At the school I went to we had a lad from Kazakhstan who had to constantly explain to the poor Norf FC staff that he was indeed from a real country that was not part of Russia, and that he just spoke Russian and thus would hang out with Russians and other Russian speakers like Ukrainians, Armenians etc. alongside other Kazakhs and then explain that all those were also all real countries and not regions or cities in Russia.

Eventually he gave up and just started degectedly answering he was from Russia.