yup had to agree with Dutch guy and HoreTore.
As Russia the only thing that beat me back a few times were well developed polish nobles stacks.
The jav range on those monsters outranges the skirmish distance for missile cav so you are supposed to keep your missile cav on manual ; but the further you are the less you can use your sparase arrows to actually do decent damage.

Remember Russia starts off with Kazaks as their main unit. Sure they are fast and cheap and all; but they have somehting like 2 bloody defence AND are vulnerable to missiles.
Boyar's sons get hopelessly outclassed by the Polish monsters as well on all fronts except cost.
Hungarian missile cav and vards are a mere annoyance by comparison.