Do any of these new policies appear to make sense, even superficially?
Similar to Putin's "revenge" restrictions on EU products, I'm at a loss to see how any of it is actually meant to be good for Russians.
Well, the whole point of government is to protect citizens from themselves by divine or elected right, so it's apparent that the Russians feel they can no longer handle freedom in regards to their Internet privileges; Putin, being the president of Russia, is the most intelligent man in that nation so says the voters, as well as being their voice, therefore he and his colleagues know far greater than anyone else what's best for the Russian people at this particular time and that's an NK-style walled garden to protect the citizens from terrorism and Nazis and terrorist nazi bloggers and so forth.
What's better for a nation than to huddle as closely to that nation as possible? Through these means, the Russian people will forget all about the people of outside nations, and will remember why their nation is so great: it is because it is the one they happened to be born into, but to them, it will be because it's the #1 nation in the world. By shutting out other cultures, the Russian people might even hit the nation-state enlightenment: to believe that they are the "chosen people" and that all others are the equivalent of animals, prime for slavery and slaughter. In this manner, the Russians have a chance to become the dominant group of the planet, rather than a mere participant within a global economy, which will no doubt inevitably destroy their nation as dreams of voluntary association increase and accelerate and materialize; no politician wants this, it would mean an end to their jobs as the recipients of bribes.
It is therefore necessary for world leaders to join the individual minds of their respective nation into a collective unit, as individual cells of a body create a living being, with the general public as the muscles and organs, and the government as the brain, and removing the dissonance which stems from other cultures and ideas is an important step in achieving this goal. It may not help the Russians be any more civil or peaceful or intelligent or otherwise better off--heck, it'll probably make things worse for them--but it'll make the lawmaker's jobs easier so it's not hard to see why Pootypoot would give his own people the proverbial middle-finger through these policies.