Seemingly, neither Russia nor the Russians will ever join the union of democratic nations. It is, and they are, trapped in an oriental despotism from which there is no escape.
It’s odd. I have personally liked a lot of Russians I have met, but their governments...good gosh.
There have never been such evil and despotic governments on such a large scale as the Soviets and the Russians, though there have been smaller ones even more evil.
We were lucky. Having been under the thumb of a relatively (relatively speaking) benign government as the English, who even then had one of best governments of that age.
For the most part, they didn’t want to crush us like bugs though there were a few places and instances they did) they just thought we were ungrateful and rebellious and wanted us to toe the line.
If we had been the Afghans and the Soviets or the Poles and the Nazis, our towns would have been flattened and the entire populations of those towns, men, women, and children would have been eradicated.
IMO Russia is and always will be our natural enemy.