[dan-robertson]

I basically read it as a polite way of saying ‘I can’t work out how this comment relates to the article (which it should) and I would like to give you the opportunity to expand on the connection or restructure your comment to be related to the article instead of using the heading as an excuse to talk about some distantly related thing you care about.’ I could be wrong though.

I think it tends to give better results than just arguing about whether something is on topic and the parent commenter probably does have some more specific things they could say about Eastern Europe here.

I don’t believe I’ve witnessed something exactly like your example though I’ve seen plenty of disagreement on this site. I don’t think that’s what happened here.