After about a year’s absence, I finally came back to Russia, and after a three-week stay in Belarus, which will be reported on later, I decided to drive to Crimea and Donbas. It is one thing to listen to the numerous reports from the front – it is another to be there myself. We know that the official press lies, but it lies even more than we think. The reason, of course, is that no one really knows anything about Russia, Russian history, Russian society – and no one understands the Russian mentality. Of course, our under-educated politicians know nothing at all, so they hire various advisors who also know nothing. In a world bristling with nuclear weapons, this is extremely dangerous because they are unable to decode Russian signals – and the lack of any practical military training also means that they do not understand the dynamics of war – and the mathematics of war. This leads to very dangerous fallacies, which together with a lack of intelligence and ideological blindness can lead us into a devastating nuclear war.