In the West, Russia is a country about which much mystery and myth has been generated. Perhaps most famously, Winston Churchill declared in a BBC radio broadcast on 1 October 1939, during the first weeks of the Second World War, that Russia was ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’
Today, Russia remains a terrain seemingly beyond the comprehension of certain members of the political elite in the West. In 2001, President George W. Bush famously declared on meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin, that: ‘I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy […] I was able to get a sense of his soul.’ It was a claim he later regretted.
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