After I read that profile I decided I'd never use the software. I remember before news spread of the Russian troll farms being real, people talked about it like "who would do that?" Russia would.
I don't think it's their quote - but I remember Penn of Penn & Teller saying about magic something to the effect that the magician does the things that people think "It could be... but who would do all of that work?" This is how I feel about Russia. They will or already are doing the things you think they won't and nothing is beyond being a tool for the state.
I don't really like feeding the image of the Russian super villain, but I don't consider it overly paranoid to avoid installing software from hostile nations. Yes I used this same logic to convince my wife to uninstall tiktok.