That’s fair. I don’t generally think of Russia when people say Europe, but historically it is (at least the parts that are in control politically). If someone in the US says “I’m taking a vacation in Europe” and I ask “oh which cities are you visiting” and they say “Moscow”, I would be pretty surprised, but that doesn’t make it not Europe.
I’d also be curious if you have a less trivial example, since it sounded like you had multiple in mind with the generalization and I’m not sure which countries I should be avoiding (I didn’t know about any).
On a side note it blows my mind that the Russians weren’t brought into the fold after the USSR collapsed. Incredible missed opportunity for peace.
Agree the Chinese here may be doing the rational thing. I think people in the west have an exaggerated view of how bad China is for Chinese. Culturally we are offended by a lot of the government practices, but not everyone has the same culture (of course).