Yeah it's cutting off the nose to spite the face. Stupid move by the kernel admins. If you're gonna start banning people from contributitg because of shut their government does, then the entire US and Israeli population of Linux devs should be dropped.
The cold war is reborn and this time it's warmer. Do people not understand that before 30 years ago no communication occured with countries behind the iron curtain. Russia's invasion of Ukraine put us on a path back to those kind of relations.
Stupid or not, it is the state of the world. It's not down to Linus to do anything but live and work within the situation constructed by the governments of nation states.