As mentioned in the “what happened today thread” we had a chat this evening with someone we had originally earmarked as “Eastern European” but who it transpires is Russian (lesson learned in the past, since forgotten, now re-learned - don’t assume English isn’t understood/spoken just because the person doesn’t appear to react to the language). Anyway, we had a good chat about our holiday in Russia but eventually the elephant in the room was too much and I had to ask about Putin and Ukraine. This was someone well travelled and (despite questionable childcare skills), clearly far from stupid. Yet he was totally bought into Putin, didn’t believe all the Western justification for supporting the Ukrainian resistance, believes Ukraine to be essentially Russian, strongly believed that Putin has over 80% support of the population (talks of rigged elections are bogus western meddling), acknowledged that someone probably poisoned Navalny but it wouldn’t have been Putin-led as there was no need as Navalny’s popularity was sinking fast, and generally felt that Putin has good control over the whole situation (no madness or irrational behaviour) and is well supported.
The whole conversation was quite surreal. I did ask him what he thought of being able to see coverage overseas that he wouldn’t be allowed to see in Russia but he dismissed it as untrue propaganda. It was thoroughly disconcerting. I wasn’t going to get into an argument with him - not appropriate on holiday - but it was very shocking to hear such a viewpoint from someone whom I would have expected to be more wordly- wise, as it were.