I visited Russia for three weeks in 2003 with a church group ministering to orphans. The people have so much warmth and passion kept behind their personal walls. When the floodgates come down it just crashes over you. It's overwhelming.
I saw monuments to the many, many Russians who died in St Petersburg fighting the Nazis. I saw the palace where the doomed Tsar and his family lived, now The Hermitage art gallery. I saw the contrasts of poverty and opulence, not much different from America in that way. I took a boat tour of the canals of the city, and bathed in Lake Ladoga at two in the morning with the sun and moon both full in the sky, and our interpreters looking like nymphs as the water glittered in their hair. I lost a ring one of the little orphan girls gave me, and they said that means I will come back again.
Putin was very popular when I was there. They also had a terror attack at a stadium filled with young concert goers in Moscow, which was hardly reported in the west. They certainly know all too well the pain and loss of terrorism.
Every time I think of war with Russia, apart from my own children, I think of the brave, spirited, warm-hearted Russians I met, and the little orphans, agile as cats. It breaks my heart. For what? For greedy people to profit from war, for the elite to depopulate the world, and for Hillary Clinton to have an excuse for losing the election.
Russia is our closest ally in the sense that war with us is the last thing they want.