Russian language is tricky, it creates problems in many Post-Soviet countries. I think Russian speakers who live in other countries feel that they're somehow better than people representing local culture because they're part of another, "superior" culture. Even if they aren't really Russians, ethnically.

I grew up in Lithuania, in a small Russian-speaking town. It's the only such town in Lithuania. Despite being of Ukrainian and Belarusian(probably Polish too) descent, the dominant culture around me was Russian because all social life there happened in the Russian language. I went to a Russian school. I read Russian books. I spoke Russian at home and in all public places. I barely even knew Lithuanian until I started to learn it more seriously in my final years at school.

The one thing that made me different from others is that my mom would sometimes speak Ukrainian at home, I was exposed to Ukrainian music from early age and we watched a lot of Ukrainian TV - all of that created a certain perspective on things that most people in my hometown didn't have.