He is completely on point and I honestly can’t understand the hysteria and the competing narratives. Guys, it’s a Potemkin village, I dare you to venture a few kms outside!!!
The reality is that Moscow is the largest city in Europe with 20 million people based on official numbers. The city is full of beautiful, well preserved historical sites, has modern infrastructure and services, it’s easy to get around, it’s clean and it’s safe. Moscow’s Crime Index ~35.2 (very low among major cities). For comparison, Paris: ~58.0, London: ~55.6, Washington, D.C.: I~59.8, New York City: ~51.1, Toronto: Crime Index ~43.5.
The people making the loudest noise either swallowed the decades long propaganda without ever having stepped foot there themselves or are gleefully remembering the lawless shit hole it was devolving into in the 90s. I’ve been to Moscow 7 times since 2007, with the most recent visit 2 years ago. It’s an amazing city whether you like the politics or not.
As for venturing out beyond the shiny capital and SPB, most large and largish cities have seen tremendous improvements with progress being made elsewhere as well. Russia is 17,098,246 km², no one in their right mind is saying that all inhabited areas are an idyllic utopia. They aren’t. Some far from it. There is disparity and places that still resemble those gray Soviet memoryscapes. The same people making the most noise should however be honest and look around their own backyard and let everyone know what they see when they step out of their country’s postcard collection.
Because USSR-era Moscow was backward, but modern capitalist Moscow isn’t. That’s the point.
Thanks to decades of relentlessly negative media coverage, many Westerners arrive expecting some grey post-Soviet museum piece and find a city with a better metro, cleaner streets, safer public spaces, faster services and more functional urban infrastructure than the vast majority of other major European capitals.
After being in Moscow, it’s actually places like London and Paris that can feel behind the times.