Thanks for pointing this out.. I (like most other US citizens) have zero idea of what things are actually like in Russia. The news reminds us daily that Russia is a frozen hellscape filled with miserable savages, Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows (Stranger Things season 3 comes to mind), our school system teaches kids next to nothing about the country.
It's a bit reminiscent of North Korea's daily news blasts showing fabricated footage of how miserable life in SK and USA is. Probably not as extreme a slant going on here, but there's an awful lot of anti-Russia sentiment floating around with no readily apparent basis in fact.
>Russians are the 'bad guys' of choice in a disproportionate amount of high visibility movies and Netflix shows
Because the Chinese are off limits now (because the studios want to make money there and throwing evil Chinese billionaires into your rotation for super-villain of the month is a great way to not do that) so that basically leaves Russian billionaires and middle eastern oil moguls as your two picks for low effort evil foreign characters.
This youtube channel is a great way to get a picture of Russia from a foreigners perspective, its basically a vlog made by an English guy backpacking thru rural Russia and former Soviet countries.
It's a bit reminiscent of North Korea's daily news blasts showing fabricated footage of how miserable life in SK and USA is. Probably not as extreme a slant going on here, but there's an awful lot of anti-Russia sentiment floating around with no readily apparent basis in fact.