Brits are cool because they have a great past, a nice present, and a promising future. Russia has a harsh past (oppressed slaves with a Tsar or a communist dictator at the top), a poor present (some of them are discovering toilets and domestic water in Ukraine), and a shitty future (more and more political and economical collapse). So the Russian people that hadn't already fled to the West to get a life and modern toilets, are all turned into nuisance and hostility back in their frozen lands. As they live in a system where dissidents disappear or get suicided, they persuade themselves the problem is not among them and at the government, but in the bad guys of the CIA. I think it is something as simple and sad as this.

I must add that France too was a great empire, and the French don't care about jokes about them because a non-French will never be more anti-French than the common ironic and unpleasing French. To realize how Russian leaders could act, we must remind ourselves of how they defeated the Napoleonic armies in their lands. They burned Moscou with injured soldiers in the hospital to make everyone homeless during the winter, and they fled so that the French had to find nobody and retreat. So yes, they really can use their nuke to suicide the whole world.

When you have nothing, you need a collective illusion of greatness to heal your ego. And when you can't protect this illusion, you dream of a burning world. It looks like Sauron, but at least Sauron could convince human factions to join him... Russians are on their own in this madness.