Linus has never been the best communicator, but he usually speaks the truth. But this is just bonkers and wrong. Not everyone living in Russia has "ties with Russia" other than "they were born there". If this is about sanctions, he could have still just told them that. But instead he just disrespected contributors completely and then double down in it by being xenophobic.
It's really disappointing seeing Russian contributors being disrespected like this, the regime that rules Russia wasn't entirely their fault, and allegiance, nationality, and ethnicity are all clearly different things
Also, wouldn't a state sponsored Russian hacker pretend to be from the US or something anyway? No way they'd contribute code as a Russian, that'd just increase others' suspicion
I agree with Linus a lot too but I strongly disagree here. I hope he's just being made to say this because of government policies
Linux foundation is a US company, and he's a EU citizen and there's companies that those devs where employed that are under sanction , hot that hard to understand