They were never your friends. They banned Russia in response to Russian government instead of ignoring their demands like any other websites. It's because ISP is easy to bypass than direct geoIP block from the sites itself. They also implemented registraiton shadowban system for some countries (not only Russia). You need to use VPN for registration otherwise you will never get access to sadpanda. It's why long ago you have seen anons confused why some of them can't register on panda.

Any site that trying to block you is your enemy. Also cloudflare is supporting UK government and directly blocking access to torrents in UK and some EU countries.