Russia Could Just Be Normal. But Here We Are. Russia has a choice. It always has. It sits on more land than any country in history, stuffed to the permafrost with oil, gas, and minerals of every conceivable variety. Brilliant engineers. World-class mathematicians. The finest vodka ever produced by human civilization. And what does it do with all of this? It invades its neighbors. Like a drunk uncle at Christmas. Because here is what Russians are missing. That first evening in Rome, when the sun drops behind the rooftops and the whole city turns the color of warm honey, and you are sitting outside with something cold and local, and the air smells of coffee and something frying in olive oil, and you think: this is the whole point of being alive. Or New York in October, the light doing something extraordinary between the buildings, eating a pastrami sandwich the size of a small child, feeling genuinely optimistic about the human race. Or a rainy London pub. Nowhere to be. A pint slightly too warm. The irreplaceable comfort of being somewhere ancient and unhurried. Russians could have all of this. Instead, the Kremlin has turned the largest country on Earth into a geopolitical pariah, weaponizing its own citizens’ futures for an empire that exists mostly in the fever dreams of one increasingly peculiar man in a very large building. Funny how every American who visits Russia comes home convinced that Putin is misunderstood. Nobody visits France and comes back defending Macron’s right to annex Belgium. France does not do that to people. The rest of us are just outside somewhere warm, drinks in hand, watching the sun go down, absolutely baffled. And a little sad, if we are honest. Because some of the finest people I have ever met are Russian. Warm, funny, generous people who deserve that Roman evening and that New York October and that rainy London pub just as much as anyone. People I miss. People a lot of us miss. Who knows if it ever comes back. Who knows if the thing that was broken can be unbroken. But somewhere out there, a table has an empty chair. And the drinks are getting warm.