Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
Your answer makes sense because the country is geographically split between two continents.
Option two places you in the same category as Turkey who is viewed with great suspicion by many Europeans, certainly the EU.
Unlike Turkey, which annexed a small part of European continent, all Russian lands in Asia are some sort of colonies. Until XVI century Russia hadn't any Asian lands and the story of conquering Siberia reminds me strongly about Cortés and Pizarro cases:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermak

ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ермак_Тимофеевич

And Middle Asia and Caucasus were annexed much later, in XIX century.

BTW, what do you think about Denmark in this context since 95% of it's territory (Greenland) is outside of European continent either?