The reality of Russia... it reminds me of going to Mexico... they have their “featured” cities where things look great - but get outside of those areas, and its not so great... Ukraine quite similar.
Then again - we can say that about quite a few areas of the USA now too...
Much of this is perceptive.
But in the US you have a powerful anti-Russian bias that often isn’t tied to reality: https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/STEM-Graphic-1-HD-1536x1159.png
1.) antiquated Cold War stereotypes persist even though Russia has a new constitution, privatized much of their economy (pre Ukraine war they had a LOWER share of GDP under government control than us!).
2.) socially not on board with our fads and tends (LGBTQIA, climate change, racism, aggressive secularism, supra nationalism/globalism). The Sochi Olympics in 2014 were the perfect example. We couldn’t shut up about gay, gay, gay, and how Russia is bad because they don’t applaud gayness.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26043872
3.) they are still our only true competition in the oil / gas domain. The whole world basically runs on energy where either the US or Russia control the real estate, refining, etc. in the background. Example (US): Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE; (Russia): Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Libya.
China has a US media engagement plan to include outright owning some US media outlets or paying for articles to be published as well as inviting key US journalists to tour China etc. They lobby and blast their media over US airwaves (they aren’t censored much). They have a lot of leverage because we manufacture there, China is a huge market, and they hold onto a lot of US securities. They actively court US policy makers (Chinese subsidiaries in the US give to the party, campaigns, and ensure key players get compensated etc). Finally, they are militarily a force second only to ours (Russia was before this build up, militarily weak).
Russia meantime is this outsider with a near information vacuum, no lobbying, heavily censored (Trump just rolled this back a little: https://www.rt.com/news/624309-us-terminates-eu-censorship-agreements/amp/).
In such a world where you only get one side of the story and you have a powerful underlying bias, example Ukraine, guess what perceptions become?
Don’t get me wrong, Russia isn’t our buddy, and they aren’t some shining city on the hill either.
But when you have the US government and Euros censoring, hard. When you have the US private sector (often in bed with the government,example Google) censoring hard, you get a very one sided narrative.
Meta for example has been censoring all along but went vocal and all out last year:https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/meta-bans-rt-russian-disinformation-rcna171402
But at the same time, no kidding, Meta allowed literally neo-nazi groups to communicate, train and organize using their platform:
https://time.com/5926750/azov-far-right-movement-facebook/
https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-battalion-russia/
What do you think happens when people get fed ONLY one side of a story?
IMHO, the information domain is one of the reasons why this war in Ukraine happened.
Most Americans didn’t even know what Russia’s point of contention was (at the beginning of the war), all they knew was Russia = bad, with our new media talking about war of aggression and unprovoked in every article.
If Russia’s perspective and all the facets of it had really been in the publics consciousness, do you think you would have maybe seen back pressure on this idea of expanding NATO into Ukraine?
Instead, all you had was idiots talking about propaganda if you mentioned another / the Russian perspective (when in reality Russia is being heavily censored) and you have literally our side propagandizing non stop with junk like this: https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence/news/russia-has-no-right-to-establish-a-sphere-of-influence-nato-chief-says/ Name me a country without a “sphere of influence?” In fact, while he’s saying this, you have the UK, France and US flexing their military muscle in their “sphere of influence.”
