Think of America as the Democrats and Russia as the Republicans...
...in terms of LYING.
All politicians lie. All nations lie.
BUT.
America has a (much damaged) trustfulness BRAND that we try to protect. We lie, of course, but are reluctant to be caught lying and our lies tend toward lawyerly omission and artful mis-statement.
We will not usually say things like, "Oh yeah, we have a unicorn at the national zoo" because we know that somebody would ask us to produce it.
Russia is, today, much like Russia was in the USSR days. A nation that will say anything without embarrassment if there's a dime's worth of advantage in saying it.
Very much Republican style, where fooling a few people is more valuable than the respect of the larger audience because you just do not care what people who don't support you think. At all.
Russia's ongoing "Rebels did the 8/21 gas attack," thing is incredibly embarrassing, but Russia doesn't care. It is not a contest to be trusted. It is a "both sides do it" thing. Nobody in their right mind trusts Russia so Russia is fine with nobody trusting any of the large powers.
Russia's objective is not, "Hey, look. Russia was telling the truth." Russia's objective is, "Nobody really knows what happened in Syria."
= new reply since forum marked as read
and not get caught up in "Cold War Propaganda" that we all were fed about the USSR..
I've kicked many of your posts and agreed with them...but this one is really kind of "uninformed."
I say this only asking you to get yourself up to date with Geo Politics and not to put some RW McCarthyism out about USSR. 
Just saying......
