Tempting to add two and two and make five.
Circa 25 years back, I attended a job interview with a well known UK pioneer of AV. A small British company, with a British name. The position I applied for was based just on programming skills, and experience of networking and UI. I took the opportunity to ask my interviewer (the then CEO) what kind of people were employed to do the real, nuts & bolts, virus discovery and analysis, that being a skill set I could not identify with?
Answer was, “They are invariably Russian, they seem to have the aptitude”.
Point being, if the Russians were intent on infiltrating AV distributors, which I doubt, it would not just affect those with Russian-sounding names.
Personally I have high regard for Eugene K as an individual, for standing up to, and destroying, some US patent trolls causing grief for App developers a few years ago. I also like kasperski’s product, it is the only paid AV I have ever used beyond the free trial period.