it’s notable how you “your side” is allowed to be a wide system of dispassionate material interests and power structures involved in seeking to overcome contradictions against its interests in callous yet rational competition; while the “other side” is a single cartoon comic book villain singlehandedly doing ‘all the bad things’ on an irrational whim for reasons of ‘vanity and cruelty’ I guess. And its people and their interests and opinions from the rural poor to the college liberal to the oligarch capitalist to the Prime Minister are only relevant to pity or otherwise also one-dimensionally criticize. I hope you analyze the ways in which you are conditioned toward orientalism and myopic essentializing that serves your own “side’s” imperialism by not recognizing and erasing the realities of other nations as just as complex and multifaceted as yours.

You’re carrying a colonial outlook to distill such a huge and diverse country with a massive population of its 150 different ethnic/national people groups and 20+ autonomous republics and all its various economic interests and players and political trends and history as in Russia to an idealist child’s comic book picture of one man’s “megalomania”. As the west not-so-coincidentally concocts this exact image for every country it tries to overthrow or attack, distilling them to ‘one crazy irrational madman dictator who only knows force’ and erasing the material existence and interests of the nation and its constituent classes and peoples and the history and context from which these things all arose as they exist. Which is very convenient then for “your side” to make it into whatever it wants.

Do you know what the Duma’s structure and role is, its party and factional makeup is and has been, what their members’ stances has been on topics like Ukraine since 2014, and what actions Putin has taken in accordance or against what they’ve been pushing for? Do you think its existence is just for show? You’ll be surprised on some points and maybe dig deeper. To really have true understanding of a country you’d have to also dig into the historical, social, political, and economic realities, trends, and topics in the country — and the contradictions, struggles, and syntheses between them over the years; and go past just 2014 to root these trends in their relevant circumstances experiences, struggles, transition periods, etc. from which they all arrived in their present form, on both a structural and people level. Optimally bolstered by some culture studies and language.

But learning about the RF’s federal governmental structure, and the Duma, and then the differences between the statements and actions of the Duma vs the Russian President’s statements and actions since 2014 is a starting point to start chipping away at this cartoon caricature notion you have, which is not rooted in reality. For any country on the planet. And you know this about your own country, but don’t extend the same humanity and respect toward other countries. It’s a very US American thing. Maybe if you don’t have the language skills you can also machine translate some stuff that they say themselves in their statements and speeches and congresses rather than dubbed 8 second snippets followed by 10 minutes of punditry on CNN too. And that’s just politics — history and economy is important too. And never forget about the people on the ground. In who they actually are, not who you’ve decided they are, or your media has told you they are.