Why is microsoft posting this / working on this rather than the rust project itself?

Judging by the getting started guide[0], they thankfully haven't forked Rust or anything, this is all about windows-rs[1], a Rust library for conveniently accessing the Windows API.

[0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/rus...

[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/windows-rs