while Linus in private said that he absolutely is going to merge Rust code over a maintainers objection. (He did so in private in case you are looking for a reference).

So as of now, as a Linux developer or maintainer you must deal with Rust if you want to or not.

Where Rust code doesn't just mean Rust code [1] - the bindings look nothing like idiomatic Rust code, they are very different kind of beast trying to bridge a huge semantic gap. And they aren't doing that in a few places, because they are showed into every little subsystem and library right now.