Putin wants to promote objective truth about WWII

[DetlefK]

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/putin-wants-to-promote-objective-truth-about-wwii/

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants you to rethink what you know about Russia and the Soviet Union and understand the “objective” truth about their history.

On Thursday Kremlin announced a strategy advising Russia’s ministries and public organizations to make plans to spread “objective historical and current information about the Russian Federation, including its role in defeating Nazism.”

The plans involve several ministries and have global ambitions. Many of the goals revolve around World War II and combating what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called “attempts to revise history” and “heroize Nazism.” The measures serve to hammer home a point that the Kremlin underscores at any opportunity—Moscow fought Nazi Germany and won.



---------------

I fully support that we talk more about the WWII-era Soviet Union.

Let's talk about how Stalin hunted down and executed blind ukrainian folk-singers in an attempt to eradicate ukrainian culture.

Let's talk about how Stalin and Hitler became besties and jointly invaded Poland.

Let's talk about how when Hitler betrayed Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union, Stalin was so hurt, he didn't leave his room for 3 days. That's how close they were.

Let's talk about how the Russians had committed such atrocities in Ukraine, that the Ukrainians greeted the Nazis as liberators. To repeat:
The Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators from the terror-regime of the Soviet Union.

Let's talk about the mass-rape of german women by the invading russian soldiers.

Let's talk about how Putin still refuses to return the german art looted in WWII because he considers them legitimate spoils of war.

[dhol82]

1. I would say that he is promoting subjective truth

Interesting.

[dchill]

28. Oh, you mean like "alternative facts?"

[dhol82]

90. Exactly. nt

[gordianot]

2. Modern Fascist hire Public Relations firms and sometimes retired foreign Generals.

They also avoid trappings of industrial level genocide and are more subtle. They are not beyond making fun of old timely fascist.

[Botany]

3. Let's talk about post WW II, the Soviet Union, and the Iron Curtain too.

We can add the Hungarian uprising of 1956, The Chech rebellion of 1968, or that
how the Soviets waited until the nazis "cleaned up Warsaw" before they retook the city.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Let's talk about the Soviet Union starving the Ukraine as it stole Ukraine's harvests.

Talk about ethnic cleansing!

[Wounded Bear]

5. Objective truth is...there were no good guys on the Eastern Front of WWII.

Both sides were evil. We can argue all day long about which side was more evil, but that's kind of like deciding whether you want your throat cut or your head chopped off.

It was the largest, and probably the most brutal military campaign in history. Of the hundreds of thousands of prisoners taken on both sides, probably less than 10% were ever repatriated. Germans invaded the USSR essentially without provocation, they almost won. They brutalized the countries they invaded, and when the Russians bounced back and counter-invaded, they returned the favor.

Yes, this is propaganda, no doubt. But getting into a pissing contest about whether Commies were worse than Nazis is beside the point, and works to reward Putin for his efforts. It's another form of divide and conquer.

[Kaleva]

9. The Finns were about the only "good guys" on the Eastern Front

They only wanted the territory they had lost to the Soviet Union in the Winter War back. Finland was the only Axis nation allowed to hold their own war crimes trials and those who served in the military were exempt from charges. It also was the only Axis nation that didn't have Allied occupation troops placed within its borders after the war.

[Wounded Bear]

11. I'll give you that...

they were a bit of a side show to the main event, and managed to mostly maintain their national integrity.

The Soviets invaded them, and while they cooperated with the Germans, they weren't a major factor beyond closing the ring on the Leningrad siege. Other than that, I don't know much about the Finnish involvement TBH.

[KingCharlemagne]

12. Um, does it matter that we were allies with the "evil empire" when our Presidents

were Dems (FDR and HST)? Or do such petty details no longer matter?

[Wounded Bear]

21. Not really...

Not sure where you're going with that comment, but sometimes the enemy of my enemy is my friend, temporarily.

Yes, we were allies at the time. So what? Immediately after the war things changed...opinions changed...strategies changed.

The fact remains, both Hitler and Stalin were authoritarian assholes of the worst kind. Now, Germany is an ally and Russia most assuredly is not. History is funny like that. We did help Stalin defeat Hitler. Historically, Russia as a country has always been jealous and suspicious of Western European countries, and we're basically one of them to the Russians.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[KingCharlemagne]

24. Sigh. You better thank your lucky stars we were allies with the USSR. Without the sacrifices of

the Red Army, you and your parents would be speaking German and saluting the 1,000-year Reich.

[Wounded Bear]

29. Sigh...your hyperbole is duly noted.

While the Soviets suffered the bulk of German aggression and were invaluable in taking Europe back from Hitler, it is unlikely that the Germans could have actually invaded the US, given their technology and the state of their navy.

You seem to think I don't have an appreciation for the realities of WWII.

Carry on.

[KingCharlemagne]

31. Your false equivalence of Stalin with Hitler is demonstrable proof positive that you

do not have an appreciation for the realities of WWII.

Hitler opened Auschwitz and Stalin closed it down. Q.E.D.

[Wounded Bear]

36. And Stalin had his Gulags...

just because he was critical in the defeat of Hitler does not make him a hero, just a temporarily useful ally.

Stalin was an asshole, too, who killed many thousands of Soviets in the 30's. Hell, he even rounded up and executed many of the partisans who rose up to fight the Nazis during the war.

You can lionize him if you like. Don't preach to me how "good" he was. He wasn't.

[KingCharlemagne]

64. OF course I lionize Stalin (for reasons mentioned elsewhere). Speaking of 'rounding up' people, FDR

did a little rounding up of his own (of Japanese Americans). Yeah, DU's hero FDR has his fingerprints all over Manzanar.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

73. Nice whataboutism. Nt

[Wounded Bear]

75. Well, you are entitled to your opinions....but...

Yes, FDR had his faults and did some indefensible things. So what? Doesn't change my opinion of Stalin, or Hitler, or Pol Pot, or Trump for that matter. I don't grade on that curve. YMMV, obviously.

[EX500rider]

85. Stalin killed more Russians then Hitler did Germans..

WHICH 20TH CENTURY DICTATOR KILLED THE MOST PEOPLE?

Mao: 40 million
Stalin: 20 million
Hitler: 12 million
Leopold II: 10 million
Tojo: 5 million


http://historyofrussia.org/stalin-killed-how-many-people/

[EX500rider]

88. How many interned Japanese died Vs how many in the Gulags?

Not even remotely the same thing.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

38. And Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union slowed Stalin's reign of terror on his people.

Which excuses absolutely nothing about what Hitler did. But basically it just shows the people of Eastern Europe were trading back and forth between arguably the two most evil men of the 20th Century.

It's ridiculous to paint one as any better than the other. The only difference at all is that Hitler was an immediate threat to us and our allies while Stalin wasn't.

Go shove your claims of "false equivalence" where the sun don't shine.

[KingCharlemagne]

66. Hitler opened Auschwitz. Stalin (and the Red Army) closed it. Q.E.D. - nt

[Tommy_Carcetti]

74. Well then, Stalin's such a swell guy.

The US and U.K. liberated the concentration camps in western Germany which, while not quite on the scale of Auschwitz, were just as horrific.

And yet we managed to do all that without killings millions via starvation and mass purges.

Hitler gave us interstate highways and VWs. Gee, maybe we should lionize him.

[BannonsLiver]

79. Yes, reminds me a lot of the "Hitler was a bad guy but had some good ideas" trope we've all heard

[Tommy_Carcetti]

81. I can't believe anyone in their right mind would laud the virtues of Stalin.

Even if someone is a Marxist, I can't see it. Maybe Lenin or Trotsky, but Stalin?

[BannonsLiver]

82. Some people have a thing for authoritarians

Probably pro Putin too.

[bettyellen]

78. Nice thoughtless sound bite.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

46. Stalin served a strategic purpose to us at the time. Hitler didn't.

That's the only real distinction between the two of them, and it doesn't absolve the fact that there were millions upon millions killed between the two of them.

[Adrahil]

50. War makes strange bedfellows.

But even before the end of the war, both FDR and Truman knew the threat a post-war Soviet Union posed. That's why there was a mad dash to German scientists and technology.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

19. I'm halfway through Snyder's Bloodlands right now

Everybody knows about the Holocaust. A good number of people know about the forced famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, i.e. the Holodomor.

But there were a lot more lesser known aggressions by either Hitler or Stalin where tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people were killed.

1930s Eastern Europe was truly hell on earth because of those two madmen.

[MFM008]

54. Millions?

Between the two including Stalin purges?
There are those that would love to return to those "good old days."

[KingCharlemagne]

6. How about instead we talk about how the USSR lost 26 million fighting Hitler

along a 2,000-mile front while the bourgeois Allies dinked around in North Africa? The U.S. lost only 250,000 in the European theater, or one soldier for every 100 Soviet soldiers or partisans. How about we talk about that???

[rug]

8. +1

[NewRedDawn]

13. How about that is B.S.!

Yes they lost that many, But it was from their own hand because Stalin after allying with Hitler was fighting for his life & country when Hitler turned on him. Also Maybe if Stalin had not killed or arrested his top Generals. Maybe the loses been far less & Hitler defeated earlier. Not to mention the food & equipment the USA provided the Soviet Union before we even entered the war.
Lets not Cherry pick please!

[KingCharlemagne]

16. What is B.S.? That the USSR lost 100 people for every 1 the U.S. lost? I know U.S. lives

are "special," but are they really 100 times more special than any other lives?

[NewRedDawn]

20. I never disputed thier loses

What is disputed is the loses was Stalin's fault from his actions. And after D Day Germany was all but defeated on the western front.
America & Britain would have defeated them without Russia. Especially after we discovered the A Bomb.

[KingCharlemagne]

23. FFS. You need to take a few history classes or read some books. The USSR had

all but defeated Hitler in the East (at Stalingrad and Kursk) before the Allies invaded at Normandy. The Wehrmacht had only some 80 divisions in France in 1944, mainly because it had to keep over 150 divisions in the Eastern Front to slow the Soviet advances.

You are embarrassing yourself with those of us who know our history.

[NewRedDawn]

26. So we had the A Bomb

You are embarrassing your self. Germany We would have dropped the bomb on them Like Japan end of war.

[KingCharlemagne]

27. Oy vey. - nt

[NewRedDawn]

94. Is that you Boris Epshtein ?

Got another election to fix don't you?

[former9thward]

93. Your rendition of history seems to leave out the Gulags.

Where tens of millions died. I wonder why you ignore that?

[BSdetect]

15. It was 42 million, including civilians.

[KingCharlemagne]

17. Precise casualty counts are impossible. For one thing, the line between

non-combatant civilian and partisan resistance fighter is not hard and fast. I've seen estimates as low as 20 million Soviet casualties and estimates as high as your 42 million.

[BSdetect]

48. Drumph is an ignorant draft avoiding moron

who could start a war with disastrous consequences due to his stupidity

[Botany]

56. And how much material support did we give the Soviet Union in WW II?*

" ... while the bourgeois Allies dinked around in North Africa?"

I am sure facing Rommel's Afrika Korp was just a walk in the park along w/Sciliy, Italy, D-Day, Europe,
and the Battle of the Bulge too. BTW the allies were also fighting a second war in thePacific @ the
same time.

Only lost 1/4 million men?

* The U.S., UK and Canada supplied the USSR with some $130 billion worth of supplies during WWII.

[KingCharlemagne]

65. We provided the coats, the Soviet people provided the bodies. Or are you

saying that the death of Soviets (at a ratio of 100-1) is somehow balanced by our provision of material aid to the USSR? Really????

[Botany]

68. You really have no shame

And how many more Soviets would have died if we had not given them support?

BTW many of the Soviet deaths were because of being shot by fellow Soviets?

[KingCharlemagne]

69. You are the one who has no shame, willing to accept with absolute equanimity that Soviets died at

a ratio of 100-1 to U.S. soldiers, just so you could withhold your gratitude and engage in decadent what-aboutism.

Jesus H. Christ.

[Botany]

71. Say hi to Vlad. just so you could withhold your gratitude and engage in decadent what-aboutism*

Your english is very good but nobody in America says, "just so you could withhold your gratitude and engage in decadent what-aboutism."



After seeing millions of Soviet troops captured in the early days of the German blitzkrieg, Joseph Stalin issued August 1941’s “Order No. 270,” which proclaimed that any troops who surrendered or allowed themselves to be captured were traitors in the eyes of the law and would be executed if they ever returned to Russia. The dictator later upped the ante with July 1942’s famous “Order No. 227,” better known as the “Not One Step Backward!” rule, which decreed that cowards were to be “liquidated on the spot.” Under this order, any troops who retreated were to be shelled or gunned down by so-called “blocking detachments”—special units who were positioned behind their own lines and charged with shooting any soldier who tried to flee. Stalin’s draconian orders were designed to increase the Red Army’s fighting spirit, but they weren’t empty threats. According to some estimates, Soviet barrier troops may have killed as many as 150,000 of their own men over the course of the war, including some 15,000 during the Battle of Stalingrad.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/8-things-you-should-know-about-wwiis-eastern-front

[BannonsLiver]

80. Yes, it's such an odd kink

You just don't see many people walking around waxing nostalgic about the warm and fuzzy Stalin years. But hey I guess everyone has their thing?

[WellDarn]

7. Oh good

National Review Online was down this morning and I was wondering where I could find a one-sided discussion of the Holodomor.

I think Russia has done enough evil both within and without its borders since the rise of the oligarchs to justify casting Putin and his cronies into the Pit of Despair. I'm not sure we need to throw in the decidedly right wing "Stalin was worse than Hitler" meme.

[KingCharlemagne]

14. LOL. When the Nazi scum invaded Ukraine, they had to restrain the Ukrainians for being

too virulently anti-semitic! I swear, you cannot make this shit up!

[NewRedDawn]

40. So what is Vlad?

Is he not Nazi scum ? He persecutes Jews & homosexuals & shits in every one elses backyards "Seems to me we may have us here one of thems Russkie Propogandists" that stole our election.

[KingCharlemagne]

59. You are quite tiresome. Go read a book or take a history class. - nt

[NewRedDawn]

87. You are a condescending Prick

Probably Russian Propagandist . Take your fucking shit back to RT & tell Vlad to fuck off!

[Jake Stern]

58. Ukrainian "hero" Stepan Bandera gleefully aided Nazis in hunting down and killing Jews

UNTIL the Germans turned on him. The all of a sudden he was concerned with the plight of Jews, well Jews like doctors that could aid his movement but left the rest to their fate.

[KingCharlemagne]

60. There's another word for scum like Bandera: opportunist - nt

[NewRedDawn]

89. Also Please don't use the Bernie Logo

Any one who waxes poetic tributes to the fucking butcher Stalin & attacks FDR is no progressive! You are on the wrong board comrade!

[Tommy_Carcetti]

32. There comes a point where the monstrosity is so overwhelming distinctions are pointless

Both Hitler and Stalin had the blood of millions--millions--of innocents on their hands. The only single difference between them is that Stalin played to our strategic advantage whereas Hitler did not. Please do not bring that shit on our website.

Stalin was every bit as evil as Hitler was. Every little bit. Read up on your history.

I can understand if someone disputes a claim that some other brutal authoritarian dictator--say Castro or Hussein--was just as bad as Hitler. That doesn't minimize what those men did, but the numbers just aren't the same.

But when the numbers are in the millions, it's essentially incomparable.

[WellDarn]

37. I have a feeling

I know just a teenie bit more history than you suspect. But seeing as how you just compared Castro to Hitler with not a word about Batista, I'm not going to bother discussing the issue further.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

39. Both Castro and Bautista were bad.

Neither were remotely in the same category as Hitler or Stalin.

Castro's a convenient example because I've heard people in the Cuban exile community compare him to Hitler or Stalin. And while I don't want to minimize the brutal things Castro--or Bautista for that matter--did, it's not at the same level.

The two fronted assault on the people of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 40s was basically unprecedented.

[WellDarn]

45. Of course you've heard

people in the "Cuban community" derived from wealthy Cubans who (after exploiting the poor of Cuba to enrich themselves and then stripping the country of capital and fleeing to the US) hoped to resume their role as master in a post-Castro Cuba say that . . . just as you heard that Stalin starved 12 million Kulaks. The truth is far more complex.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

47. I was probably a couple of days from not existing as who I am...

...as both my grandparents probably would have been added to the millions of others killed by Stalin's troikas if they hadn't fled when they did. God knows what would have happened to my infant mother at the time.

So with all sincerity you can take your 50 something posts and your Stalin apologizing here at DU and well...you know.

[WellDarn]

52. I appreciate your family experiences

But even the most liberal estimates of the number of people killed by the Troika is in the hundreds of thousands (an obviously hideous number nonetheless). The millions numbers you are using (and which form the basis of the Hitler comparison) are those millions who died of starvation during the forced collectivization and famine of the early 30's. Whether those deaths are all attributable to the actions of the government is a complex question. It is unfortunate that you consider discussion of these facts offensive, however, considering what your ancestors went through, totally understandable. Take care.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

76. Collectivization was a disaster from the get-go.

If it was only a matter of a failed policy gone wrong, Stalin would have stopped it as soon as he realized it wasn't working.

Instead he accelerated it to the point of absurdity (just for example, creating quotas he knew very well were impossible to meet) knowing full well the only logical result would be even more death. And it was intentionally punitive and vindictive against the Ukrainian kulaks who resented being subjugated under Soviet rule.

[WellDarn]

77. Hard to argue with that.

[bettyellen]

83. You're spewing some hateful nonsense about your fellow DUers now. But as long

As you're running interference for Putin I guess there's no surprise about that.

[rug]

10. Here's more propaganda

Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. Without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany.

from the State Department https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/us-soviet

[KingCharlemagne]

18. Were it not for Stalin, Zhukov and the Red Army, we would all be goose-stepping

and Sieg Heiling a different Fuhrer than we Sieg Heil today.

[sarisataka]

42. How, pray tell,

was Germany going to conquer the continental U.S.?

[bettyellen]

84. You seriously think the Nazis would have conquered America?

This is hilarious.

[EX500rider]

86. If not for US aid, the Russians would be the ones speaking German.

US aid to Russia in WWII:

In total, the U.S. deliveries through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[39] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[40] 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras)[41] and 1.75 million tons of food.[42]
Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.

According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease played a crucial role in winning the war:
On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR’s emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany’s might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[24]

Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin’s views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were “discussing freely” among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany’s pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don’t think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.[30]

In a confidential interview with the wartime correspondent Konstantin Simonov, the famous Soviet Marshal G.K. Zhukov is quoted as saying:
Today [1963] some say the Allies didn’t really help us… But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

[Tommy_Carcetti]

49. That doesn't excuse anything Stalin did.

Agreed?

[KingCharlemagne]

62. What-aboutism, the first resort of defenders of the right wing. - nt

[NewRedDawn]

22. Again Bullshit!

Your boy Vlad the impaler & Trumpy are the Fascists now.

[KingCharlemagne]

25. Sigh. - nt

[malaise]

30. On this he is correct

Western propaganda re WW2 is sadly inaccurate

[Tommy_Carcetti]

41. Counter propaganda and whitewashing is not going to improve it

And that's exactly what Putin will do with Stalin'd legacy.

[malaise]

43. Maybe we should leave it folks from neither of the two great

experts on propaganda

[Tommy_Carcetti]

44. Agreed. nt

[hrmjustin]

33. The lesson of WW2 is that war is evil.

[KingCharlemagne]

34. We did not need WW2 for that lesson. (See WW1.) IMO, the lesson of WW2 is that sometimes

military force is necessary to smash evil.

[hrmjustin]

35. Yes that is a good point.

[melm00se]

51. What most ideologues

don't understand is that the Nazis would have prevailed in WWII without the 3 major Allied countries each playing and fulfilling a particular role in WWII.

It is well known that the USA became the arsenal of democracy churning out an absolutely staggering amount of war material:

- Half the Allied airplanes used in WWII
- More than half Allied vehicles
- Half the Allied coal
- Half the Allied iron ore
- 3/4 of the crude oil
- more than 3000 Liberty and its successor Victory ships
- 100+ aircraft carriers
just to name a few

Among other things, Great Britain provided:

- A staging and jumping off point for the invasion of Europe
- The technical background/basis for many of the technologies used during WWII
- A bolstering of USSR tank forces in late 1941 to stave off the Nazis (excellent article here)

USSR provided
- The primary front against the Axis until the tide turned in North Africa
- This front tied up huge amounts of the Axis forces preventing the Axis from solidifying their conquered territories.

Without these 3 countries working in conjunction with each other, the Allies would have eventually fallen

[NewRedDawn]

53. Agree.

But by us first having the bomb in 1945. Germany would have been defeated with or without the Russians. I hate nuclear warfare, but Truman made the decision to drop it on Japan who were even more fanatical than the Germans. The German Generals would have sued for peace after seeing the destruction wrought on Japan. Actually if that scenario happened god forbid the lost lives. There would be no Soviet occupation of East Europe.

[sarisataka]

55. Correct

While it is true that the Soviet sacrifice is under appreciated, it is equally true that without U.S. material support it would have been in vain. I have watched several documentaries on how the T-34 tank was so important to the eventual Soviet victory but I have yet to see one note the importance of the U.S. built trucks that brought the fuel and ammunition to those tanks.

Battles are won with weapons and the troops wielding them; wars are won on the logistics that support them.

[Cartoonist]

57. Winds of War

Just dropping this in here. Interesting thread. My title is from the bok by Herman Wouk.

The Russians would not have succeded if not for the supplies provided by the U.S.
Nevertheless, the important disinction Herman made was: U.S. coats, Russian bodies. We owe the Russian people our thanks. We don't owe Stalin shit.

[KingCharlemagne]

63. We owe Zhukov big-time. - nt

[sarisataka]

67. "Coats" is a bit of an over-simplification

yet the cost in life paid by the Russian people is mostly unknown to the West.

[jeanmarc]

70. Ukraine was treated by Russia in the thirties...

Like England treated Ireland. 4 million Ukranians died thanks to starvation, while they pumped food out of the country to go to mother Russia. Same as what England did to the Irish during the potato famine. Pumping food out during a famine is absolutely disgusting.

[EX500rider]

91. I've seen Mugabe fanboys here, Chavez, Castro etc...

Never thought I'd see a Joseph Stalin fanboy though....yikes...

[NewRedDawn]

92. I know. That is some shit isn't?

Hey King, I thought Vlad had you guy's fixing the French election for LePen, or are you just the American brigade of fake news & propaganda pushers?