Short answers, pulled from the story.
One of the earliest known uses of the Russian Bear symbol in the West appears in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4, where he refers to a "rugged Russian bear." The symbol spread further through 17th-to-20th-century maps and British political cartoons, particularly in the publication Punch.
In Western cartoons, the Russian Bear was often used negatively, implying Russia was big, brutal, and clumsy. British publication Punch depicted the bear during events such as the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, and the First World War, using it to characterize Russian power or aggression.
The mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games was a bear cub named Misha. Soviet organizers chose a small, cuddly, smiling bear cub deliberately to counter the Western image of a big, brutal Russian bear.
Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign used the bear motif in an advertisement called "Bear in the woods." The ad argued that Reagan recognized the Soviet threat to the United States and the First World, while his opponent Walter Mondale denied its existence.
The surname Medvedev is an inflectional form of the Russian word medved, meaning bear. Dmitry Medvedev was elected Russian president in 2008.
The United Russia Party uses the bear as its symbol. The party has dominated Russian political life since the early 2000s.