You see Russia is in a unique position. They want to fight dissent online, they have a very competitive ISP market with lots and lots of ISPs that are hard to control, they have a lot of foreign companies taking a huge share of internet usage, they alienated IT professionals and don't really have smart loyal people who can help them figure these things out. So they seek guidance in China and follow Chinese ideas to monitor and filter online communications. Meaning that they are trying to figure out how to pressure foreign companies like Telegram to cooperate, how to pressure ISPs to cooperate, how to block access to the services foreign companies provide, given how many different ISPs there are. So at this point it's more like a process, not an actual end goal of getting access to this one particular platform. And family is definitely not the line they would want to cross, as it would undermine the whole process if the word gets out.
