Thread by @EerikNKross

A friend asked for an explanation why "It's just Putin" is wrong and dangerous. I felt it needs a longer response. Here it is:

The problem is immeasurably deeper, wider and older than Putin and his band of gangsters. Generation after generation has been raised in a lie. And the despots who have ruled Russia have always gotten away with it internationally.

The terror of Bolsheviks, Stalinist purges, the GULAG as a system have never been criminalised, there was never a national, leadership-led redemption attempt. The opposite, all this is now, again, officially preached as a proud process of national cleansing and strengthening.

Stalin's generals and NKVD bosses were not tried at Nuremberg or Moscow process for co-conspiring with Hitler and Ribbentrop in 1939, for Katyn, for invading and illegally annexing all or parts of the Baltic states, Poland, Finland, Romania, Hungary etc,

never tried for genocide in all these countries nor for war crimes anywhere they went. I'm not even talking about the wave of Bolshevik aggression against all neighbours in 1918-24…

Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Ukraine were all independent democratic nations back then whose future was crushed by Moscow. All these countries were betrayed by the Paris Peace Conference first and at Teheran and Yalta for the second time. By the West.

Hence the deep suspicion in these countries that it’s going to happen again. If Ukraine would have not fought or fought but lost in a week, Ukraine would have been betrayed in a second. By Macron, Scholtz, Biden. Realpolitik and all. New Minsks, new mediations, soon new wars

Current national myth of Russia & the core of Putins ideology is the lie about Russia as liberator. All of us between Russia and Germany are watching Ukraine being liberated and hope that for once the West understands that this is how the Russian liberation has always looked like

This is what was done to us either in 1918-21 or 1939-45 or both. And it kept going until 1991. And it began again in 2008 and the West pretended, again, that it was not happening.

Germans have apologised for 80 years but I still felt a bit uneasy listening to Scholtz saying: wir werden uns remilitarisieren. Thankfully, for once, the Germans r on the right side of things because even there, after 80 years, the demons are not entirely dead under the surface.

So. No. It’s not about Putin. It is very much about the state of Russian society. It's not Russians' "fault", there are too many factors, but to fix this means a process of national breakdown, regrouping, redemption and re-education for, well, 80 years.

It can only be done by the Russians themselves and the best thing we can do is not get in there to tell them how. Because we don't know better.

All that is needed is help Ukraine win, set strict cold war rules relating to Russia until the war crimes have been tried, by them, and a representative government is in office. Let them demilitarise. And then take it slow. Very slow

And jail every and any Westerner who tries to engage in corrupt business with them. And help them rebuild Russia not Russian imagined expansionist interests.

Of course, it's not going to happen. At least not with the current bunch of leaders we got. The best outcome will be another short period of a Yeltsin after which it’s all going to come to something like we have today, again.
Hope you enjoyed the optimistic note from Estonia.