Russia spans 12 full time zones it has twice the land area of Europe or the USA. They also take civil defence seriously. Moscow and St. Petersburg both have enough fall out shelter space with blast doors deep underground for every citizen of those cities. They also stock pile food underground. Contrary to what ignorant people think fallout doesn’t kill for thousands or even dozens of years peak fallout rads happen within a few hours after and fall rapidly over the next 30 days since most of the fission products have short half lives. The longer a half life the less it’s activity in gamma,beta or alpha decay the relationship is nonlinear. Even if you were directly in the peak fallout tail of a megaton class ground burst with 10000+ REM per hour levels a few hours after detonation three months later you could walk across the same patch of earth to safety in an area not directly in that plume path in less than ten years you could live in that earth with only slightly higher back ground rads. Survival is contingent on having at least a protection factor of at least 10000 for at least three weeks. Ten feet of moist earth give that level of protection. Moscow subways are 100+ feet deep with nuclear blast rated doors they don’t hide them Google Moscow subways blast doors there’s dozens of images they look like the doors on out NORAD why because they serve the same purpose. It has always been Russian doctrine to ride out a nuclear exchange they have so much remote land mass that there will always be land to.grow food no matter how much warheads we throw at them. That was in the 1980s with 30,000 warheads aimed at them we have less than 5000 now so they are sure they will survive in some capacity. That’s just how they will.
Of course life will go on but thinking that they can just merrily ride out the destruction of every city and their entire military is silly.
Whatever they like about their lives can be incinerated and we don’t have to tolerate those who emerge from the shelters either.
Yeah Japan rebuilt because they surrendered and became our ally.
Bottom line is when kooks start threatening you with nuclear war you let them know they will be the first to die.
The landscape after that exchange will be radically different. You might come out of those shelters to encounter American, or more likely, Chinese troops.
China would sure love that productive land and access to Europe.