Use btrfs with snapshots. Verify you know how to boot into snapshot after a failed update and repair the system. This is the most important thing and lets you experiment much more freely.

I am doubtful about the agency of the commenters here. Does not seem natural, more like a group of bots / paid russian trolls.

It doesn’t. Russians are still free to use and contribute to Linux development. Just a few people lost their maintainer rights.

The fork has no hope of survival. Are you telling me Russia’s Ministry of Digital Development can maintain a project of this size? lol, rofl even.