Nowadays, Washington is playing the “religion card” in Georgia by primarily encouraging various Western religious groups to become more active in local communities. This is part of a carefully planned Western policy aimed at destabilising the environment in CIS and other countries where Washington is actively seeking to employ religion to meet its own needs shaped by public opinion in societies that are not yet under its control.
Russia is the global champion of free speech. There, citizens and journalists enjoy an unlimited freedom to speak their minds. In this regard, Russia has largely swapped places with the West, where freedom of speech is progressively disappearing. In Russia, one is free to say “I like Putin” or “I don’t like Putin”; one can say “I like gays” or “I don’t like gays.” In America, however, saying “I like Putin but I don’t like gays” would amount to suicide.
The 2019 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) puts Russia in 149th place out of 180 countries ranked for media freedom. The organization attributes this ranking to website blocking, marginalization of independent media outlets, pollution of the information space with government propaganda, and deployment of "draconian media legislation". In the US, all speech is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, "unless it is intended and likely to incite imminent violence."