>>17749713The Byzantines married into the Rurik Dynasty of Russia. The Ruriks were the descendants of the last Roman Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos.
Russia almost completely adopted Roman culture. They became the centre of, and defenders of the Roman religion, Orthodox Christianity.
Almost their entire legal and administrative system was Roman.
Cyrilic, the Russian alphabet was based on the Greek alphabet and modified by the Byzantines, which became the basis for the Russian written language. So they use the Roman language.
One of the reasons why the Russians constantly went to war with the Ottomans for a period of like 500 years was to try and avenge the fall of the Roman Empire and retake Constantinople.
A Roman from the 1300s/1400s would recognise Russia more than any other country in 1914. Picrel is when rome died, in 1917.