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by satnhak 7 days ago
"Russia is good, actually" is a hard sell to anyone who has been indoctrinated by a lifetime of Western Russophobia. Is I think what you meant.
5 comments

Western influence isn't necessary. Eastern Europe has experienced the Soviet Union and doesn't want to go back.
>anyone who has been indoctrinated by a lifetime of Western Russophobia

or who turns on the TV and sees which atrocity they've committed this week.

Technically true but it's also a hard sell to normal people who don't like wars of aggression, poisoning political opponents, and shooting down airliners.
The problem is that if you look at Russia's actions they are mostly rational and predictable. And by Russian standards Putin is a moderate. The Western wet dream is to "Yugoslavia" Russia. Balkanize it, load it with debt and take all of its assets. They had their man in Yeltsin, but he was such an egregious drunk that even the CIA couldn't get him reelected. In many ways, if you look at things objectively, there may not be a Russia without Putin.

(and you show me a major country where they aren't poisoning political opponents, conducting significantly less relevant wars than the one in Ukraine, and all kinds of other things)

I have no words for what I just read.
Oh yeah, the West is so russophobic that Russian elites all sent their kids there to study and bought million-dollar villas and penthouses there...
The Russian public are victims of Putin just as much as the Ukranians. This is almost all on him and his party apparatus, just as it was under Stalin.