Retention and legal holds: Data can still be deleted even if a retention policy or legal hold is in place, unless licensing or billing is restored first. Do not rely on holds alone to protect unlicensed data.
Surprising it doesn't automatically move into an admin or company lawyer's drive so it can be dealt with rather then a few notifications which will probably be missed and the data permanently deleted.
Don’t worry, you have ~30 days, that should be enough for you to audit your entire org. /s
That number has no connection to the actual system.
I can’t see any suggestion that accounts already 12 months since they were deactivated won’t be nuked in July. You’re potentially getting a months notice in the short term.
Looking into the actual announcements, they're not 100% clear but I'd be shocked if they skipped the archival period for old accounts. But also they originally announced this a long time ago and the official page says they've been rolling it out since January last year.