Same here, as a Czech, the Russian narrative that all Slavic people should be united under them doesn't really help with a good night sleep. I've been just waiting for Russia to wage another of its wars for at least 15 years. I'm not happy that I was right, but this was very much expected.

Thanks for sharing your perspective.

Lithuania is often considered very anti-Russia, similar to other Baltic states, as attributed to a history of Soviet occupation and all the outcomes of it, so it's natural that alarms raised by such country are more easily dismissed. At some point, this really could be paranoia; at another, it stopped being one. The art is in figuring out where one ends and the other begins.

As per imperialism - it is common in almost every country with big territory, population, large economy and military. US (above all), China and other powers have it too. I'm not saying it's not ugly, I'm just pointing out it's a general trend that should be approached more systemically - and until then, cultural shifts can only get us so far. I wonder what would it take to remove imperialist tendencies in every place in the world.

I could try to address that disagreement. I'm inclined to assume that you, and citizens of other European countries that had a substantial number of Russians living there, tend to get this impressions exactly from those Russians. Russians who doesn't live in Russia, and social media related to them. My impression is that they are much more crazy than average Russian living in Russia. The latter are uneducated enough to believe that the west wants to conquer Russia, but the former are idiotic enough to assume they are in some privileged position, and that mist Russians think the same. In reality the rest of Russians don't have time to indulge in such fantasies and really busy with their lives.

So I'm saying the imperialism exists in a minority of Russians. The irony is that the president is with the minority and that's why we are in current situation. He got crazy enough with time that he disconnected with majority of the Russians.

I think it's useless to blame regular Russians in imperialism. But it might be useful to put some pressure on those Russians living outside Russia to make sure they think less about possibility to improve their lives by conquering some country.

I'd say at first it did work on a lot of people from TV generation, forming a picture of Ukrainian soldiers as Nazis driven by drugged President who is a puppet of american dementia man, and of Russian soldiers liberating people from insanity.

At its peak, even some of the generally anti-war individuals fell into uncertainty.

But the longer it drags, the less effective propaganda is. War exhausted country's resources and killed its men, and this becomes clear even to past die-hard supporters of the war. Also, the dissolution of Wagner group made Wagner fans (which constituted a large percentage of pro-war individuals) more bitter towards the military effort.

So in general, the sentiment goes more and more towards "why are we waging this war in the first place" and "how much longer do we have to suffer"

I'm not saying anything remotely illegal, but I'm just gonna say we do have anonymizing instruments when we really need them.

Thanks for voicing it!

You mean Crimea? While it was a hostile act indeed, it was different. Might be less visible from the outside, again.

Lemme try to explain the difference. Again, no justification, I don't have a strong stance on Crimea, just how it looks from inside Russia (and Crimea - having lots of relatives and friends from there and been there pre- and post-annexation).

The annexation of Crimea was relatively peaceful (while some Russian soldiers came to the peninsula, it wasn't a full-scale invasion, no bullet was shot and no bullet was meant to be shot) and went in accordance to the interest of locals, who wholeheartedly overwhelmingly approved the change - and I'm not just sourcing this from Kremlin propaganda and referendum results, I've been on the ground and have many contacts in there. The sentiment has somewhat changed over time, but is still moderately pro-Russia. Crimea is also primarily inhabited by ethnic Russians - 67,9% Russians with only 15,7% Ukrainians by the time of annexation in 2014 - which might help to explain such a fierce support (source: Wikipedia). Putin has also taken action against growing conflict between Russians and Crimean Tatars, which, while being heavily controversial, got him even more support from the Russian population majority.

The 2022 invasion was meant from the start as a full-scale war, and was meant to meet resistance and be hostile to the civilian population. Unlike annexation of Crimea, which was more of a political recoloring than anything, this time it was an actual war, with blood, bullets, and flame, and with Russian tanks riding through Ukrainian protesters that wished those tanks to go away. And this is the kind of scenario Russians could not envision. In Russian mentality, Ukrainians, just like Belorussians, are brotherly folks, and going for the kill means betraying the almost sacred bond the nations have. This shows in Russian politics, with leaders constantly trying to tell population it is not a war against brotherly Ukrainians, but rather against Nazis and their leader Zelensky (yep, the guy with Jewish bloodline). But it is bullshit that the majority can still see through, and when the war started, it was a giant shock and, like, something that absolutely, under any circumstances, shouldn't have happened.

This, exactly, has blinded Russians, myself included, into trusting Kremlin with their "combat exercise" rhetoric. Not that we had (and have) big trust in our government, but going to a real bloody war with Ukraine was too unthinkable to ever seriously consider.

Also, please avoid rhetorical questions in favor of direct ones. I do answer this one because it might be useful for the general context, but it is rude and also ineffective in case you actually want to hear an answer.

I'm not Russian so I have a limited perspective of this, but I remember people pointing out good indicators that the invasion was really going to happen during the weeks leading up to it, like how the Russian military was setting up field hospitals along the border. Obviously, hindsight makes reflecting on this difficult, and I'm not sure what information was available to Russian citizens at that time.