I think they removed or downranked results they deemed “pro-Russia”, which is not a very good sign

DuckDuckGo censors things based on politics, so no. I think StartPage is better, but still mildly sketchy, as it functions as an encrypted proxy to Google. That is, it doesn’t track you, and searches aren’t recorded, but the results may still be a little skewed. The cool thing about StartPage, though, is that it provides a web proxy to view other webpages in, to prevent third-party tracking.