Yeah, it's a strange one. That seems to be what will happen alright. I got the feeling either (a) allowing them in the qualifiers gives them time to appeal, whereas if you booted them out of the qualifiers and then lost an appeal you'd have a big lawsuit or (b) they want to punish the federation but not the players - so the players get to go to the World Cup, the Russian fans get to watch their team (and FIFA get their TV money), but the Russian Federation doesn't make any money off it. But I don't really know.