Comment by gumby

It is literally a pro Russian action, to be against sanctioning Russia for their war against Ukraine.

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

Hungary and Slovakia are largest importers of Russian natural gas in Europe. France is third as I remember.

Geopolitical decisions aren't made by countries, they are made by individual people.

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.

>precisely the countries that should know better, since they were the principal recipients the "love and friendship" from Russia

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.

Older people in these countries have good memories of that time, employment and housing were basically a given, healthcare and public transportation were solved, etc. They're very easy to manipulate, promise them a 13th month of pension and they'll vote for you.

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.

The Slovaks ultimately got federalization of Czechoslovakia from the crisis (1969), which both distracted them and made their memories less negative.

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.

My brother visited some of these countries. He said most people there are oblivious to what happened to their countries. They simply don't care. It also didn't help that everyone he met (agricultural sector) was a day-drinker.

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

A lot of Eastern European countries have oligarchs who largely made their fortunes with help from the Russians. In Czechia one such example is the prime minister Andrej Babiš, who was a bureaucrat in a state owned business who then sold it to himself in the 90s (with the help of some "Swiss" money) and became a billionaire. He's consistently been as pro-Russia as he thinks he can get away with (the positive is that Czechs hate Russians a lot).

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.

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Are there any other wars that are not of aggression? What do you gain by parroting the legalese speak? Implying that it is extra bad and extra illegal war? Not your run of the mill PG-13 war? This one is X-rated kids.

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.

No, it just means their governments are controlled by pro-russian people, or are simply Russian puppets installed years ago.

Old people are ruining their grandchildren’s lives everywhere, not just in Slovakia.

It's rooted in the education system to this day.

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).

Sounds like boomers everywhere.

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> God forbid for national politicians to think about their națion first!

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

ceding sovereignty and to many degrees cultures to another nation to kinda like be a vassal state is quite literally not thinking about your nation first lmao. even less so when the other nation funds your political ascension, like.. that's the opposite of thinking about your nation first. that's flat out doing it for the other nation man.

acting like western nation didn't spy to each other

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.

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In the case of Slovakia, it's purely Russian misinformation that was able to capture a large part of the population, mainly older people. First anti-EU, then anti-vax, and now anti-Ukraine and anti-EU.

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Silver Fox is a very vaguely defined Chinese cybercrime group of malware and actors...or are you referring to something else?

> Recent false flags are a thing: 2018 Olympic Destroyer, Marble Framework, Silver Fox, MuddyWater Chaos

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

"learned their lesson well now" - I don't think Russia has learned any lessons at all since Ukraine. Russia's sheer incompetence keeps getting worse and worse, as Prigozhin exposed on the inside. The war went from total failure to achieve any objectives for 5 years, to now 4 hour lines in Moscow to fill up your car at the gas station - i.e. Russia went from "failing to capture Kyiv in 3 days" to now "getting hit in the center of Moscow regularly".

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.

That does not make much sense. In 2014 Yanukovic was in power, who had been bought off by Russia. Lets not forget that Yanukovic ran on a pro EU platform and then reversed a day or so before signing the EU association agreement. Naturally the people went to the streets and eventually Yanukovic fled. Not sure what you would have wanted to spy on.