It’s not like they’re squawking it the whole way. It changes in flight- for example the attached captured roughly at the point of squawking 7700 (note weird routing)

pick a Pobeda operated (Bermuda registered) plane in the same general vicinity today (DP1192) and it’s currently squawking 1002

Not sure whether Fr24 would be open to blocking the transponders of an entire country’s fleet? And that’s before they even get into the leased aircraft that are registered elsewhere. My understanding is it’s done on an aircraft by aircraft basis

it strikes me as a genuine distress call on this basis. However I don’t know (obvs)