Comment by dismalaf
6 hours ago
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.
And maybe they mistake current Russia for a communist country? It has every single ingredient of Stalin's Russia except the pretense of socialism or communism.
oh no, they see very clearly, to the West it's a (more or less) rule-based order and to the East it's a might-makes-right one, so they having acquired their power and money in a not entirely legal way, naturally are drawn to the east.
edit: ah you mean the old people? not really, no, it's just pure propaganda, it doesn't have to make sense.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-says-communism-comes-bible-co...
It doesn't matter what Russia actually is. They play both sides with their propaganda. Old people who thought positively about communism still support Russia.
Fico and Babiš for example were both communist party members and both pro-Russia politicians today.