I also readily recognize that Russia has many problems that Russians themselves must continue to work on, among them, bureaucracy, corruption, constitutional freedom infringements (speech, assembly, press), and selective enforcement of the rule of law. Having stated this, we must recognize that Russia as a democratic nation is but 24 years young, with a long history of tsarist and Soviet rule, compared to my America that has existed as a democratic country for 239 years since 1776 and your Great Britain for over 300 years. It is simply not reasonable to expect Russia to be at a developmental stage in its democracy that the USA and Western Europe are already at after having worked on these areas for several centuries. In addition, even in my own America as a mature democracy, there are still many major problems that are a significant threat to democracy, among them:
(1) institutionalized (legalized) corruption and massive waste, including by lobbyists, major political campaign fundraisers and contributors, in defense spending, and in health care spending (17.1% of GDP when other developed countries spend 9-12%);
(2) excessive funding of and spending on political campaigns and extremely subjective media coverage of political candidates (with many mainstream media outlets now actually endorsing candidates) to the extent that many Americans no longer view elections as being a part of "democracy" and do not participate in them;
(3) unethical use at times of "soft power" to manipulate and gain at least indirect control over other countries;
(4) a media industry controlled by major corporations and wealthy "oligarchs" and aligning itself more and more with government interests and specific political and corporate groups and agendas and less and less with independent and investigative journalism;
(5) a growing tendency of the USA government and military to intervene (whether directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly) in other countries affairs and thereby disrespect the sovereignty of such countries, including ones with democratically-elected presidents and governments;
(6) a growing tendency of the USA to use international organizations to serve its own broad interests, without adequate consideration of the interests of other countries.
In your work, are you ever as vocal about the USA's democracy problems as you are about Russia's propaganda?
What would be truly helpful and would reflect much more objectivity and less propaganda on your part would be for you to write a series of articles about:
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