Sure, there was a post back in June posted in !worldnews@lemmy.ml about a dam in Ukraine being destroyed. Obviously a contentious topic. There were several threads speaking poorly of Russia and its administration, many such threads were deleted and users banned, with "Orientalism" typically cited as the reason in the modlog.

It's the admins' right to dictate what is or isn't acceptable. Generally they are hands off on most topics, but Anti-Russia, anti-China sentiment is looked down upon by admins and often removed/banned within lemmy.ml. Just saying that this choice of new moderator doesn't change their moderation philosophy, it only complements it.