It's still the same today

Submitted by Peter Chew (United States), Oct 30, 2019 at 15:25

Your experience with Primakov's "explosion" in response to your question reminds me of one I had just last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (https://www.csis.org/events/russia-iran-relations-agreements-and-disagreements). I asked the Russian speaker, Ruslan Pukhov, if Russia might be making a strategic mistake by assuming Iran had no other options but to work with Russia, and the response was at least angry, if not explosive.

Perhaps I had less to lose at the CSIS event than you felt you had in Moscow, but reactions of this sort just make me more determined to ask inconvenient questions. It seems little has changed in the Russian psyche since 1983, but I think you are right to "console [yourself] with the thought that this meeting added one tiny brick to the edifice of Western contact that opened Soviet eyes". That's why I persist in asking Russians (and others) these awkward questions. :)

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