IP lookup still broken!

I am completely losing my mind here. Our geo-targeting is STILL failing, even after trying literally every suggestion from the previous thread about our IP geolocation API problems. This is absolutely critical for our SaaS, and I’ve been staring at logs for hours, days even, feeling like I'm hitting a brick wall. We cannot launch properly if users from blocked countries are getting through.

The maddening part is that the IP lookup API itself seems to be returning correct country data. When I check our server logs, I can see 'US' for US IPs, 'RU' for Russian IPs, etc., in the raw API responses. The data is there, it’s correct, but our application's geo-blocking or redirection logic just isn't triggering correctly. Users from countries we’re supposed to be blocking are still getting access, and it's driving me insane.

I've tried everything I can think of. I started by verifying the API key and endpoint again, confirmed they're active and correct. I logged the raw API responses right on the server, and the JSON *does* contain the correct 'countryCode' field. So the API isn't the problem, or so it seems. Then I dove deep into our application logic. I’ve spent countless hours tracing the code. The `if` statements for geo-blocking, like `if (countryCode === 'RU')`, are syntactically correct. There are no typos, no weird case issues that I can see. I've cleared all application caches, server caches, and even CDN caches multiple times, just in case something was stubbornly stuck. Nothing. I checked our database entries for country-specific access rules, and they're configured correctly. I even used a separate tool, a simple `curl ipinfo.io/json`, directly on the server to verify the server's *own* outbound IP lookup, just to make sure general network connectivity wasn't the issue. It's not. Finally, I reviewed our Nginx configs and Cloudflare settings to ensure no IP masking or strange forwarding is happening before the request even reaches our application server. Everything seems fine there too.

What on earth could possibly cause an IP lookup API to return correct data, yet the application, despite having seemingly correct logic, completely fails to act on it? Is there some obscure environment variable I'm missing, a framework-specific caching layer that I haven't found, or a common integration gotcha that I'm completely overlooking? I’m completely stuck and desperately need an expert to point me in the right direction. Please, someone help me out here.