Russian has been, for several hundred years, a tool for promoting Moscow's policies. Tsarist Russia used it as a tool of imperial assimilation, the Soviet Union as a carrier of communist ideology, and Putin's Russia as a marker of its claimed sphere of influence.
The gap between Russia and the European Union in living standards, wages, and the rule of law seems obvious at first glance. Yet, in today’s world of populism and increasingly sophisticated propaganda, even such basic truths require careful restatement.