My point was that great powers are always in some kind of military conflict, so it's not really a deciding factor when choosing where to build an R&D.

Putin's concentration of power has been alarming, but only since around 2012, to be honest. It was relatively stable between 2000 and 2012 in general (minus isolated cases of mysterious deaths and imprisonments). Russia was business-friendly back then, open to foreign investors, and most of Putin's authoritarian laws were yet to be issued. Most of the conflicts Russia was involved in were viewed as local conflicts in border areas (Chechen separatism, disputed Georgian territories, frozen East Ukrainian conflict, etc.). Only in 2022 did the Ukraine war escalate to its current scale, and few people really saw it coming (see: thousands of European/American businesses operating in Russia by 2022 without any issue)

So I kind of see why Intel didn't do much about it until 2022. In fact, they even built a second R&D center in 2020... (20 years after the first one).