First time I've seen this sitting behind my shitty VPN. If the frontpage /r/normaldayinrussia posts didn't make you raise an eyebrow knowing their denying access to people for running a VPN should at least make you second guess.
Welcome. I think you will find lemmy is a sufficient substitute. Not as fast pace as reddit but it turns out to be a good thing. You also don't have to worry so much about comments falling into the abyss. With comment counts topping out at around 500 you can respond to the main post and still get engagement.
That will probably change as lemmy grows but for now it's nice. Overall it's reddit but a different speed.
So far it does feel like a re-imagining of traditional internet forum of the early 00s, but Reddit inspired. I actually had no idea about the whole "Fediverse" thing until today, but so far it seems really promising that there isn't any one central agency in control of the platform. Maybe that's a misunderstanding though.
Am I correct in thinking that Fediverse operates somewhat like the internet? Is it just a collection of end-points sharing data through a single protocol and if one shuts down, the rest aren't affected? Or is there a host that is technically in control of Lemmy as a whole?