I’m actually all in favor of Slavic unification (as well as any other reasonable and constructive one), but it should certainly NOT be under the leadership of any particular country. I’m super pissed by earlier centuries panslavists trying to cater to Russia in order to gain its favor and influence.

That’s not how brotherhood is made.

My point is, due to all this complicated and violent history, Lithuania will obviously be on a higher alert than many other countries - that’s what I’m saying first and foremost. This means a lot of false alarms, which the rest of the world recognizes, and which is why those early warnings didn’t help.

But thanks for making your point, it is important to the understanding of the problem as well.

Genuine question - could you provide examples of open high-level hostilities Russia has shown to Baltic or other countries related to Russian minorities? Cause from the inside it looks mostly as showing concern over Russians having their culture stripped away in order to force assimilation. Don’t know much on how it’s going in Lithuania in particular, but I have ethnic Russian relatives in Latvia and many of the restrictions imposed, language and cultural, seem very unreasonable and hostile.

That’s true, and that’s why I selected several criteria here. For its relatively low economic power, Russia has tremendous influence in the region and does act as a superpower due to a large combination of factors.

I’m not saying this to distract someone; I’m pointing it out to say that the solution to imperialism lies in some sort of global shift and not local cultural effort. Cultures of superpowers will inevitably gravitate towards imperialism, and we need to find a way to stop it at its root.

I’d say at first it did work on a lot of people from TV generation, forming a picture of Ukrainian soldiers as Nazis driven by drugged President who is a puppet of american dementia man, and of Russian soldiers liberating people from insanity.

At its peak, even some of the generally anti-war individuals fell into uncertainty.

But the longer it drags, the less effective propaganda is. War exhausted country’s resources and killed its men, and this becomes clear even to past die-hard supporters of the war. Also, the dissolution of Wagner group made Wagner fans (which constituted a large percentage of pro-war individuals) more bitter towards the military effort.

So in general, the sentiment goes more and more towards “why are we waging this war in the first place” and “how much longer do we have to suffer”

Uhm, you can freely leave China? And unless you’re a secret FBI agent, your family is probably safe.

I’ve heard those stories of “secret Chinese police in the Netherlands”, but they are based on words of like one man without decent confirmation

China actually can challenge US in the Pacific theatre.

Besides, it’s a matter of how far each side is ready to go. Taiwan is important for the US, but vital for China. US will back down abd avoid escalation sooner.

Also, when you have nuclear states on each side, situation always gets very precarious.

So do not underestimate the leg China has here.

I’m not saying anything remotely illegal, but I’m just gonna say we do have anonymizing instruments when we really need them.

Thanks for voicing it!

It’s a little harder to topple Putin than you imagine. He does have loyal police and military, and civil protests are crushed.

And yes, the elections were heavily rigged, which was shown time and time again, especially when opposition still wasn’t all incarcerated.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Lithuania is often considered very anti-Russia, similar to other Baltic states, as attributed to a history of Soviet occupation and all the outcomes of it, so it’s natural that alarms raised by such country are more easily dismissed. At some point, this really could be paranoia; at another, it stopped being one. The art is in figuring out where one ends and the other begins.

As per imperialism - it is common in almost every country with big territory, population, large economy and military. US (above all), China and other powers have it too. I’m not saying it’s not ugly, I’m just pointing out it’s a general trend that should be approached more systemically - and until then, cultural shifts can only get us so far. I wonder what would it take to remove imperialist tendencies in every place in the world.

Thank you.

Russian here, protested against the war and find it terrifying, not buying official narratives of nazis and NATO threat for a second.

Still remember the 24th of February, 2022. Before the date, we were all like “naive Westerners, Russia will not openly attack Ukraine, that’s so obviously stupid on so many levels, it’s a brotherly nation going through turbulent times, that’s it”. No one could in their sane mind even comprehend something like this. It was unthinkable. No one wanted that aside from a few select extremists, and most people never supported it later on - though propaganda machine did make some progress on the weakest of minds.

And then we wake up that day, on 24th of February, and have a collective “HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK PUTIN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT OH WE’RE ALL SO SCREWED”. It was a very grim day, and everyone had worries of their own: some, like me, had friends and family in Ukraine, some were afraid of their men being drafted (which did eventually happen in September 2022), others were just terrified of the scale of human suffering it will entail.

Since then, we learned never to trust anything and question everything we believe in. It was a cultural shock like Russia has never seen.

Same day, 24th of February, streets sparked in violent protests, police got extremely brutal - to this day, almost 2 years into the war, police has constant 24/7 presence in the places that were the main anti-war protest venues of my city. It lasted for months, despite police never stopping and detaining extreme numbers of people: courts are still overburdened processing all of them. All until everyone who had integrity and bravery and nothing to lose got in jail.

Putin should pay for all the atrocities he has committed, and that’s something very many Russians will subscribe to.