Has the "free world" become the enemy of freedom, and the old communist bloc the defender of it?  That this would occur was predicted by Mr. Friese, my high-school history teacher.  Glastnost was ripening; the wall had not yet come down. Bush had ridden Reagan's coattails to the presidency and was itching to start a war, any war (if oil could be conquered, even better)! I think that was the year Rambo 3 came out, and we were deep in a proxy war with the Soviets in faraway Afghanistan.  As students swelling with national pride and little life experience, we were loathe to see that we were fast becoming the "bad guy". Friese saw it, and also saw the hunger for freedom that Gorbachev had awakened in his long-oppressed people.  We were on our way to the place of tyranny where they had begun; they were on their way to the rebirth and freedom that America had been the beacon of.  And Friese believed it was so well underway that both nations would cross the midpoint, trading places and being each more like the hated enemy than their own historic selves, and that it would happen unnoticed and unadvertised.
The Donbass has seceded from Ukraine--literally declared independence as two sovereign nations--and where did they go for recognition and help? Moscow. The Donbass borders Russia and has a significant ethnically and liguistically Russian population. But what if, say, TEXAS were to secede? Would Russia be an option for alliance and support? The thought is absurd to the American mind, but this has already happened in the Americas, TWICE, by nations bigger and more populous than Texas (and with their own armies, navies, and air forces).  Brazil and Mexico...

Only ten days ago, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was in Moscow, a controversial trip given the imminent Russian intervention in Ukraine.  As discussed in a previous article, Bolsonaro is coming to the end of his four-year term and his reelection is unlikely.  His use of military force to keep his legitimate and duly elected government in power is likely (political swamps are never drained by civil action, but nooses and firing squads).  Russia has argued that the Ukraine intervention is about exactly that--arresting and bringing to trial a corrupt government that has come under the control the of a hostile foreign power to the neglect of national interests and regional security. Many citizens of Ukraine believe this and asked Russia for help.  I speculate that Bolsonaro came to Moscow because he knows that he must declare martial law to free Brazil from the grip of globalism.  The same corrupt judiciary that freed his convicted adversary (former president Lula da Silva) and would make a Bolsonaro reelection impossible (just as in 2020 USA) would need to be removed by force.  This would be called a "coup" just as the Ukrainian intervention is called an "invasion" and Bolsonaro would need to know which world leaders can be counted on in such a case.  Bolsonaro comes from the political right; for him to reach out to Putin in this way is indicative of the Passing In The Night.   
Bolsonaro has also not been very cozy with Iván Duque, the president of Colombia.  They should be the best of friends, were the ancient Left-Right paradigm still intact.  They come from the same side of the aisle, after all!  The difference is this: Bolsonaro is a nationalist fighting for his own nation, and Iván Duque is a Bushite neocon globalist (hence his ambition to assault Venezuela even as his own nation is decades into civil war and one of the biggest narcotics producers worldwide). A Venezuelan intervention with Duque as a major partner could have only been a quagmire with elusive goals and ever-increasing costs. 
I admittedly speculate as to the reasoning for the Brazilian president's trip to Moscow...but in Mexico I saw the SPETZNAZ on the eve of President Lopez Obrador's (AMLO's) inauguration.  China and Russia, while often grouped together, have had very different modes of cooperating (some say interfering) with other nations.  China's economy is ten times the size of Russia's ($15 trillion compared to $1.5 trillion).  China has the cash for lavish gifts and scholarships for bright foreign students (to be indoctrinated in Maoist thought). They have unlimited workers to send out into other nations to learn the culture,  spy, and colonize. Russia's cooperation is based more on their expertise in petroleum, advanced defense industry, and countering election fraud.  This last point is why in 2018 the Spetznaz were in Mexico--to prevent a third instance of election theft against AMLO.  In 2006 and 2012 the choice of the Mexican people was denied,  twice AMLO was robbed of the presidency and the looting of the Mexican nation continued unabated.  The ostensibly conservative leaders installed also protected a flourishing drug trade and industrial-scale pillaging of Pemex, the state-owned oil company.  AMLO has reversed all this, proving himself a nationalist just as surely as Bolsonaro. Both made friends with Trump despite their differences.  Aside from any help in the intelligence sector with the election, AMLO has also rebuilt Pemex with a good bit of Russian cooperation.  Three suspicious explosions at offshore oil rigs occurred in  2021, installations operated jointly by Pemex and Russian energy companies.  AMLO also bought Shell's 50 percent stake in  a Houston-area refinery, a move which made Mexico self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel.  Mexico intends to be fully energy-independent by 2023 (something globalists hate).  Repeated "accidents" may well be acts of "grey war" by the Biden administration against Russia and an energy-independent Mexico at the same time.  AMLO has distanced himself from China during his administration, even telling Biden and Trudeau that it would be tempting to resist Chinese expansion with military force.  His cooperation with Russia is seldom in the news but appears to continue in its mutual benefit.
The Passing In The Night has occurred, I believe, just as Mr. Friese predicted, and it may be a ray of hope for Spanish South America that has gone communist, largely in the Chinese orbit: it is only a small step from there over to the Russian orbit, and Russia may prove to be the new defender of Freedom worldwide.  Days before Bolsonaro, Argentine President Alberto Fernandez also went to Moscow...