Learn Russian

I work as a dialect coach with a lot of actors to help them sound like Russian speakers. My explanation of why actors say (or writers write) w's instead of v's on some words is this: there is no "w" sound in Russian, but when rendering English words into Russian, one might replace "w" with a "v" (as in Vashington). It might then be difficult for a native Russian speaker to determine when the "v" is really a "v" or when it's standing in for a "w." Does that make sense?