It's sad that it's spiraling down to this but it is in practice no different than what the US is doing. There's no free speech without privacy so this looks like a "choose your dictator" kind of thing.
The difference here is that America does not care whether you store your data on services in Europe or Russia, but Russia does. Clearly in practice this is very different to what the US is doing.
Of course it doesn't because most, if not all, international internet services are actually based in the US, and there are laws/courts saying that US companies should give over data even if it's stored abroad. No other country has this kind of power, so it's reasonable that they try other ways of protecting their access to information.
The only reason we haven't cared up until now because it has all been stored here or within countries that have had very strong diplomatic ties to the United States. Plus, it doesn't really matter anyway because the internet backbones are all tapped. In any event I think Russia is just looking out for its own best interest by realizing that data needs to be managed and controlled like any other national resource.
