Really if you are asking someone if they "have ever been to Russia" you ar enot asking them if they have ever

Question

been there.

To means they have been in the process of going there. Say you have a plane ticket to Spain, your are to Spain. You could tell people your off to Spain. But say your plane gets cancelled and you dont make another one or you miss the flight you can tell people from then on "yes" if they ask you "have you ever been to spain". Technically the correct saying would be "have you ever been in ________ .

Answer 1

dude this isnt even a question and i think it's either/or anyways

Answer 2

If you wanted to know "have you ever tried to go to Russia", that is what you would ask. It may seem logical to you that you could say you have "been to Russia" without ever arriving there, but it doesn't work that way.

Answer 3

well that spain analgoy doesn't make sense, even by your own resoning - if you never got on the plane, you wouldn't have gone to spain by either your resoning or any other

and where is the question here. it's a point of grammar and dialect, and it doesn't really matter how you say it - people know what you're saying, so who cares? It's accepted english.