This is correct, however in theory the NSA is not allowed to spy (let's not argue about "wittingly" here, I get it) on American citizens without FISA or 702 approval:

https://www.newamerica.org/oti/blog/scope-standards-and-prot...

So if they did not know you were an American through your identifiers, they could intercept foreign traffic. However, once they identified you they would need to stop unless the above exceptions were met. IN THEORY. Exceptions have occurred, the most egregious that I can think of is that the FBI has NO ACCOUNTING WHATSOEVER of how many agents accessed the 702 database:

https://www.justsecurity.org/66622/how-to-address-newly-reve...

Yeah, they'll just ask the German intelligence service to spy on Americans for them using NSA tools.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-intelligen...

Wasn’t the whole point of five eyes that we’d spy on the British and they’d spy on us and merrily round we go, merging data together to bypass domestic spying laws?

This is why I hate Canadian ISPs.

Their in-Canada peering is so terrible, it's common for local Toronto traffic to have round-trip through Chicago or NYC.

Yep. Bell, Telus, Videotron, Rogers have preferred to interconnect in the US for a long time (Chicago & NYC). During the mid 2000s the CRTC made bell and Rogers peer domestically over an OC12 (622Mbps) which was congested all the time (they shed some of load into the US). The Canadian IP transit market was a disaster until Cogent came into Toronto at 151 Front which paved the way for several other providers after.

In that case a Russian VPN service is indeed preferable.