It had apparently escaped the attention of anyone in Western Europe (other than the Spaniards who drew up the Treaty of London 1604) that the Czars had succeeded in conquering Kazan in the mid 1500s.
By 1867 Russia was selling Alaska to the United States.
The Russians still aren't part of an integrated European military alliance ~ although both the United States, which simply didn't exist at the time, and Turkey itself do!
Well, to much of Western Europe, Russia must have been a far off land, no more tangible than Cathay