Out of curiosity, what parallels or differences do you see between the West and Russia?

I get the sense that Russia is on the up whilst the West is on the decline but I've never been to Russia and don't speak the language.

I believe we are still quite similar -- the same individualistic society with mostly short-term thinking. Demographically we are down just like West too.

It seems Putin sees religion and traditional values as a way to prop birth rate, so in this regard we are likely to diverge more.

In terms of control of speech on the internet it seems that West is catching up to Russia.

That's just what came to mind first.

Thanks for that.

My sense of the control of speech is that in the West we don't really have freedom of speech; culturally everyone is offended of different opinions and politically the West censors via finance rather than official controls. You won't go to jail, but you will lose your job, so if you don't have money...you don't have speech. It's a more elegant form of control since it costs less and is less overt. In any case, indoctrination seems to be the aim of the game more than speech; who cares if the truth is available if no one believes it. Admittedly that's just my own observations of Australia (where I live), which never had explicit freedom of speech legal protections.

How do Russians feel about the hatred that has come out of the West over the last two years, particularly from Europe/Poland (since that's my background)?

Well, the polls show that Western countries are viewed overwhelmingly negatively. That's quite a way from 1991, when the US had an 80-90% approval rating in the eyes of Russians.

On the other hand, some Russians distinguish between Western governments and people, and understand that most people are fooled by propaganda and are not genuine Russophobes.