Russia after starting aggressive war against Ukraine quickly deployed own version of payment system. And it has been working much better than Visa/Madtercards with much more straightforward integration with online services and very intuitive apps. Russian people who moved from Russia as refugees or just to escape mobilization or prosecution have found banking system in EU/UK/US are rather unsmooth to put it mildly.

1. "Quickly deployed" is misleading. The work started after 2014 when the idea of closing Russia from the SWIFT system was first discussed. Europeans didn't do that at that time (and they were, that would have been hugely problematic for Russian banks), but made Russia initiate technical work to add in-country backend. In 2022 they finally had to turn it on. But the work was 8 years in the making.

2. When it comes to Mir (Visa/Mastercard) alternatives, it is not that wide-spread.

3. The awesomeness of Russian Fintech (and IT/tech in general) is a separate thing, that has everything to do with Russians' technological ingenuity, not the government/sanctions/patriotism/safety/risk-management/sovereignty/independence.