Yes, the Russian locale is, in fact, the place not only of Russian citizens, but of all Russian-speaking people from the countries of the former Soviet Union: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc.
We have similar situation in Croatian local board, people write there from all surrounding countries (Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro...) that speak same or similar languages.. and we still don't have our own moderator.
As for lenient moderation, for the Russian locale it was a very big vulnerability, because thanks to this, trolls could create shitposts for months containing absolute nonsense, provocations, hatred, etc., and no one could do anything about it. As far as I understand, local moderators cannot ban high ranks, this requires the help of global moderators.
How many local moderators you have in Russian local forum board?
I was taking a look and it is showing xandry and Xal0lex, but I have no idea if both of them are active now.
It's sad to see that some people are fueled with hate and they are using bitcointalk forum as platform for spreading hate to others... nobody replies to them, but they keep posting...