{"id":402083,"date":"2019-03-31T07:26:09","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T06:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/russiagate-hoax-helped-turn-ordinary-russians-against-the-us\/"},"modified":"2019-03-31T07:26:09","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T06:26:09","slug":"russiagate-hoax-helped-turn-ordinary-russians-against-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/russiagate-hoax-helped-turn-ordinary-russians-against-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Russiagate\u2019 hoax helped turn ordinary Russians against the US"},"content":{"rendered":"
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RT<\/strong><\/a>
March 29, 2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Russiagate\u2019 is over. But its toxic legacy will endure. And in Russia it has led to disenchantment with the United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Red Army Street is a 3km-long thoroughfare in Krasnodar, southern Russian, notable for its many bars and nightclubs, which number in the dozens. Indeed, it\u2019s so raucous it makes snooty Moscow look rather pedestrian.<\/p>\n

Last summer, I was in one hostelry, with a South African farmer who was visiting the region. Naturally, we spoke in English. This seemed to upset three drunken locals who (in Russian) were loudly exchanging anti-American slurs.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the largest, and scariest, of the trio broke into English to shout \u201cYankee, go home<\/em>.\u201d To which I swiftly replied that I was Irish. Suddenly, he ran over, bear-hugged me, and shouted at the top of his voice: \u201cConor McGregor!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always like this. When I moved to Russia, nine years ago, Americans were very popular here. And Russians knew little of my homeland, most wrongly seeing it as an extension of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d had a dollar, in the early part of the decade, for every Russian who\u2019d expressed a desire to visit the US, I\u2019d easily have had enough to fund return tickets there myself, plus a few weeks in a decent hotel.<\/p>\n

However, times have changed. And admiration and curiosity towards the US has been replaced with disappointment, hostility and often anger. We\u2019re a long way from Mikhail Gorbachev advertising<\/a> \u201cPizza Hut\u201d now.<\/p>\n