were living in two entirely different parallels of reality. what was it like on the ground in russia? >> one of the most striking scenes i witnessed was two young women being dragged off by police for protesting. when i say protesting, it doesn't look like protesting does in the united states. they were not carrying placards, not chanting, they were just suspected of prof protesting. the whole city was continuing to flow and go about life around them without noticing it didn't seem to take any effort for people to not notice. it was just the sort of thing that happened outside of people's view. and the other thing is that there's this sense of normal see that russian television continues to project which i think is something that we don't