I agree that this is a stupid, virtue-signally move, but it's important to remember that Gagarin journeyed into space in service of the Soviet government, while the latter was explicitly occupying numerous countries and enslaving tens of millions of foreigners. I still think he should be honored because his accomplishments were truly a milestone for the human race -- just as Nazi innovations in rocketry ought to be -- but characterizing it as racism misses the bigger picture.
That said, there have actually been cases of explicit racism against Russians since the invasion started, such as the recent slurry of vandalisms against Russian-owned restaurants in New York. It's particularly disgusting because this kind of behavior buys into the same ethnonationalist ideology Russia's used to justify its interventions in Donbass and Crimea.
