Adding a second keyboard and using the Russian layout is a cool method to use a 2nd keyboard that doesn't just duplicate the keys of the first, and likely has more fun applications than just adding more shortcuts to your text editor.
[1] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord
I'm trying to build out more ergonomic bindings since emacs-pinky is starting to haunt me at times. I have key-chords setup for very common things like jump to beginning/end of line ('jk' and 'kl').
Emacs is a differenet story... By default it uses a lot of alt and ctrl key combinations and also makes heavy usage of the arrow and home/end keys. Of course, there is a vi mode for emacs (evil; this is what Spacemacs uses) to take advantage of vi keys in emacs. But I believe that most emacs users just stick to the alt/ctrl shortcuts.
After seeing the article I've thought about doing something similar, but dismissed it exactly because it would take my hands out of the keyboard.
Control is more common than Alt, and with the usual swap with caps lock (as on old keyboards) it is still on the home row for the left hand.