I called Charter Communications, he internet provider, and, of course, they did not seem to understand the problem and could not provide me with their IP addresses.
But, they were very nice.
They are good at resetting the modem so I let them do that.
Then I called Linksys and told them I wanted to reinstall my router just as though it was a brand new one with no settings in it. They eventually understood and after about 2 or 3 hours (can you believe it??) they walked me thru the process.
So, now, I have a new password (not "admin"), the Russian IP numbers are no longer present in the router (they were right there as DNS1 and DNS2). Now, on the summary page (not sure what it was called....) all the pertinent numbers are present including DNS1, DNS2, and DNS3....so there must be 3 alternates....and I assume these are the Charter numbers....
So, hopefully, the problem is solved.
By the way, I ran the computer for a few hours plugged directly into the modem before diung all of this and had no redirects at all.
So, am looking forward to operating using the router with the same results.
I feel like getting some kind of book to learn some of these terms and something more about how computers work.....funny, I was an engineer and did a lot of programming in Fortran 40 years or so ago.....lots of math related stuff in grad school but never learned how modern computers worked.....just how to turn them on and do simple things.
I cannot thank you enough for your help and will let you know in a couple of days that things are working normally for sure.
Thanks again,
walt