The Russian sentences you give are correct.
There is no logical inconsistency in the Russian way of dealing with the tenses, it’s just a different way.
A dependent clause in Russian uses tenses relative to the tense of the main clause in such cases, not the absolute tenses like in English. You should take this into account when speaking about semantics.
English sequence of tenses sounds to the same extent ludicrous for an inexperienced Russian ear.