It is pretty obvious your opinion is firstly based on appearances. We all do that to some extent I guess, but it maybe blinds us to the way folk apppearing different from our ideals are really feeling. To Russians, NATO has been converging on their border for about thirty years, and there was the quiet civil war already going on in Ukraine between nationalists and unionists also since 2014. These are things our Western media never talks about, but common knowledge in Russia, surely.
So their attack on Ukraine can't be compared with the US attack on Vietnam.
The population of Russia feels like the action taken in Ukraine is self defence, whereas that couldn't possibly be argued by the US population in the case of Vietnam.
But those you spoke to, meeting you on holiday, thinking they only need to get along with you for the duration of their holiday, like simeone else points out here, they would just say whatever they thought would placate you, for the sake of keeping the peace, at least while they are on holiday.