For context, Russia has a special government service [0] dedicated to censoring the websites they don't like. They maintain a list of blocked IP addresses, and the Russian ISPs are forced to block access to these, or face revocation of their license.

Companies/websites that want to have business in Russia are hence forced to comply with the government's request to block the content Russia doesn't like (for Russian users), as otherwise Russia will simply blacklist the entire site (or other owned sites, since the legal framework for this is deliberately very vague and allows blocking anyone on a political whim).

Talking about slippery slope, it started under the guise of protecting the underage from child molesters et al, and very quickly descended to blocking opposition to Putin's government.

Also for context, the IT/software crowd in Russia is much more liberal/pro-Western values, since they speak English, are able to read international news, setup VPN, etc. As much as we all hate what the Russian government is currently doing, pouring that anger at random developers, that mostly share the westerners' views is plain stupid.

If you want the decision makers to feel the pain, go sanction the oil/gas industry. It's owned by the inner circle that has much more influence on the policy than a random IT guy from a cheap outsourcing firm in Moscow.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervisio...