What Brits don’t understand about life in Russia

When I tell people in England I’ve just returned from several years abroad and they find out the country was Russia, it is a real conversation stopper. Their minds short-circuit, they seem to gulp in front of you. What question do they ask next? Do they mention the war? Talk about Tolstoy?

‘Ah… Interesting,’ one woman said to me finally, as though looking at someone’s awful etchings and wanting to be polite. ‘That must have been…difficult for you,’ said another. How can I get across to them that, before February last year, it might have been ‘interesting’ but wasn’t difficult at all?

It’s depressing when a country you have warm memories of develops a poisonous reputation, and even sadder when that reputation has been earned. Russia is now the country which invaded Ukraine. Which flattened Bakhmut. Which raped and murdered its way through Bucha and Irpin. Which attempted to inflict a lightless, heatless winter on its neighbouring ‘brother’ country, and caused an environmental catastrophe by blowing up one of their dams.