You were born in St Petersburg no? id say you more then "understand Russian".

Being born somewhere does of course affect some of your worldview, though not always predictably. Ayn Rand was born in Russia, ran away from communist Russia, and she spent her life being as anti-communist as she could be, developing a philosophy (objectivism) that even argued against altruism. Refugees born in Cuba sometimes have family there, but they don’t exactly endorse the Castro regime. Republicans love to welcome those refugees, but not the ones who come thru Mexico, because they can’t use them to show how socialism fails everywhere.

I’m Jewish and my family left as refugees from USSR. I have practically no family there. (As opposed to, say 11 million Ukrainians who have family in Russia and vice versa.)

Personally, I think that today’s refugees from Honduras are fleeing much worse conditions (and Trump sending them back is like FDR sending ships full of Jews back). I think many people who could leave USSR did so for economic opportunities and not true “refugee” status, but that’s a separate issue.

I also think that if the USSR hadn’t fallen apart, it could have become a lot MORE liberal than the US. Gorbachev started liberal reforms in the 80s, imagine if that continued for another 30-40 years. But instead, the USSR fell apart and he Russia got a president (Boris Yeltsin) who for the first few years did everything USA wanted. “Shock therapy”, privatizing all national resources to oligarchs, all the Chicago School reforms — same as in was tried in Chile, Iraq etc. And same as in those countries, the people rebelled and their representatives voted no confidence to oust him. In 1993, he fired on the parliament, arrested them, and took control with US support. (The president of Peru tried that this year but utterly failed due to having no US support). In 1996 we openly helped meddle in Russia elections to get Yeltsin re-elected while he had an abysmal 6% (not a typo) approval rating.

I hope you see that my analysis — while it may be unorthodox - is evenhanded. I condemn Russia for its funding and arming of terrorists in Donbas (Strelkov, Motorola, etc.) Russia also deserves blame for causing this war in Ukraine. I condemn Russia for carpet bombing civilians in Chechnya, Aleppo, Homs. Does that sound like a standard-issue follower of Russian propaganda?

But at the same time, I compare apples to apples. Everything Russia does, USA did 10x (including funding paramilitary groups in Ukraine, Syri, etc. for proxy wars). I understand that each side reacts to the other and it’s SHEER FANTASY to expect either Russia or China or Brazil etc. to roll over and allow a roadmap where its enemies to place nukes on their doorstep.

USA has 30x as many bases as the rest of the world combined. I am just for dialogue and peace. Same as Bernie was during the cold war when he visited Russia to make sister cities with Burlington. Same as Tulsi. Same as Trump, indeed. And there are billions of people outside the NATO bubble who think like me. I travel… unless you believe as the Pope, multiple heads of state, multiple populations, are all on Putin’s payroll, the answer is that we have to stop the one dimensional cartoonish justifications for the wars, like “they hate us for our freedoms”.

I love USA with its freedom of speech, I have gotten Noam Chomsky to admit on video that USA has the greatest protections for speech of any country. But when you love your family, and jow they treat their own members, you can also criticize them for harming others, and want them to do better.

Am I biased? To the extent anyone is, sure. But if you asked me about India, or China, or Palestinians, I’d have an opinion too. To me, peace and fairness are the main factors. I’d like to think that I can look past propaganda on multiple sides, not just “the other side”.