p.s while I'm doing my observations, I might as well point out something else I always found rather interesting. Back home, in the west, I would often ask people where they are from (when I heard an accent - usually I had a guess in mind already... and in Russian people's cases I knew they were Russian speakers) but I would get all sorts of answers...
like:
Czech Republic (if the person is Czech)
Hungary (if the person is Hungarian)
Latvia (if the person is Latvian)
Poland (if the person is Polish)
Romania (if the person is Romanian)
... I think you can see a pattern here?
So what would a Russian or Ukrainian answer?
"Europe" of course!
this happened in more than half the cases... not really sure how much more than half, but it was the majority. These were older people (over 40 usually), I was not making a habit of chatting up young people. So perhaps the young might respond differently
My theory is that perhaps some think that western people may not automatically like them? who knows?