I used to work for a manager who would blatantly say "I will not hire a white person for this position". Of course, it wasn't an official policy to exclude people based on race. I'm pretty sure that would be illegal? But in practice, some hiring managers would sometimes reject or not even consider candidates of certain races. I've also seen people on hiring panels lower standards explicitly because of "diversity" (but to be fair, only when the candidate was on the fence of hire/no-hire).
This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
Russians need a travel visa to go to any Western country and most of the world. Some EU countries are banned Russians from entering; the US is not issuing travel visas in Russia anymore.
How did the company decide who to lay off? They didn't even ask EMs?