Thread by @les_politiques

"To understand #Russia’s fears over... western military encroachment, it is important to remember the suffering Russians endured as a result of many western invasions since 1917." middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia…

"In the wake of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks not only withdrew from the “First Imperialist War”, dubbed in the West as World War I, but also granted independence to regions that were part of imperial Russia before the revolution."

"...the Bolsheviks gave up Finland, the Baltic territories and Ukraine, which became client states of Germany, as well as portions of Poland and Byelorussia."

"All in all, the Soviets lost one million square miles of imperial Russia’s territory; 50 million people; most of Russia’s coal, oil and iron ore; half of its industry; and a third of its railroads and agricultural lands."

"In the case of Poland, the Bolsheviks supported its independence, but the Polish nationalist General Jozef Pilsudski remained belligerent...In April 1920, Pilsudski’s forces invaded Ukraine, and by May they occupied Kyiv."

(the spelling of Kiev as Kyiv is a recent western concession in support of recent Ukrainian nationalism).

"by June, the Red Army had driven Polish forces out & taken the offensive (to Warsaw). The Soviet advance alarmed western imperial powers... (The French) helped the Poles launch a successful counteroffensive, forcing...the Soviets to cede a large tract of Byelorussia & W Ukraine"

"Poland’s aggression against Soviet Russia was the clearest evidence that W countries were vehement in their determination to encircle the Soviet state by transforming the territories that the Soviets ceded... into military outposts, to be used to threaten the Soviets militarily"

"The rise of Nazism in the 1930s created a new threat... Finland, after a civil war that ended with the execution of thousands of communist revolutionaries, became a vassal state of Britain & France. Later, Finland would become Germany’s staging ground ...for Hitler’s invasion"

"As for the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, to which the Soviets granted independence in 1920, they would all become military outposts for the West - the “cordon sanitaire” engineered by France and Britain against Bolshevism."

"In 1939, Hitler... invaded Poland. Stalin quickly followed by invading Poland from the east, and within weeks, the Soviets had annexed the Polish territories that they had ceded in 1921... (incorporating) W Ukraine into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic"

"Stalin would ultimately occupy the Baltic states...and reintegrate them into the Soviet Union."

"During the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalists ...collaborated with the invading Nazis (and) helped perpetrate one of the worst massacres of World WarII at Babi Yar, where more than 100,000 Jews, communists, Roma & Soviet prisoners of war were killed"

"After World War II, the West did not change its ways, rejecting Stalin’s demand for a neutral Germany...W plans to encircle the Soviets from the south were also successful, with Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and...Afghanistan serving their W masters. Neutral India was harder to coopt"

"In the last decade, it was #Ukraine’s turn to be brought into #Nato’s orbit to fully encircle post-Soviet #Russia, whose leadership, including President Vladimir Putin, had even offered to become part of Nato...but there were no takers among the western countries."

"Already, in 2003, #Ukraine had participated in the US-led illegal invasion of #Iraq by sending 5,000 troops...the 3rd-largest contingent to destroy and occupy Iraq. But as Ukraine’s elected pres was not forthcoming on joining Nato in 2014, a quick regime change was arranged..."

"The heirs of the antisemitic Ukrainian nationalists who had aided the Nazis...were resurrected to champion the Ukrainian nation against Russia. Led by the far-right and US-supported Svoboda party, as well as the...neo-Nazi "Right Sector", they rioted and took over gov buildings"

"Since then, the US, specifically the CIA, has reportedly been training Ukrainian militias to advance western interests against Russia." #Ukraine

"Fourteen armies invaded Soviet #Russia after the 1917 revolution, devastating its economy, in order to destroy it. The Nazis and their allies tried again in 1941, but were defeated, at the cost of 26 million Soviet lives."

"it is clear that #Putin will not stand back and let the West threaten his country once again. His attempts over the years to change the belligerent western policy towards Russia have clearly failed."

"In light of western intransigence & bellicosity, it would seem that #Putin, unfortunately, concluded that Russian military intervention to “de-Nazify” Ukraine and push back #Nato’s advance was his only remaining option."