Redirecting DNS lookups as a way to isolate a network brings to mind the USSR in its latter days. There were phones, yes, but no phonebooks — and everyone had a little book with the numbers they needed.

Similarly, we’ll see a lot of Russians with their own DNS servers, or simply lots of entries in their hosts files.

That said, I’d love it if they said they wanted their own splinternet — and the rest of the world said “OK — fine!” and air-gapped them at the hubs (there aren’t a whole lot of them). #AirGapRussia. Or, if an air gap is too extreme, use BGP to disallow their packets in either direction. Historically, BGP has been to open to hacking, but from reading more recent RFCs, it looks as though maybe that’s getting fixed (?)