This mix of ideological and corporate backing may make Linux and certain similar projects seem "too big to fail", but the only reason Russia, China and India (and indeed certain western corporations) hasn't completely ignored all or parts of the GNU Public License is because its rise in popularity coincides with the world turning unipolar: the Linux kernel was released in 1991, the same year the Soviet Union toppled over and fell apart.
This way of writing as if Russia, China and India are undifferentiated monoliths, often while affording "The West" the courtesy of being comprised of individuals, is really grating.
These countries also consist of individuals, and these people also create and contribute to FOSS. Perhaps to a lesser extent, due to cultural and economic reasons (as the author speculates), but they contribute nonetheless.
The author seems to ignore one of the most practical reasons for contributing to FOSS (and the argument behind the Open Source movement when it broke from Free Software). It's often cheaper and simpler to play ball (i.e. contribute back instead of maintaining your own patches in perpetuity).
I do buy the argument to some extent that American global dominance is helpful in enforcing free software licenses overseas, but it's definitely not the full picture and there will always be people contributing to FOSS regardless of whether there's a state that enforces licenses.
we probably shouldn't hold our breath waiting for anything substantial to show up in any FOSS repository from sanctioned countries
Nginx is Russian. I would call that pretty substantial.