Tell me how it’s not advantageous for Russia to enable trade with them.

Sometimes those people are a plurality that organically endorses that decision and votes some representative in. Sometimes those people are a plurality that has been brainwashed by compromised media to do it. Sometimes those people are just a small ruling elite that get voted in by people who didn't think very hard about those particular geopolitical decisions and just want, I don't know, their political and cultural enemies brutalized and $1.99 gas.

I don't think you understand how bad globalization fucked up these countries, people live with their parents until they're 30+, young people can't find decent jobs, etc.

Goes to show that 1984-style conditioning really does work, decades later.

Remarkably, it can even be passed through generations, as it gets ingrained into the mentality of how parents raise children: "The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Don't rock the boat."

Which was a survival trait in those times.

The current incarnation of Russian propaganda is different, but is even more virally poisonous:

> I'm not political. Politics is dirty. There's nothing you can change anyway. "Two sides" is an illusion. Everybody is lying and has an ulterior motive. Only naive fools believe otherwise, only naive fools ever trust. You can't know anything for sure. What you think is true is actually a lie. The only thing that's real is who you're with. That's the only truth. That's the only thing to look for in anything anyone says, that's the only thing one really says. That's what makes something true or false. The words uttered don't matter at all.

You might have seen this kind of mentality spouted by your friends on either side of the political spectrum.

Remarkably, whatever the political persuasion of people who have it is, the end result is the likes of Orban/Fico coming to power.

Sadly, this thing not only spreads, it also sticks.

If you know of an antidote, please tell me what it is.

As far as Hungary goes, I asked my friend who studied Hungarian history. He explained to me that while the Soviet invasion was very traumatic, the subsequent Kádár "goulash socialism" was a lot more lenient on the people than all the other Soviet Bloc regimes, and that the Hungarians made an incorrectly confident conclusion that losing a small war to the Russians is not catastrophic.

Of course, this is NOT the experience of basically anyone else who happened to be in a similar situation. A potential puppet regime of Russia in Ukraine wouldn't look like Kádárs by any means, it would rather look like the Kadyrovian microstate in Chechnya, minus the Islam of course.

That's why they're doomed to repeat it. Again and again.

Also in these countries there's a lot of old people who have never been able to adapt to living in a free, capitalist society, so for them, there's some nostalgia for communism.

Everyone knows who the attacker is - just some people root for Russia for their own reasons. Usually tied to the internal politics of their countries - like hating for unrelated reasons the political actors from their states that happen to support Ukraine.

The majority of school teachers grew up under the Soviet side of cold war propaganda.

And in history education in particular, we are told that "we" have always looked towards Russia as a role model, to fight Hungarian nationalism (since the country was just part of Hungary for most of its history).

Being pro-russia is being anti-Slovakian though. You get zero upside for teaming with terrorist state and all the downsides.

Is he? I don't see that in his comment at all. Can you point out that part to us?

Perhaps your handlers never taught you that two things can be bad at the same time.

How are any of those false flag? They're state sponsored, by different state actors.

Given the level of incompetence that Russia has demonstrated on both the political and military front, I highly doubt it could've turned anything around in Ukraine even if knew everything about 2014.

This wasn't some oversight of the proverbial Nina in any way. They just did sloppy job from both sides covering tracks, not uncommon with current government. They are loud (and racist, xenophobic, and often dumb), not competent smart people.

Well the interior ministry didn't really demand one (yes really) but the opposition people have read the documentation for the cameras and the hash of the supplied software was exactly the same as the hash for the russian simicon camera.

That's exactly the sort of thing that James Bond would do.

There is a video somewhere of a Finnish university professor from around the time the war started (maybe a bit before), explaining the Russian attitude to sportsmanship, or whatever you want to call it.

Basically he suggested cheating is not considered unethical in Russia. If you are not using all means available to reach your goal you are leaving something on the table and are weak. This applies to all levels of society.

I would be cautious of such generalisations normally. But the industrial scale cheating at the winter Olympics says a lot.