Yes, when I was setting up a server I eventually had to apply a separate and more draconian set of firewall rules to IP addresses in Russia and China to avoid my logs just filling up with Junk, failed logins , attempts to access shady looking URLs which did not exist and HTTP requests filled with fragments of shell or SQL script.

To be fair I'm sure this only represents a minority of the people in these countries but perhaps it is just that it is more lucrative there.

I imagine it's quite hard to earn a decent living in the west just by breaking into a few servers and sending out a bit of spam, in Russia it probably looks like an attractive get rich quick for anyone with tech skills.