More than a year after I got in trouble with the Russian Migration Service and the FSB, and 11 months after I was featured in some trashy and sensational articles that claimed I was a foreign agent bent on disrupting the 2018 World Cup, here I am back in the news once again.

I’m reluctant to give these people any more clicks, but here we go anyway: so, alongside some fine journalists and scholars (and, unfortunately, some less scrupulous journalists too), I was featured in a propagandistic “documentary” called Unsporting Behavior, shown on the nationwide Rossiya 24 station.

The upshot of this is that they show me giving my informal and improvised talk at Volgograd State University. This appearance was the pretence that got me hauled into questioning by the authorities. What was new to me was the fact that this entire interaction was filmed, completely without my knowledge.

There are several important moments to unpack here.

First, there’s a logo in the upper left of the video. That’s the logo of Volgograd State University, which clearly filmed me on some built-in equipment. Fair enough. Recording me might have been standard practice, as they do for all guests. It would have been nice to have been informed or asked, but perhaps this is just the way things are done there. I mention this because it’s possible that filming me was not directly ordered by the security services, though it does seem unlikely. Either way, though, the footage ended up in the hands of the authorities, who didn’t like what they saw.

Next, I don’t think it matters what I was saying. I was operating under the understanding that people have free thought and free speech, especially in a university environment. I had never felt particularly threatened or repressed in Russia, so this entire experience took me by surprise. Nevertheless, I think it’s interesting to note that in the clip shown on TV, I’m talking about corruption during World Cup construction. The implication is that I am somehow ruining the minds of the youth, importing dangerous thoughts from abroad. Actually, that’s not even the implication – it’s the angle of the whole piece. In any event, I think it’s fair to say that every Russian with a functional brain knows that corruption is an issue in their country. And indeed it was the students themselves who brought up the topic, though knowing now that our interaction was filmed makes me worry for those kids. What the clip doesn’t show is that I was actually being rather tame about corruption. I have a recording of my talk too, and re-listening to it recently I found myself somewhat embarrassed by how gingerly I was treating the issue. Specifically, I talked about how corruption in mega-event construction was a worldwide problem and I even talked (too long) about corruption in construction projects in my home state in the USA. Not that any of this should matter. The idea that discussion – anywhere, but particularly in a university setting – is subject to official monitoring and approval is simply appalling.

Finally, in this video the security services are portrayed as brave protectors of the nation against foreign invaders like me. They show that I was given three days to exit the country – the first I’ve heard of this. Granted I signed a huge stack of papers they gave me, so who knows what I admitted to. This was stupid, I know, but in my defense I signed under duress and, also, I had never been questioned by the authorities before. It was a new experience and I was unprepared.

This entire story is so sad.

I’ve spent twenty years trying to show westerners a different, more positive side of Russia. I still do not subscribe to the idea that Russia is some sort of neo-Stalinist state ruling through fear, informants, and terror. I still work for better relations between our countries. But now, having experienced just the lightest touch of the security services, I have to say that I am… profoundly disappointed. The idea that we should be unfailing cheerleaders of a state – of any state – seems so disgusting to me, and I can’t believe that this continues even in 2018. That security agents of the state see Russophiles like me as a threat is, frankly, depressing.

Because the truth is there are plenty of people spreading baseless anti-Russian perspectives out there. The trouble is that they’re not usually the ones falling in love with the language and trying to build better bridges between our countries.