You can implement lists in Rust safely; with enums, a list is four lines of safe code. You can even implement a doubly-linked list safely. You just can't do either of these things by wielding pointers willy-nilly. If you're willing to accept a performance tradeoff by implementing a list in pure, bootstrapped, FFI-free Python, then you can do the same in Rust.

How would you implement a python list in python? I mean, what would you consider "acceptable" primitives to do so?

You certainly can! And that's a good example, because it exposes just how important context is to this discussion. Perf matters in certain contexts. If you implemented a list in pure Python, do you think its users would find the overall perf of Python to be acceptable?