How odd that scorn for Russia, and fear of that country, have become fashionable in Western countries even – sometimes especially – among conservative-minded and Christian men and women. This view is so common that people automatically assume that I share it in conversations and correspondence.
When I object, they are often puzzled, or immediately assume that I am in the pay of the Kremlin. In fact, I now refuse to appear on the Kremlin news channel RT because anyone who sees me there will assume that I am being rewarded with enormous wads of roubles, and perhaps a dacha in the birchwoods outside Moscow.
