It may sound obvious, but the United States has more access to the ocean than Russia, which is why NASA launches its rockets on or near the coast and lands them via splashdown. Since 1961, American crewed and uncrewed spacecraft have made it back to Earth using parachutes to slow their descent and the ocean to absorb the impact. From there, NASA and the U.S. military work together to bring the spacecraft and its crew out of the water and back to shore.

Only once has a crewed Russian mission ended in a splashdown: 1976's Soyuz 23. Even then, the water landing was an accident that nearly killed its two crew members, who ended up stuck in a partially frozen lake for around nine hours.

and

Given the key role water plays in shock absorption, Soyuz spacecraft need to do more than just deploy parachutes to lower their velocity enough for a safe landing. That is why they have retrorockets that fire just before touchdown, counteracting the descent to slow the craft to under five feet per second — far softer than the 80 feet per second at which American spacecraft hit the water.