I would be very surprised if such a fork would diverge from Linux. I would guess that this would be little more than a branch with (most likely) support for Russian hardware. Just my hunch.
A legitimate hard fork doesn't seem particularly smart to me, but what do I know...
It's not about a divergent featureset, it's about making sure Russian businesses can continue to legally use Linux if the US decides to make that the next step
"I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, Rus/GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Russian Federation plus GNU plus Linux minus Linus."