"America has a simple ideology": how one of Russia's top US experts tries to explain America

The United States comes up constantly when you talk to Russians about their country's place in the world. But the conversations tend to go a lot differently than many Americans might expect.

In the US, the common view is that Russians feel aggrieved by the loss of the Soviet Union and all the respect that came with being a global superpower. Russia's acts of aggression in Europe, in this telling, are all about challenging the American-led order as a way to prove Russia's might and impo