northwestern russians are basically slavicized finns and many finno-ugric groups live in russia
culturally while we may seem similar on the outside there are many differences
if not for the russification campaign in early 1900s and what happened during ww2 i believe our nations would be great friends and i wish that in the future we still can be but doesn't seem likely considering our retard government forced us to join nato (no voting, so much for democracy)