You may contact the Russians with the same safety precautions as the Americans.
In fact, everything you might know about Russians from non-russian news, concerns only a small group of the certain people who have steadily ruled this country for the past 20 years.
In general, the Russians are friendly towards foreigners, with the exception in some cases of the Americans(USA) and Germans.
And the main reason - they tolerate others like they tolerate each other (or not tolerate). Because when you speak of Russians, you speak of 100+ nationalities mixed on different races, with the different religions and even different native languages. The closest comparison is the whole European Union (Scots included).
In short - two Russians can be so different, that the only common thing for them would be the official language for Russia - russian