I've visited a lot of countries bunches of times but only once to Russia. It was at the very end of the Soviet era, early in the same year as the abortive coup against Gorbachev and the official end of the USSR. Before going there I had a stock of all the mental images nearly forty years of life during the Cold War built up. Some of those were confirmed. The inefficiencies, poor quality of products and food, staggering drunks on the streets after dark, and the occasional remnant "true believing" Communist official (very few and far between by 1991). But I also found that the faces we saw on the sidewalks were strikingly the same as you'd see on an American street.
It was striking because when you're in Paris the people look French. In Manchester or Birmingham they look English, in Rome they look Italian, Frankfurt-German, Stockholm - Swedes, etc. I'm able to see a movie scene of just faces on a street and with ninety percent accuracy tell you what country it was filmed in. Not Russia, unless and until a Cyrillic sign or big fur hat appears.
Another thing that was striking was how friendly everyone behaved and hospitably we were treated. It was like both sides were exhausted prize fighters, glad the fifteen rounds were over, with a clear winner but both still standing and grateful to have survived the match. After a couple vodka toasts that feeling turned to giddiness. That's my memory of Russia. They are proud, passionate, enduring under centuries of suffering. Cursed with bad rulers who committed the worst oppression against Christianity since the Roman Emperor Vespasian, but ready to rebuild the churches and return en masse once it was lifted.
I don't see any reason at all to desire or seek a war with such people. Like Alexis de Tocqueville once observed, on many levels there aren't two peoples more unlikely to be similar yet in many ways so alike. Watch the faces in this video of a children's chorus in St. Petersburg singing their national anthem. No, only fools and crazy people will want to fight these people.
My French teacher in high school traveled with groups of students every summer. She said the same thing about Russians about 15 years before your trip. And indeed my experience with Russians who have moved here... they mostly learn English and they tend to mix in more than a lot of other groups. Just don't buy a used car from one of them. ; )
But it’s quite all right to pick fights with Germany, Great Britain and France and Japan and Iran?