A Ukrainian soldier named Serhiy, returning from Russian captivity, has reportedly been found mutilated with swastikas carved into his forehead, as disclosed by Dr. Olexandr Turkevich, who is treating him.
The soldier, blindfolded during the ordeal, claimed Russian soldiers threatened to dismember him, citing accusations of fascism.
As a Lithuanian, I actually disagree. We always knew that a day like February 24 would come. We kept telling that to our allies and they thought we were being paranoid.
You have to address the deep sense of Russian imperialism before we can take you seriously. Even the Russians who have lived in my country for 30 years or more have it. “We are Russians” they say. “We want the world; we want it and we won’t stop until we have all of it.”
I also know that people like you exist, and some people resisted, but our collective fear is that people like you are a smaller minority than you would think.
Same here, as a Czech, the Russian narrative that all Slavic people should be united under them doesn’t really help with a good night sleep. I’ve been just waiting for Russia to wage another of its wars for at least 15 years. I’m not happy that I was right, but this was very much expected.
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.
I’m very much against. Like, we have nothing in common with Russians, except our languages sharing the same roots.
That’s not exactly true, we also watched Krtek and Nu Pogodi in out childhoods, and both nations are considered “glum” (as never smiling) and cynical (and the correlation between being educated and being cynical, sometimes to the point of dark humor), relatively recent urbanisation. Otherwise, yes, of course, things are different, there is almost as much common with Bulgaria or Croatia
I meant something in particular, what you mentioned are things that we have in common with many others. There’s nothing except the language that really makes us part of a group which Russia is also part of.
Your call.
I’d argue we still have plenty of cultural similarities, not limited to language, and some sort of common identity as Slavs. In many cases, that alone is enough to be a force driving for unification.
Generally though, I just welcome peace and partnership, and unification seems to me like one of the best ways to achieve this - assuming it is voluntary and conflicts are sorted out, of course.
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.
The whole “but every country is imperialist” is kinda weird to say, dude, considering Russia is the only one atm currently involved in an invasion
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.
We are not anti-Russia, we are simply pro-survival. Even before the Soviet occupation, tsarist Russia did a lot to destroy our national identities, in Lithuania, they forbade writing our language in Roman alphabet and hunted smugglers that carried books written in it. The ban and other repressions caused several massive rebellions including 1830s and 1860s ones.
The Tsar later sent his hound, Muravjov, who hanged so many men that the line of gallows went from Kaunas to Vilnius (~90 km). They have put a statue of Muravjov outside of Lithuanian consulate in Kaliningrad. I guess they are going to put a statue of Adolf Hitler outside the Israeli consulate next /s
And imperialism is common among big countries, sure, but it is Russians who enflame their local minorities in neighbouring countries and then rush to save them. And we do have a Russian minority.
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.
Russian hostilities are not open until they are.
Belarus sent a lot of immigrants from 3rd countries to Baltic states and Poland to cause problems for us.
Russian propaganda machine was to blame for enflaming a lot of marginal political movements, like antivax, anti-LGBT and now anti-Ukraine.
Russian backed propaganda machines were cutting up Baltic states and inventing non-existant separatist movements since 2010. But unlike in Ukraine, none of them stuck.
The problem with Russians in the Baltics is how many of them still think that they are either in charge or that Russian army will be back soon. They completely refuse to integrate, refuse to learn our language, our customs, our values, despite living here for over 50 years. In comparison , I spent 9 months in Sweden, I can give directions and haggle in the market in Swedish.
Toppling the Russian government is the key to end the horrific war and genocide. The “Republics” in Russia should have been independent.
I see your point.
I wonder, though, how many of this is genuine and how much is false politically motivated accusations, which are very often the case in the political landscape of many countries.
Being to blame and being the cause are two very different things.
Also, you know the world is fucked up when immigrants can be used as a weapon. We seriously need to deal with the problem, and not through stricter border control and enforcement. But I digress.
I get your integration argument, though.
We will never know how large the extent of Russian propaganda and other intelligence activities are, but whenever we have any problems in our country there are always chaos actors linked to Russia. They are always on the lookout for weakness to exploit. Even a local anti-fracking protest had ties to Gazprom.
Honestly, discussing Russia’s economy as large in the same breath as the US and China ks a bit disingenuous. US GDP is around 27 trillion USD, China around 18 trillion USD. Russia? 2 trillion USD.
Source for figures: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/explainers/top-10-largest-economies-in-the-world/86159/1. Even if we dispute the specific numbers, an order of magnitude is an order of magnitude.