"A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." That was how Winston Churchill famously described Russia (the Soviet Union as it then was), back in 1939. To this day, I can't think of a better way to describe the complications when trying to decipher Russia, its leadership and its motives. A conundrum reinforced to me yet again this past week during my first conversation with a senior Russian official since the country's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Before Russia's Crimean invasion and