Same headline could have been in America a few weeks ago. "Internet disrupted in United States amid opposition protests" Except private companies disrupted the internet over central governments.
web services != internet: Nobody was pulling a lever and blanket shutting down WhatsApp.
government != private: You touch on this, but it' a significant difference that there was no abuse of political power at play; you simply had independent entities coming to the same conclusion, and acting within their rights.
tactical != strategic: The revocation of service by various American web services was not time sensitive, calculated to disrupt an ongoing protest; it was a refusal to continue providing service after the heat had died down.
You don't need to if you can intervene at the specific application and user level. Which is what happened with Twitter and Facebook, Youtube and Parler.
> there was no abuse of political power at play; you simply had independent entities
Which happen to be companies from the same nation, after the political entity their actions are directed against has lost the elections and is well on its way out and its opponents are coming in. Russia doesn't have the luxury of having its own Facebook and Youtube.
> The revocation of service by various American web services was not time sensitive, calculated to disrupt an ongoing protest;
Yet it was motivated with the danger of further incitements- which means that the heat had not died down at all- the actions were explicitly aimed at preventing more protest.
(... not sure if the headline fits any style guide)
Arguably, the internet ends at the network level (TCP). Everything above it is just the payload. Application layer disruptions are not internet disruptions.