"Sam Bendett, a researcher at the CNA Corporation and a Fellow in Russia Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the Kremlin has been keenly concerned about ‘adversarial’ information warfare initiatives for several years. “Therefore, efforts to control it or affect the information space in its favor are front and center,’ he said.
Like of much Russia’s internet isolationism, the move reflects what the Kremlin gleaned from the Arab Spring and older pro-democracy movements, Bendett said “One of the biggest lessons learned from Syria, and from the Arab Spring writ large, was the need for Russia to have more robust information warfare capabilities, especially for its military. Despite Western concerns that Russian [information operations, or IO] are very successful, Russians themselves tend to think that it’s the IO against their interests that is gaining significant steam. So, once again, Smirnov’s comments underscore the need to control the cyberspace in favor of Russia.” Read more in Defense News.