Dear Russia,<\/p>\n
In the wake of Finland’s imminent decision to join NATO, you threaten again. You present yourself as the victim of aggression by Nazis.<\/p>\n
So let’s take stock. Who did what in Europe since 1945?<\/p>\n
In 1953, you used your military force to crush an uprising against hardline communist tyranny in East Germany.<\/p>\n
In 1956, you did the same thing in Budapest, inflicting severe damage on my city of birth, still recovering from the devastations of WW2.<\/p>\n
In 1968, you crushed the Prague Spring with tanks.<\/p>\n
Kudos to you: You refrained from the direct use of military force in Poland in 1980, though you supported the regime that imposed martial law.<\/p>\n
After the Soviet collapse, as the newly independent Russian Federation you supported separatists in the Transnistria region of Moldova.<\/p>\n
You waged not one but two wars in Chechnya in the 1990s, with tens of thousands killed and cities like Grozny leveled.<\/p>\n
In 2008, you launched a war against Georgia, seizing territory and creating two phony mini-republics.<\/p>\n
In 2014, you launched another war, against Ukraine, seizing the Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, creating a permanent war zone, even shooting down a civilian airliner that flew over the area on a scheduled route.<\/p>\n
And now you attempted a full-scale war, hoping to decapitate Ukraine, Blitzkrieg<\/em>-style, and resorting to horrific, genocidal tactics of purposefully targeting civilians when your ineptitude and Ukrainian resistance thwarted your plans.<\/p>\n But you are the good guys. I get it. Meanwhile, what did evil, imperialist, Nazi NATO do? How many times were you attacked by NATO nations? What territories were seized by NATO?<\/p>\n Oh, I get it. NATO bombed Belgrade. Never mind that the goal was not to seize territory or even change a regime, simply to stop the (now well-documented) ongoing genocide in Kosovo. Because, I get it, that’s what Nazis do: they stop genocide. And you, the good guys?<\/p>\n This video speaks for itself.<\/p>\n