holt and i found when i decided to come to russia i was confronted by my friends and my colleagues in canberra which is the government center of australia with all sorts of illusions once you get outside moscow people will be stuffing better not get sick in moscow you think in russia you won't be looked after properly all rubbish but the point is these have become general beliefs and i felt as a former ambassador for whatever authority i still had and whatever credibility i still had. i want to put it at the service of of writing a book that would encourage a better understanding of russia now i wonder. whether this issue of portraying russia always in a very negative light is also connected to the west own south perception because in your book you're afraid. liberal interventionist as a driving force behind many of the west or america's adventures and we think it's

impossible not to agree that many of those adventures created more harm than good and yet they also produce very little in the way of south reflection to what extent this insistence on portraying russia as redeeming really ugly is predict a date on the needs of the west who sees itself as invariably good despite all its recent policy blunders yes i think you're absolutely right. it's very important for the west and i laid however you define that military diplomatic political media that. believe in their own objectivity they have to believe in it but it's not just objectivity it's some sort of internal goodness. the other side being always in the wrong well yes although i'm not sure that very many people would talk about being good and evil i mean that that's a moral. in the west it's becoming many many of the speeches are for simple

titian's you constantly hear these theme of moral superiority drawing you know making i think this is a recurring theme in many of the present obama statements and in many of the statements by british politicians that they could be no moral equivalency between for example russia and the west where in fact why would you even think about equating anyone morally everybody makes mistakes everybody has his own or her own difficulties why would you need to compare anyone on the moral basis yes well i find that really very strange and limited thinking on that because to me russia is one of the most morally conscious countries in the world i mean the country that produced. it's all about morality it's all about what is good what is evil this is something that preoccupies russians in a very noble very noble sort of way on the other hand i see the west my own country

australia which is a small satellite of america not so much as a country that is sort of moral sense of itself but a country that believes in its own pragmatism we like to pretend that we are totally realistic when we're not we become prisoners were an illusion and now in your book here i think it very eloquently explain the russians have this deeply ingrained fear of war which comes back to our losses in world war two and perhaps even before that and i think you can easily make a case that russians sometimes overplay those fears those insecurities or security concerns but i wonder why do you think people in the west have lost out fear because this intimate treating all those interventions especially in foreign lands very casually without any concern for the people there for their own. wellbeing because you mentioned the issue of pride much as but why. going into

libya or syria well i think that's a very good question because to my mind war and entertainment have become blurred in our culture and we've children grow up playing playing war games on their computers war has somehow been domesticated as entertainment. the major hollywood film industry. films about war. remember the way george bush when he wanted to declare victory. over saddam hussein's iraq he went out to an aircraft carrier and put them above much eckert and stood there like tom cruise but look at the way he package that i mean he was basically making a little warm. and so i think russians on the other hand war is a dreadful reality for them this this this wonderful new tradition of the much of the poke to russians this business thing funny about war it is serious and i'm

sure that russia will be there to extend your question little bit i'm sure that russia will be the last country in the world to abandon its nuclear deterrent i think russia will be the last to give up nuclear weapons because russia regards nuclear weapons as the bow walk against invasion or war by a superior coalition of speaking about this affair superior outside coalition forces those tensions that we've been discussing came to had in ukraine in two thousand and fourteen and in your book here try to explain both russian and western thinking in great detail and there is this popular view in moscow that as painful as the ukrainian rupture was and it certainly was and is for russia russia is playing it a great cost for the kind of decisions that made in the ukrainian conflict there is also believed that the rapture. how to prevent a much bigger conflict between russia and they said that if russia didn't act.

moment back in two thousand and fourteen that the nature would continue pushing across its border and there would be no other way to escape that direct confrontation how much do you crave at that very much i mean there was a sort of a rehearsal for crimea some years beforehand and in georgia of course went under a lot of american encouragement the fact are severely government but very provocatively towards russia or in a couple of ethnic group parts of georgia and you know and i think i forget the name of that number when the current dutch and russia drew a line that russia moved in with support for the local local governments local ethnic groups and drew a line that was a dress rehearsal if you like. ukraine became the real thing because for many years before the the overthrow of the in the case which government for many years before two thousand and fourteen there was all kinds of encouragement being given to

nationalistic elements in the crowd and the russian element by the united states and by certain european countries do you think they actually understood the seriousness of encouraging those kind of forces and the kind of reaction that they may provoke in russia where they understood and simply didn't care i think the latter i think they didn't care i think it was you know whatever we can do to encourage the build up of of anti russian opinion in ukraine is worth doing whatever the risks because ukraine so important strategically so important economically and if we can prise it away from the russian world to the nato world it would be worth spilling some china breaking some china and spilling the sort of on the way so i think they underestimated the seriousness of the nazi elements new crown. and russia had to draw a line somewhere in ukraine as if you just really were in georgia what if they if

they helped a very small part of ukraine i mean. it's been done it pretty small amount of territory what five percent of ukraine they they've helped crimea carry out an act of free self-determination and. they did it under enormous provocation if they hadn't been in the mud square could they would not have been the warden. mr cameron i could argue that the west did similar things in other countries but as western officials would reply to that there is no moral equivalency anyway we have to take a short break now but we'll be back in just a few moments stay tuned. in

america a college degree requires a great deal. of debt. studying so hard it requires. going through mediation to enter society. sometimes quite literally. other true colors of universities in the u.s. . manufactured. public wealth. when the ruling classes project themselves. with the famous.

we can all middle of the room sick. it's in american interests to not see any russians die in terrorist attacks as it is in russian interest to prevent any terrorist attacks in the united states or elsewhere in the world so i don't think there's any dispute on that in congress and i think maybe some of the posturing is frankly political as opposed to substantive . apply to many clubs over the years so i know the game and so i got. the ball isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the funnel school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the super mom killian erroneous and spending two

hundred twenty million. it's an experience like nothing else on here because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful just like great so will transfer. welcome back to worlds apart that tony cabinet for must try and diplomat in russia and the author of the book called return to moscow. mr cameron what. we started discussing your crane before the break the break and there was definitely a genuine aliment in that uprising people wanted change positive change they wanted

to they and to to corruption the they want to the more fair a more representative a more transparent government and all of those. calls you can hear in russia these days changes also have pretty popular world in this country but i think russia's relationship with changes is interesting because as the former prime minister of the imperial russia once said everything changes in russian ten years and nothing in two hundred i wonder what are some of those changes and norm changes that struck you when you came back to this country after a very long break. well obviously we're talking about since the cold war years when i worked here forty six years ago it's a very different country now totally different in terms of material living standards in terms of the the the madness of the people the old rudeness and and roughness that i remember about russia wrist maybe it was a full picture even then but i certainly felt it and i don't feel it

a toll that i feel russians were very well managed people and now what are the changes i think there's a much greater self-confidence in russia today. and i think it's growing because i think russia's learnt in the last few years particularly since you cry and since that experience since syria. russia has learned that. the west when it criticizes russia is not big but they haven't. basically tried to undermine russian self-esteem and i think russia has learned that yes we have our own problems we have our own disputes we have to deal with for example gender equality we have to deal with the way we treat option the really old feel. particularly the way we treat homosexuals because i think for homosexuals there are still very biggest news about being russian and it shouldn't be that way but it's not my place and it's not the west good place to lecture russia about these things well i know you have very reluctant to criticize russia openly but you just mentioned this

attitude towards the community and if you actually look at the polls you will see that russians by and large. homophobic they for example if you ask people do you mind homosexual couple living in the apartment next door to you they would usually say the majority would say no i don't care and yet in the political. environment these days you hear a lot about the traditional values the patriarchy and so on and so forth where in fact i would argue they have realistically no place in the russian society this is a society that is. empowered by strong women that we have lots of single mother families you know women taking care of the entire families women tend to be i think in other countries too more tolerant towards people who are different so i wonder if you perhaps would go as far as to say that the russian elites are

exploiting exploiting some of the things and perhaps fostering some of the negative attitudes dead actually do not have that deep of a root in the russian culture not enough about russia no answer your question but i'm very interested in what you say i can only say that just recently in australia we've had an extremely controversial. new law passed in december which we call the marriage equality law which for the first time allowed a sexual couples to marry it was very difficult to get that passed because our political elites were much more conservative than the population it was clear that the population wanted it that certain powerful politicians in the power limit and did their very best to to him paid it what i did find if i may extend the question a little is.