TLD servers for .ru zone can answer questions like “who should I ask where kremlin.ru is?”, but before that there is a question “where .ru zone DNS servers are”

TLD servers for .ru zone can answer questions like “who should I ask where kremlin.ru is?”, but before that there is a question “where .ru zone DNS servers are”, and that’s what root servers are supposed to answer. If - hypothetically - all root servers will answer “oh, .ru zone is served by that guy in Washington DC”, no DNS resolver would ask “real” .ru servers because list of root servers is effectively hard coded and changing it on all clients is a lot of work.