You are confusing Russ Allbery with me, while at the same time making it sound like I have a problem with systemd, which is not the case. Russ remains a debian developer.

No, I don't think so but perhaps it wasn't as drastic: https://lwn.net/Articles/620879/

Also, I worked in the same department as Russ once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away.