Not only during the period of the Soviet Union but also in the preceding era of the Russian Tsars, many different ethnic group inhabited Russian soil. There were ethnic German, Fin, Tatar, Jewish minorities - just to name a few. The would normally move freely between Talinn (Estonia) in the West, Vladivostok in the Far East and and Crimea in the south.
With people from any of these different groups eventually mingling by intermarriage or when they married ethnic Russians, you will get personal family histories with mixed Tatar, German, Finnish or even Mongolian blood. The Crimean tartars speak a Turkic dialect and have a traditional Islamic background themselves with many of them not being Muslims at all. Hence, someone with a name from a Turkic ethnic minority must not necessarily be Turkish or be a Muslim (also note that “Turkish” and “Turkic” are two different things!).

I learnt that by myself in the nineties and I from the UK btw.

I read about the C.I.S out of interest, and as the successor to the USSR, of which the Russian federation now holds the UN seat and is responsible for it's debt. I know that there are not just white russians, even germans make up a minority, and the people in the east look more chinese/mongolian, than white european.

But you are right, Turkish and turkic are two different things. Either way it does not look good for Georgia with putins continued annexations, I bet kazakhstan must be worried also, as Russia has the lease on the space station and views northern kazakhstan as essentially russian.