MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Suzanne Massie, who advised the former President Ronald Reagan on the Soviet Union, on Monday said the US has come to understand that Russia has grown stronger in recent years.

"They now understand that you are stronger than you used to be," she said at a news conference at TASS.

Massie said there are people in the US, including the Congress, that believe the Soviet Union still exists.

"There are people now that believe the Soviet Union still exists," she said. "There are people in the Congress that sometimes even use this."

She said she loves Russia and feels at home here. "It’s not a secret. I love you very much," Massie said. "I feel at home here."

"When I came and breathed in the air for the first time, I realized I liked it here," she said. "Nothing has changed."

Massie was born in New York in 1931. She’s known as an American writer and author of the book, Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia. In the 1980s, she was an informal adviser to former President Reagan on issues of the Soviet Union.

Massie’s representative in Russia, Baltazar Shaldenbrand, said earlier that Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov on Monday gave her a Russian passport at the presidential administration building in central Moscow.

In May 2021, Massie said on NTV television that she would be honored to have Russian citizenship if Russian President Vladimir Putin found it possible to grant it to her. She said she devoted many years of her life to make the people of Russia and the US closer. Putin on December 30, 2021 signed a decree to grant her citizenship.