UPDATE: When asked whether Linus Torvalds was under any sort of NDA around this, he responded:
"No, but I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.
I’m also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them."
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Russian-Devs
Linus was always really, really stupid politically. It’s truly amazing he’s outlived the Linux foundation.