It does export to odt, but it still messes up document formatting. Of course this is a solvable issue from a technical perspective, but it's still a lot of man hours to do so for every single document and template across an entire government.

Microsoft’s format is “open” but they don’t follow their own standard so it’s effectively proprietary. I’d be surprised if the odt export even works.

The format isn't the problem; the rules for rendering content outside the PDF are more suggestions.

And honestly, even if the rules were adhered to, there's no way in F that Microsoft would comply just for this very reason

It isn't the same thing, no. The Russian alternative got forked by some EU corporation and relabeled to Euro Office. Further, it's FOSS, so it can be truly independently audited unlike Microslop's garbage.

I will urge LibreOffice/Collabora any day. I don't really care for the Russian BS suite because it still adheres to Microsoft's proprietary "open" document standards, and so long as you use that bullshit you'll never own your own documents. You'll always be beholden to their garbage one way or another.