Absolutely not a surprise. Seeing how obsessive the brittish good-old-boys have been about Russia. Why not bribe, blackmail, harass, censor and maybe even kill for a good cause, or that’s how they see it.
i wish i understood the european obsession with russia; especially the delusion that russia wants to conquer europe when poland and ukraine was the closest they ever got and the europeans (especially the british) have literally conquered territories across the entire globe.
I think Russia is western Europe’s One That Got Away. They never got to totally subjugate it’s resources and they never got to carve up it’s land, and now that they’re weaker they’re worried, like all empires in decline, that those they tried to fuck over are gonna fuck them over. Obviously there’s a ton of material historical entanglements in play, but I think just in terms of like, mass psychology, projection plays a role.
that makes sense from a hegemonic perspective, but it doesn’t from any practical one.
russia proved that it wasn’t able to dominate ukraine like the propaganda had suggested it could; yet they’re somehow going to dominate europe.
the europeans have literal colonies within their borders in the form of american military bases and the americans have inflicted the same kind of political violence that it inflicted on latin america (and now the americans are turning on them); yet the russians are still the problem, somehow.
