Eh, a red passports in my pocket, along with a military id of same color say otherwise

Then you know better than me.

Though I’d advice to consider one in Armenia, if possible. It’s close, but much more liberal and the internet speeds are just as good. Though computer part imports seem to be problematic in there so I’m not sure if there are any good providers.

I don’t have a particular love for Russia for this type of thing, it just happens that a lot of low cost barely-professional providers are in Russia, and that Russia isn’t among the worst countries in terms of surveillance law and competence to enforce those laws. I’d happily rent from an Armenian provider, they’re just a little worse at SEO. Thanks for the tip.

ones that don’t use it as a pretense to infringe on your privacy.

My current ISP works with any router but there is a mandatory purchase of their partner’s router when you sign up. That router doesn’t host a configuration page, if you want to configure the SSID or password, you need to use their Windows/Android app. The Windows app installs a root certificate. I haven’t done that, and I think it’s just to facilitate regular updates rather than MITM decryption, but it could be either. ISPs have smart people (or people with skills in the right technical area), but they don’t have any financial incentive to use a clean solution sadly.

But it’s sad to see that they are, too, going political with this.

I’m not categorically against blocking illegal content, but it’s the surveillance I find really icky. Countries with laws about having to keep logs on users. Mandatory invisible/silent data-sharing with police. Gross.