[cbg0]

If the history books are any good indicator, Putin going away tomorrow won't really change anything, the problem has always been with Russia as a whole, not just its leader - ask most of the EU countries that have some historical beef with them.

[mathfailure]

Why did EU countries always have some historical beef with Russia?

[ben_w]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain for one.

Cold war was rather less theoretical in Europe than in the USA. The USA got to argue about missile gaps and sending conscripts to prevent domino effects; we got to watch troops and tanks doing maneuvers by shared land borders they themselves had fortified.

A forum like HN will be familiar with the misdeeds of the CIA/NSA/Five Eyes; much of Europe with the KGB/Stasi/ etc. from allied/puppet states.

Friends in the UK got married, the father of the bride talked about fleeing torture in (communist) Poland. The current prime minister of Poland was part of the movement that overthrew communist rule, leading to his own arrest: https://www.gov.pl/web/primeminister/donald-tusk

Russia gets the blame for pulling everyone's strings in the cold war.

[mopsi]

Finland: got invaded, Russians tried to overrun the entire country and install a puppet government, but eventually managed to capture only a part of Finland that they have not returned to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania: tried to appease Russians, still got invaded, governments overthrown, puppets installed as replacements, a large part of the local population was deported to Siberian labor camps in multiple mass actions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi This was followed by a 50-year military occupation that saw severe violations of human rights, suppression of national identity, and developmental retardation that left these countries severely behind of their free counterparts.

Poland: Russians colluded with Hitler and invaded from both the west and the east in September 1939. Germans started burning Jews in ovens, Russians set up an industrial operation to murder Polish politicans, lawyers, officers and other national leaders by tens of thousands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre Hundreds of thousands were murdered in total and 1.5 million deported to Siberia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish_c... In Poland too, Russians installed a dictatorship at the end of WWII that severely held the country back until the 1990s.

The rest of the journey southward on the European map remains homework for you to complete.

After that, we can philosophize why no one likes Russians, if that still remains unclear.

[mathfailure]

Those countries all were allied (or were going to side with) with nazi Germany, so they are all square.

But even regardless of wars - there was always some degree of russophobia without any good reasons. Maybe it's just a fear of a big neighboring country, I don't know.

As for Katyn - you are right, it was indeed a crime by USSR's Stalin and it's a shame USSR hasn't admitted to that crime until as late as 1990.

Thank you for that reply.

[cbg0]

All square? What is that supposed to mean?

Also, the poster above gave you actual examples that you're handwaving as "regardless of wars" and then go on to say "russophobia without any good reasons"?

Please don't try to wash this over as "USSR" or blame it on Stalin. It's called Russia now and Putin is in charge, but the fundamentals haven't changed, they're still russifying captured territory by displacing local people and they still have no regard for basic human rights.