Thread by @SofiOksanen

I'm grateful to #Ukraine, because:
- I've been writing about #Russia'n colonialism and its consequences for 20 years. I define myself as post-colonial author. But when I said that aloud, Western journalists very seldom understood what I meant: (1/x)🧵

They didn't connect #Estonia's occupation history nor the USSR with colonialism. Since February I haven't had to explain this.
- You made the energy-weapon visible. Even though Russia has been using it for ages, the Western countries just didn't see it. (2/x)

- You made the Russian cultural appropriation visible. Even Google defined Ukrainian artists like #Repin and #Gogol Russians. The West didn't understand it's a problem even though cultural appropriation is a tool to make the colonialism look like "justified" or "natural". (3/x)

- You made the Russian colonialism visible. In Baltic states we saw the rise of colonial winds already when Putin rose to power. But the West was deaf to our words about this. (4/x)

- You made the Russian nazi-rhetoric visible and finally it seems that Western countries understand that for RU a nazi is a synonym for non-Russian. In Baltic states we have been called Nazis by Russians since 1940, just like you. (5/x)

But the West was totally deaf to this. Instead, when RU called us nazis, the West started to look for nazis in our countries even though they should've been looking for nazis in the Kremlin. (6/x)

I'll end for now with a "fun" fact: Baltic actors had always the honour of playing the Nazi-roles in Soviet movies. (7/x) End of 🧵