Commentary Russia gets bad press, deservedly so. Corruption is rampant, journalists and other critics of President Vladimir Putin have met untimely ends, mass political protests are met with batons, the LGBTQ community suffers restrictions of a kind that ended decades ago in most Western countries, and religions seen as disloyal to the nation—a radical Muslim offshoot and Jehovah’s Witnesses are examples—aren’t tolerated. Yet by some measures—some more personal than political—Russia today affords its citizens more rights, more respect, and more accountability than the United States, Canada, and other Western countries, where fundamental freedoms can no longer be taken for granted. The decline of U.S. freedom is clearest since COVID-19, where under the “guise of a real medical pandemic, [the United States is] really moving into a coup situation, a police state situation,” states Naomi Wolf, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton who has been warning of the rise of …