Right, so I'm just going to say it - I have a feeling many of us are thinking it but it's an uncomfortable thought and so it's gone mostly unspoken so far.

From the Kremlin's point of view, it's handy not to be too reliant on Apple/Google software, which is produced by companies based in NATO countries. Especially when you have very different strategic aims to those countries, and tensions are increasing because you:

• recently annexed part of another country
• "probably" either lost control of your stockpile of your favourite nerve agent (best case scenario) or explicitly sanctioned its use against citizens in a NATO country (worst case scenario)
• are propping up another regime that is using chemical weapons on its own people
• are (quite successfully) gaslighting citizens in your own country and other NATO countries about all of the above

If relations deteriorate further, you probably don't want to have your government ministers chatting about strategy using a Google handset.

As for whether we here can benefit from the extra money/development efforts resulting from Russia investing in SFOS... that's a separate question. Will SFOS remain a mostly open platform that the Russian gov just happens to use lots? Or will it become like Android - open core but with all kinds of shady telemetry and crap on top, this time with the telemetry handled by companies aligned with Russia instead of America.

NB: I don't see "Russians" as synonymous with "Russia", by which I mean the current Russian government.