What I see is that someone is arguing the point that all Russians are criminals. If someone is sending bad code, they usually just get banned, this time it’s preventive measures based on ethnicity.

This is such an odd thing to do… I really cannot see the benefits for the project doing this. Maybe those maintainers were payed for their work and sanctions prohibit paying them or something?

No one knows yet. Given the scale of the operation it’s most likely a large organization.