Project 11356R was designed as a stopgap solution to plug the hole until the much more ambitious Project 22350 became available.
It is basically a Krivak frigate hull with VLS (UKVLS for Kalibr and Shtil for Buk) added to it.
China imported those weapon systems and sensor suite to make the Type 052B destroyer. So the technology itself is perfectly known to the PLAN. The Type 054A has a significantly different hull and CODAD propulsion. While the Project 11356R much like the Krivak uses COGAG propulsion.
The Type 054A has a slower top speed but should have lower fuel consumption and increased range and endurance as a result.
The basic Type 054A hull is much closer in specifications to the French La Fayette frigates than any Russian ship.
Missile and electronics system miniaturization has enabled a huge capability increase in modern frigate designs compared to Cold War era designs.
If you look at the French Formidable-class stealth frigates, which are modern derivatives of the French La Fayette frigate design, they even look kind of similar to the Type 054B in terms of the main radar and sensor mast setup.
The main difference between Type 054B and the Formidable-class seems to be that the earlier was more optimized for endurance and the latter for speed.
They picked a hull that was much larger than of the Perry frigates to begin with (FREMM) and made it even larger.
It makes sense if the goal is either to counter or defend against salvos from supposedly smaller Chinese ships in the same class.
Except the Chinese decided to make their own ships 50% bigger.
Even at its current level, Russia needs to get its act together.