>How Runet Became an Appendage of the Great Firewall of China
That's a huge overstatement. Maybe in some border region some traffic was router through Chinese uplink, but in general Russian and Chinese networks are connected very loosely. My ping to Chinese sites from European part of Russia is around 260 ms, which is two times more than ping to even US sites. Same for ping to China from Western Siberia.
In terms of internet connectivity, China is even more distant from Russia, than South America.
>The Russian economy is dependent on continued military buildup
That's a myth that economy can improve by military spendings. It boosts production and investments in the moment, but in the long run it sucks resources out of economy. USSR failed precisely because of dozens of years long high military spendings
That's a huge overstatement. Maybe in some border region some traffic was router through Chinese uplink, but in general Russian and Chinese networks are connected very loosely. My ping to Chinese sites from European part of Russia is around 260 ms, which is two times more than ping to even US sites. Same for ping to China from Western Siberia.
In terms of internet connectivity, China is even more distant from Russia, than South America.