This could all depend on where you’re living. I get the impression you’re in a country that may have been or may currently be an enemy of Russia (or thought of as a threat by those running Russia right now). If that’s the case, could your folks be Russian ops in some form?

They would have stopped having those sorts of conversations around you as you got older and they’d deny that they said anything of the sort for those you did remember.

The phrase “we won’t wait (for) when the war starts” could mean that they’re going to do whatever they need to do even if there’s no actual guns, bombs and fighting going on. You know. Cold war things.

There’s that phrase that Khrushchev allegedly said about the US, for example. Putin has revived all of that. Assuming it ever went away.