You do not believe me?
Modern territory of Russia, starting from the central European part, belonged to the Golden Horde, and earlier to the Khazar and Bulgar kingdoms, there were no "Russians" there. The ancient Russian state and Litvin Rus were on the territory of modern Belarus, Lithuania and eastern Poland. Everything associated with Russian culture, such attributes as bears and forests refer specifically to this territory, it include Moscow, but further from Moscow to the southeast, there is none of this, the steppe begins there and there was horse breeding and no bears. You can check it on the maps.
All this is united by the Baltic archaeological cultures, these are the cultures on the basis of which the Russian states arose.
The final merger took place only in 1917, before that there were Cossack autonomies.