I feel dubious about believing anything on this subject that comes out of the US and UK intelligence networks – remember the nonsense they made up to find a reason to invade Iraq. They are just looking for a scapegoat to blame their countries’ failures on. Of course, some elements of the Russian government are hostile to us – they see NATO military manoeuvres only a few miles from the Russian border, they see NATO member Turkey throwing its weight around against countries like Greece and Armenia and they see a threat. They remember what NATO did to Serbia and how the western powers encouraged the break-up of Yugoslavia and maybe they suspect us of wanting to do the same with Russia, which is also a patchwork of nationalities, religions, languages and races. The sad thing is we had a chance after the fall of communism to get Russia on board but NATO warlords needed a big enemy to justify NATO’s continued existence so the chance was spurned. So now we have made an enemy of a capitalist country with institutions that are not much less democratic than many NATO countries. If you doubt that, just look at the Netherlands, Italy and France where the leaders of the main opposition parties are on trial on ridiculously political charges or Belgium where the main opposition party was banned by unelected judges or the USA where the president won fewer votes than his opponent or Britain with its House of Lords and its first-past-the post electoral con-trick. No doubt, someone will mention the poisoning of a Russian traitor in the UK – but conveniently forget that the UK took part in the deliberate murder of civilians in Belgrade by targeting the Serbian equivalent of the BBC – something that I happen to know some Russians remember well. Anyway, the main reason that I doubt that the Russians are stirring things up in the US is that Americans are doing it quite well by themselves and are likely to drag the US further into racial chaos (with the UK not far behind). The Russians can just sit back, take it easy – and laugh.