Just another afternoon in beautiful Moscow...

[DFW]

26. Actually, probably not, for real.

A German friend of ours is a former news correspondent who was stationed in Moscow for years. He had met a Russian girlfriend (30 years ago!) who never moved here to live with him because she only speaks Russian. For four years, due to embargoes, they have only talked on the phone. He is careful not to tell her anything she might not have heard from Putin’s media, since the FSB monitors phone traffic to the west. But she is free to tell him what she “knows,” which is what Putin’s propaganda factory is churning out. She is now in her 70s, holding down two (or more) jobs to survive. She talks to a news correspondent, and still has no earthly clue what is going on. She still thinks the Ukraine attacked Russia, and the whole line of BS that Putin is feeding to his people. Imagine the USA if the ONLY source of news was Fox Noise. She is not entitled, privileged or sheltered. She just has no way, as an average working class Russian, to be better informed.