Thanks for an interesting perspective. As I can no longer communicate with those I knew in Russia who remain there, and as others have left, it's difficult to get a reasonable sense of the attitudes now prevalent. But your article more or less confirms what I previously knew and suspected would still be the case. Ordinary people tend to accept whatever they are told by purported authority figures and in Russia, where information is strictly controlled by the Kremlin, it's only to be expected that most people will swallow a diet of endless simple-minded self-contradictory lies. After all, the same sorts of people in much more open societies voluntarily swallowed the lies of Brexit and Trump; we can hardly expect Russians to overcome huge obstacles in order to do better.