Alex, why are u asking this?

yup, it was called for. the statistics show that russians are the ones who cheat the most and generally provoke toxicity online and specifically on codeforces. i personally think this was a long time coming and now that it finally happened we will start seeing positive results. as with everything, russians are starting to become more and more marginalized due to their behavior and misconduct.
the end of an era, finally no more russians. [everyone liked this]

I think they do not hate russian competitors, however they do hate having a negative image in any way (this does not have to be the IOI, but it could be any competition really). I think this would have been the reason.

The point of dissallowment is not one to make russians suffer, but to indirectly annoy them, as such: having a war will make the general acceptance of the public lower to their leader (i.e. they'll hate him more). When a leader does something impressive, or the country itself (which they represent), the mood will go up (i.e. they love him). If the mood is very low, maybe the people will try to overthrow him in some ways or smth idk. If the leader cannot show how in his hands the culture of sportsman ship grew and bred strong and fierce representatives that show their true cultures might, then the population would again become dissapointed in the leader, and then maybe they will overthrow him or smth idk