He didn’t call the maintainers trolls.

In brief, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel stated that the dismissals were simply made in line with the policy of sanctions on the Russian aggressors in the Ukraine war.

Moreover, Torvalds didn’t pull any punches when he said “lots of Russian trolls” were working to make the recent decision look unpopular. Torvalds directly accused Russia of wielding its army of social media bots in an attempt to fake a grassroots campaign and reverse the Russian maintainer cull.

This tracks with other Russian social media efforts.