“While the world is chasing Bin Laden, behind the Kremlin walls another monster like Hitler poured with blood. If he is not stopped, perhaps this maniac in the near future will lead civilization to another world massacre, millions of lives will burn.”
~ Alexander Litvinenko, Oct 21, 2006

Reminder about what kind of a man we are dealing with.

The Russian nuclear submarine “Kursk” sank during an exercise in 2000.

Putin initially turned down British help that could have saved the 118 sailors.

Later, he said “she sank” on CNN with a weird smile on his lips.

The West has never understood the Russian Civilization. The value of human life is different there.

Case in Point: http://romaninukraine.com/bragging-about-mh17-mascara/

A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940
William R. Trotter

About time these arguments become public:

https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/why-russia-has-never-accepted-ukrainian-independence

In “Rebuilding Russia”, an essay published in the USSR’s most widely circulated newspaper the year before, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had asked “What exactly is Russia? Today, now? And—more importantly—tomorrow?…Where do Russians themselves see the boundaries of their land?” The need to let the Baltic states go was clear—and when they left the Soviet Union in 1990, Solzhenitsyn, Yeltsin and most of Russia rallied against revanchist attempts to keep them in. Much the same was true of Central Asia and the Caucasus; they were colonies. Belarus and Ukraine were part of the metropolitan core. The bonds which tied “Little Russians” (ie Ukrainians), “Great Russians” and Belarusians together, Solzhenitsyn argued, must be defended by all means short of war.

For centuries Ukraine had anchored Russia’s identity. As the centre of the storied medieval confederation known as Kyivan Rus, which stretched from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, Kyiv was seen as the cradle of Russian and Belarusian culture and the font of their Orthodox faith. Being united with Ukraine was fundamental to Russia’s feeling of itself as European. In “Lost Kingdom” (2017) Serhii Plokhy, a Ukrainian historian, describes how “the Kyivan myth of origins…became the cornerstone of Muscovy’s ideology as the polity evolved from a Mongol dependency to a sovereign state and then an empire.” Russian empire required Ukraine; and Russia had no history other than one of empire. The idea of Kyiv as just the capital of a neighbouring country was unimaginable to Russians.

But not to Ukrainians.

Published 1740, Voltaire

Music Video of “Chernova Kalyna” – set in Soviet Prison camp.

@ 27 seconds, the NKVD agent / prison guard says – “What were you fighting for? An independent Ukraine? There is no such country on the map! There is only the Soviet Union!”

There is a core “Russian” ethnicity made up of some Slavic, Finno Ugric, and a little Mongolian Ancestry, located around Moscow.

However east Asians in Kamchatka are also “Russian”, as are the Turkik peoples of Central Asia, as are the Chechens and other Muslim populations of the Caucuses.

So what is “Russian”?

An ex- mid-level Soviet bureaucrat once told me they used to joke that if you beat a Polish man long enough, he becomes “Russian”.

“Russian”, once you get away from the core group who regard themselves as “greater Russians”, is not an ethnicity but a shared historic trauma.

For example: the annihilation of Grozny turned Chechens into “Russians”.

Russian identity is fragile, largely because they’ve expanded, conquered, and oppressed in all directions, and are reviled by their neighbors.

To prop up their identity they rely heavily on victory over the Nazis in WWII. Hence, their domestic propaganda insists that the invasion of Ukraine is a war on Nazis. Earlier, I accumulated articles showing Russians separately calling every single one of their European neighbors, from Finland to Georgia, either Nazi or fascist. Sadly, I didn’t make backup copies and most of the links are no longer live.

Interestingly, the years 1939-1941 do not exist in Russian history. Their over collaboration, and material and political support of Hitler would be a devastating blow to the foundation of their identity. As far as Kremlin propaganda is concerned, WWII began in 1941, and there were no invasions of Poland or Finland.

This site details the headline-by-headline history. Poland spent years trying to join NATO.

Here is a speech by Poland’s PM in 1997:

https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1997/s970221b.htm

Update (15 April): It seems the website nato.int has completely changed since I posted that. It used to let you choose a month and year and see all the nato-related headlines.

There’s a theory that it’s the source for the Ancient Greek description of Hades. Flat, endless land. A broad, slow-moving river.

In 2013, right before Russia’s invasions of Donbas and Crimea, the last US Army tanks departed Germany for the US.

NATO was standing down.

The “aggressive NATO expansion” narrative is B.S.

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us-army-s-last-tanks-depart-from-germany-1.214977

What does surprise me is that among all the voices testifying to the glory of this single man, not one rises above the chorus to speak for humanity against the miracles of autocracy. You can say of the Russians, both great and small, that they are intoxicated with slavery. ~ Marquis De Custine, 1830s

“Can’t you understand if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometres through blood and fire and death has fun with a woman or takes some trifle?”

Yevgeny Khaldei, the author of this iconic photograph of Red Army servicemen raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag, had some editing to do before it got published.

Notice how in the unedited one on the left, one of the soldiers is wearing wristwatches on both wrists?

(ie. he probably stole one or both)