Sure, just as soon as the EU sanctions the US or Israel.

Reread what he said- legal reasons (sanctions) caused a number of people to be removed from the MAINTAINERS list because they work for Russian companies that fall under sanctions.

Someone realized (or was reminded) of the sanctions, and they did their due diligence to remove them as required by Finnish and/or EU law.

This doesn't mean they can't submit code- just that they have to go through other maintainers and have their code audited, just like basically everyone else. It doesn't mean their code is removed, or that attribution is removed. It just means they can no longer act as maintainers.

As for Torvald's comment about aggression? Someone was asking him to break sanctions and restore these people to MAINTAINERS, and his response was basically "Why would I stick my neck out to try to take a stand against sanctions for a country whose policies and politics are abhorrent to myself and my country?"

As for why Linus doesn't want to engage? Why should he engage with new accounts coming out of the woodwork that aren't contributors, maintainers, or involved in Linux at all? He has better things to do, like work on Linux, especially since he just lost a large number of maintainers that reduce the load on him.

No sooner than he moves to Russia, I suppose. So while I am surprised, because I did have a higher opinion of him too, these are pointless questions. Pointing fingers won't help for sure.