[quote=@Shyri]
<Snipped quote by Pepperm1nts>

Also, if you go for a government in St. Petersburg, we can roll with saying it's funded/supported by the Germans as the "true" Russian government. Don't really have the reach if you go for a Moscow-based one though. 

[/quote]

To make things funner we can toss a third city into the mix, if my knowledge of the source of the Russian nation banter is correct; though this is in a post-Soviet world.

Folk say it's Saint Petersburg, because that's what Czar Peter built and he's the one that officially founded the Russian state. Muscovites claim it's Moscow because Moscow was at the center of the state Peter was born into and ruled from to found Russia, never mind he moved the capital of the Empire to Sankt Petersburg.

Then there's the people of Novgorod, who have the claim to the Rurik dynasty who came on invitation to impose order and whose dynasty moved out from to seize the lands that made the Rus kingdoms. Though this claim may be nationally small, but that's also because the Soviets repressed Rurik's legacy because it was too foreign, Danish/Swedish in fact.

But in any case since the royal family had ties to the Germans and also invited many Germans to live in the Empire itself the precedent for German involvement in the area is already pretty strong either way.