A couple of years ago a friend that grew up in the USSR and I were talking about Trump. I was saying that I didn’t think he could do anything to really undermine US democracy. Dimitri’s response has sat in my brain uncomfortably for the past 2 years. He said Russia was a free democracy a short time ago, and that Putin changed it back into an autocracy within a year. Another friend from Turkey speaks similarly about Erdogan.
Russia was not turning brutal and incresingly fascist for a long time. It was turning more democratic for years and then had a sharp sudden turn back
