Small countries routinely help out for cases like this. I expect the US has reached out to whatever ones were involved long ago - it is just that until now things were still in the evidence gathering stage. While the police are sometimes willing to make an example of the wrong guy - that is the exception - most of the time they try to be right which means long investigations over many attacks.

Exactly. Also not sure why everyone says Bitcoin is anonymous. It's as anonymous as how deep someone is willing to spend to uncover your address. If we are talking multiple nation states who are interested in tracking you down you are pretty much screwed.

The problem is the US doesn't have any jurisdiction over Russia, and the Russian government turns a blind eye to these activities (and sometimes works with certain cybercriminals) as long as Russian citizens aren't victimized. Not only will they not extradite, they won't do anything at all to address it. So another government would have to resort to extralegal methods like what ostensibly happened in this case, if it isn't a smokescreen. (I think either scenario is plausible.)

(This isn't some anti-Russian screed or anything; this is just one particular point where the Russian government is IMO behaving improperly. I could elaborate if needed.)

> Russian government turns a blind eye to these activities

Presumably in return for some sort of gratuity. Perhaps they decided they weren’t getting a big enough cut.