I get a feeling that many people, with whom I talk about Russia, have a perception about it as a large monolithic blob of unknown somewhere in the East. And as we know, everything that is unknown, becomes feared and distrusted. This perception is formed by the Western MSM, which seldom mentions Russia, and when it does, only the negative angle is allowed to reach the audience. This is very well put in Lada Ray’s article Desperate for Up-To-Date Truth About Ukraine and Novorossia?.
In this regard, it is an interesting exercise just to fire up Google Earth and take a bird’s eye view of the Russian Federation:
And the first thing one notices is that, yes, it is a Federation. Notice all the territories, the Federal Subjects, that comprise the Russian Federation. They all have a large degree of autonomy, with their own regional laws, that take into account the specifics of the nationalities that populate them, most of them have one or more national languages, besides Russian – like Crimean Republic, which has Ukrainian and Tatar as official languages. And they all have a common desire for peaceful existence and prosperity. And Russia, just like about any other country, only as strong as it stands united