What was the point of the Russian's being in North Vietnam?

During the real Vietnam War Russians were secretly there to fight America by proxy through North Vietnam by supplying and training the North Vietnamese.

In the movie it was to show that they still had a presence there overseeing POW camps secretly holding Americans that were supposed to have been released. Also, during the 80's the Cold War between the US and Soviet Russia was still red hot and it was including them as part of the show and acknowledging their real part in the Vietnam War.

I think that although the Russians were involved in the actual war, the reason they were in the film was for another reason. That is the producers didn't want the whole movie to be Rambo killing Vietnamese in their own country.

And so they added the Russians and they get killed one by one as the real fighting starts. And only then does he start killing Asians (around the time of the corn field).

This is just my opinion as to why they inserted the Russians into the film, because otherwise it felt a bit forced for me. The plot wasn't really calling for it.

Because every 80s (Cold War times) movie needed an evil Russian guy, duh! 

I always thought that was a plot hole since Russia is very far from Vietnam and I don't know how a Russian would be able to speak Vietnamese

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Because it was the 80’s so therefore the Russians had to be the bad guys.

Yes, it made no sense. It was a movie conflict made up for the cold war.