I didn't wanted to explain here why exactly she banned it since I believe no one on HN will truly interested in authoritarian state internal politics, but it's important in this case. Few years ago Kremlin marked non-profit Dynasty Foundation [1] that was for years funding science and educational institutions as "foreign agent" and stated that that reason for that is foreign funding. Of course it's was complete bullshit because organization was funded by single person: Dmitry Zimin (founder of one of three largest Russian telecoms).

Real reason for that Kremlin action was funding of some politics-related book publishing and lectures. For non-profit "foreign agent" mark in practice bring regulation that almost impossible or too expensive to comply with. So Dmitry Zimin just decide to close non-profit.

Then most of people in Russian science community who still live and work in Russia have strong liberal views. Obviously they wasn't too happy about that since it's one one of few non profits in Russia that was actually funding science and education for real. Very few rich people in Russia ever donated anything to science or education so it's a big loss.

Elbakyan "nuanced standpoint" was such that Kremlin doing good job and since Sci-Hub users from Russia didn't agree she just decide to ban whole country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasty_Foundation