Let’s take a look today at the city of Chita. Usually the chorus goes: ‘Well, Moscow may be fine, but just step outside of Moscow and you’ll see…’ So let’s take that step. Chita is a small city, located very far from Moscow. It’s an old city, with its history going back to the 15th century, and it began to truly develop during the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. After the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) between Russia and China, the status of Transbaikalia was secured for Russia, and the Buryats gradually became part of it. In the 18th century, the Buryats entered Russian allegiance, retaining considerable autonomy and their own lands. In return, they received protection from the Manchus and Mongols, as well as access to trade.

Yesterday we discussed the Second World War in Europe, where the Red Army destroyed 75–80% of the Wehrmacht. Today, let’s turn to what happened in China.

Japan launched its war against China in 1937, which is why many historians mark that year as the true beginning of World War II in Asia. A lesser-known fact is that in 1939 Japan also clashed with the USSR at Khalkhin Gol, where Soviet forces under General Zhukov delivered a decisive defeat. On September 15, 1939, the Soviet–Japanese Ceasefire Agreement was signed in Moscow.

After that, Japan no longer attempted to attack the USSR, but instead intensified its brutal campaign in China and Korea, killing civilians, sending people to concentration camps, and pursuing outright territorial conquest. In the Second World War, between 15 and 29 million Chinese died, including 3 to 4 million soldiers (some estimates are even higher).

China fought back against Japan and played a major role in wearing down the enemy, though this contribution is rarely acknowledged in the West.

Many people assume the Americans did most of the fighting in the Pacific, but that was primarily a naval war near Japan. In China, it was a vast land war, especially in Manchuria in the northeast, with massive battles that tied down much of the Japanese Army, a fact still largely absent from Western narratives.

Finnish President Stubb calls on Europe to unite against the “common threat.” Oh, how boring and repetitive. Where have we heard that before? Ah yes, when Finland joined Hitler in his campaign against the USSR, dreaming of new territories.

Remember Finland's rallying cry to join forces with Hitler: "Join us in a holy war against our nation's enemies. Together with Germany's powerful military, as brothers-in-arms, we embark on a crusade to secure Finland's future."

And guess what? Churchill was right there, holding Mannerheim’s hand. Didn’t know that?

Then let’s unpack👇🧵

1/5 Western textbooks love to paint Churchill as the bulldog of Europe: stubborn, fierce, never yielding. But when it came to Finland and its Marshal, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Churchill’s role was something else entirely. He was soothing and applauding. Churchill held Mannerheim’s hand with words, with gestures, with moral encouragement while letting him walk straight into the fire against the Soviet Union.

During a Cabinet meeting on February 12, 1940, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed dispatching Brigadier Christopher Ling to Helsinki for his mission to bolster Marshal Mannerheim's spirits and deliver precise intel.

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Finnish President Stubb calls on Europe to unite against the “common threat.” Oh, how boring and repetitive. Where have we heard that before? Ah yes, when Finland joined Hitler in his campaign against the USSR, dreaming of new territories.

Remember Finland's rallying cry to join forces with Hitler: "Join us in a holy war against our nation's enemies. Together with Germany's powerful military, as brothers-in-arms, we embark on a crusade to secure Finland's future."

And guess what? Churchill was right there, holding Mannerheim’s hand. Didn’t know that?

Then let’s unpack.
.👇🧵

1/5 Western textbooks love to paint Churchill as the bulldog of Europe: stubborn, fierce, never yielding. But when it came to Finland and its Marshal, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, Churchill’s role was something else entirely. He was soothing and applauding. Churchill held Mannerheim’s hand with words, with gestures, with moral encouragement while letting him walk straight into the fire against the Soviet Union.

During a Cabinet meeting on February 12, 1940, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed dispatching Brigadier Christopher Ling to Helsinki for his mission to bolster Marshal Mannerheim's spirits and deliver precise intel.

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History in Numbers: How ‘6 Million’ and “Holocaust” Appeared in Print Before World War II

🧵👇

The Sun
June 6, 1915

loc.gov/resource/sn830… The New York Times
October 18, 1916

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…

The Kremlin wasn’t always the red-brick giant we know today. First, it was just a wooden fortress on the hill, guarding Moscow between the rivers. After the wooden walls, the Moscow Kremlin was rebuilt in white limestone (sometimes called “white stone”), which gave Moscow its old name “Belokamennsya”- “the White-Stone city.” That’s why in medieval chronicles Moscow was often called Moscow the White-Stone.

Already back then, there was a “Red Square.” But it wasn’t about the color. In Old Russian, krasna didn’t mean “red, it meant “beautiful.” Only later did the word shift to its modern sense. So the famous square is actually the Beautiful Square. The version that survived, the one we walk past now, was the work of Italians. Invited by Ivan III in the late 1400s, they brought with them Renaissance know-how and even the memory of Milan’s Castello Sforzesco. Look at the walls and towers that’s Italian engineering fused with Russian grit.

Ivan III didn’t just hire Italians to design pretty facades, but also to bring in their engineering. And they gave Moscow something almost no other fortress in Europe had back then: a water supply system.

Sakhalin: An Untamed Russian Gem and a Hidden Winter Playground

If you’ve never heard of Sakhalin, you’re not alone. It’s a long island way out in Russia’s Far East, just above Japan. Most people think it’s only about oil and gas but honestly, it’s one of the most beautiful, underrated places you can visit. Picture mountains rolling right into the Pacific, quiet forests, hot springs in the middle of nowhere. It feels like Alaska, but with a touch of Japan.

When most people in the West think of divided Germany, they immediately picture the Berlin Wall – a symbol of Cold War brutality. The common narrative says: Stalin divided Germany, and the West defended freedom. But what if the reality was almost the opposite?

🧵👇 in 1952, Stalin offered the Western powers a plan to reunite Germany. His famous “Stalin Note” of March 10th proposed free elections under international supervision, withdrawal of occupation forces, and the creation of a neutral, united Germany – not aligned with either NATO or the Soviet bloc. It was not a vague propaganda trick, but a concrete diplomatic offer. Germany could have avoided decades of division, occupation, and the Wall.

The Holodomor is a very popular myth among Ukrainian propagandists. But like all propaganda, it’s aimed at the masses who are incapable of thinking on their own and in this case unfamiliar with history. There is plenty of evidence available in open sources to prove that Holdohoax is a silly lie. For example, photos used to “prove” the Holodomor actually come from World War I or the famine of the 1920s (the Holodomor was in 1932–33).

Soviet documents, available in large numbers, confirm that food was imported into Ukraine as aid, not exported out, which doesn’t fit the narrative of deliberately starving poor Ukrainians. Moreover, there was a state-level policy of Ukrainization, meaning the government invested huge resources in developing Ukrainian culture, opening Ukrainian-language schools, and even forcing people to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian (look up korenizacia). That too doesn’t align with the myth of exterminating Ukrainians.

It's also worth mentioning that the famine happened not only in Ukraine, but in Kazakhstan and the Volga region, which was RSFSR (Russia), meaning it affected not only Ukrainians.

But today, I want to tell you about other facts, things that almost nobody else will tell you. 🧵👇 Keep in mind we're discussing the years 1931 to 1933. During this period, when Western companies were expelled from the USSR, the U.S. and Britain imposed restrictions on Soviet gold imports, raised tariffs on Soviet timber and grain, and gradually transitioned toward trade bans. In today's terms, the West essentially imposed sanctions. Consequently, the USSR was forced to purchase industrial equipment necessary for its industrialization by trading grain, directly contributing to the 1930s famine. The USSR needed to buy equipment, but the West wouldn't accept gold or money, they demanded grain.

Without Monsanto, DuPont, or GMOs capable of growing food in challenging conditions (though these aren't particularly good for us anyway), back then any climate issues spelled trouble for harvests. And trouble certainly occurred.

Americans will recognize this as the Dust Bowl, spanning from 1930 to 1936, a period marked by unusually dry years in the region. Many people died from malnutrition. I place "malnutrition" in quotesfor you to notice how the same events described differently: malnutrition - hunger. It's noteworthy that no one in the U.S. actually counted how many people died during that time.

Why Did Britain Abandon Poland?

Picture this: London, August 25, 1939. Britain and Poland finally sign a mutual assistance pact. On paper it’s beautiful: if Germany attacks Poland, Britain promises to step in. To the Poles, it felt as if the British lion was now on their side.

Now here’s the cinematic twist. That very morning, Hitler had already signed the order to invade Poland on August 26. By evening, he hears about the treaty and cancels everything. A full-scale invasion literally scrapped hours before it was supposed to kick off. But… just one week later, on September 1, the Wehrmacht rolled in anyway.

And here’s the detective question: why did he still go for it? The Road to War

Then came Munich, 1938. Chamberlain came home waving that piece of paper: “Peace in our time!” In reality, Hitler with Poland’s complicity carved up Czechoslovakia, the arms-production hub of Central Europe at the time. And more importantly, he learned something: London and Paris talk big, but they won’t shoot.

By March 1939, he seized Prague. Even London realized that Hitler wasn’t just uniting Germans he wanted to dominate Europe. That’s when Britain began giving guarantees to Poland.

Since 1933, Hitler had been dismantling the Versailles system step by step: rebuilding the army, marching into the Rhineland, walking out of the League of Nations. The West just kept looking the other way.

Ah yes, Finland – the ‘neutral bystander’ of WWII. Just standing there, totally uninvolved, while Leningrad starved. Cute story. Too bad it’s pure fiction.

Reality check: Finnish troops sat on Leningrad’s doorstep for three years. Not sipping coffee, not staying “neutral”. They were holding one-third of the blockade line. Without Finland’s part, the Germans couldn’t have fully strangled the city. Together, they closed the ring that starved a 1.5 million people to death, inclidin 400,000 children.

And Mannerheim the “savior”? Please. His orders were to bomb the Road of Life (which was not really a road but a frozen lake), the only route bringing food across Lake Ladoga.

On June 25, 1941, Mannerheim ordered the Finnish Army to begin hostilities against the USSR:

“I call you to a holy war against the enemy of our nation. Together with the mighty armed forces of Germany, as brothers-in-arms, we resolutely set out on a crusade against the enemy to secure a reliable future for Finland.”

Finland dreamed of expansion and had concrete plans. On the ‘Greater Finland’ dream map, you’ll find Russian cities like Murmansk, Leningrad, and Kandalaksha marked as theirs👇

Let's unpack the common myths and educate our fellow Finns about their own history. 🧵 Meet Mannerheim.

Before we move on to Finland’s well-known war against the USSR on Hitler’s side, we need to roll the clock back a bit and look at the context. Finland as a state was born inside Russia. Before the Russo-Swedish War, these lands were simply the eastern part of Sweden. After the war, Russia took them and created the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. It remained part of the Russian Empire until the revolution of 1917.

Now, meet Mannerheim – a military and political figure who came from poor Swedish-Finnish nobility, yet rose to become a general in the Russian army and an officer of the Imperial Guard, close to Nicholas II himself, part of the very top of the empire’s military elite. He received special assignments and was even dispatched on reconnaissance expeditions across Central Asia and China. But this is where his true colors began to show: he mingled freely with foreign officers, shared information with the British during his 1906–08 “expedition” in Asia, and later was even suspected of having ties to Masonic circles. These are hints that his loyalties were never fully aligned with Russia.

After the collapse of the empire, he wasted no time. In May 1919, he offered to co-operate with the British intervention army against Soviet Russia on the condition that the industrial town of Petrozavodsk be handed over to Finland. The offer was rejected, since the Russian Whites then backed by Britain opposed an independent Finland. Nevertheless, Mannerheim launched an attack on Petrozavodsk, though unsuccessfully. In October 1919 he made a similar proposal to General Yudenich, another “White” leader supported by the British fleet in the assault on Petrograd. Again his offer was declined, but he still lent his support indirectly: on October 12, when the British and French fleets proclaimed a blockade of the Baltic republics for making peace with Soviet Russia, Finland under Mannerheim followed suit and proclaimed its own blockade as well.

When Finnish President Stubb discussed Finland's WWII alliance with Nazi Germany against the USSR, he overlooked a critical detail: Finland's role in the ethnic cleansing of Karelia (USSR).

Far from innocent, Finland teamed up with the Nazis, mirroring their brutal tactics.

Between 1941 and 1944, the Finnish army seized Eastern Karelia (USSR), unleashing terror on its civilian population. Their targets were everyday people.

On October 24, 1941, Finland set up its first concentration camp for Soviet civilians of Slavic descent in Petrozavodsk, including women and children. Their chilling mission was ethnic cleansing and the erasure of the Russian presence in Finnish-occupied Karelia.

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🧵👇 By the close of 1941, more than 13,000 civilians were behind bars. Fast forward to mid-1942, and that figure soared to nearly 22,000. In total, about 30,000 individuals endured the harsh realities of 13 camps, with a third succumbing to starvation, disease, and brutal forced labor. And this grim count doesn't even factor in the equally lethal POW camps. As the war drafted most men early on, women and children bore the brunt of the labor force in these camps.

In April 1942, Finnish politician Väinö Voionmaa wrote home:

“Out of 20,000 Russian civilians in Äänislinna, 19,000 are in camps. Their food was rotten horse meat. Children scavenge garbage for scraps. What would the Red Cross say if they saw this?”

In 1942, the death rate in Finnish camps exceeded that of German ones. Testimonies describe corpses being hauled daily, teenagers forced into labor, and women and children made to work 10+ hour shifts in forests and camps, unpaid until 1943.

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rabkrin.org/vojonmaa-vyajn…

How the U.S. Downgraded Alaska’s Natives to Second-Class Status

When Russia sold Alaska in 1867, the land didn’t just change owners, its Native peoples saw their world turned upside down.

Under Russia? Sure, the first contacts with Inuit weren’t peaceful but policy shifted toward coexistence. Schools were built. Native kids got an education. Creoles, children of Russian and Native parents, had a recognized social status. Orthodoxy spread, not by erasing local identity, but by integrating it. Flawed? Yes. But the intent was inclusion.

1/ Then came the U.S. with a treaty that spelled it out in black and white: settlers got full rights, “except the uncivilized native tribes.” Creoles and even Russians who stayed were dumped into that same legal category. From citizens of a colony to “wards of the state” overnight.

2/

September 12, 1939 the day Poland’s fate was sealed not in Warsaw, not in Berlin, but in the small French town of Abbeville.

At a meeting of the Supreme Allied War Council, French Prime Minister Daladier and British Prime Minister Chamberlain, along with top military commanders, quietly made a decisive choice: there would be no major offensive against Germany. Only limited actions in the Saar region and nothing more.

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1/5 What this meant for Poland

Under their alliance agreements, France was obliged to launch a major offensive on the Western Front within 15 days of mobilization. Poland counted on this as its lifeline.

Yes, from September 7–12 the French carried out the “Saar Offensive” but when they realized it would mean a real war, they simply… stopped and went back.

The Abbeville decision made it official. It was kept secret and never communicated to the Polish government. Imagine the shock when it became clear that help wasn’t coming.

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Top Secret: Jаpаn bоmbing was not just “military.” They used Jаpаnese civilians as guinea pigs.

Declassified orders show the missions were designed as large-scale observation operations for a new weapon.

“…to carry military and civilian scientific personnel from the War Department to observe and record the effects of the explosion.” Cities were deliberately chosen: minimally bоmbed, high population density, dense infrastructure.

“…tаrgets should be of such size and importance that a large part of the city would be dеstroyеd.”

Goal, measure the weapon’s effect in “clean” conditions, without interference from prior damage.

From Nagasaki to Moscow: How the U.S. Used Japan as a Testing Ground to Intimidate the USSR and Drew Up Plans to Bomb the Soviet Union.

Today, 80 years ago. Nagasaki, August 9, 1945.

The second atomic bomb in just three days. An incident that met every criterion for a crime against humanity. Not because it was necessary, but because it was possible.

This isn’t my opinion, top U.S. commanders admitted it themselves.
Eisenhower, Nimitz, Arnold, all said the same thing: Japan was already on its knees. Negotiations were underway, and surrender was only a matter of time.

But Washington wanted a show of force. Not for the Japanese. For us. For the USSR.

“The bomb was the master card” in postwar negotiations with the Soviets.”
- Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War

1/6 And while you’re thinking this was “for the sake of victory,” the Pentagon was already drafting a new target list.

66 Soviet cities. Over 400 atomic bombs.
Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Vladivostok - all marked for destruction. These aren’t my words, but real declassified plans from September 15, 1945, barely a month after Nagasaki.

This was War Plan “Totality”, the first U.S. nuclear war plan against the USSR, approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and drawn up under General Dwight D. Eisenhower with input from Manhattan Project chief Leslie Groves. It mapped out a mass nuclear strike to cripple Soviet industry and population centers in one blow.

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🇷🇺🇺🇸 Alaska was officially discovered for Europe in 1741 by Vitus Bering, a Russian subject and navigator serving in the Imperial Navy.

During the Second Kamchatka Expedition, Bering sailed east from Siberia and reached the Alaskan coast, charting its shores and opening the way for Russian exploration and settlement.

And thus, Russian America was born. The indigenous peoples of Alaska include the Native American tribes, the Eskimos, and the Aleuts. Their ancestors are believed to have reached Alaska from Asia thousands of years ago, relying primarily on fishing, sea mammal hunting, and reindeer hunting for survival.

In which country do Muslims and Christians live peacefully? In Russia.

Meet Kazan.

Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan, a republic inside Russia where the majority are Muslim Tatars and yet churches and mosques have stood side by side for centuries.

🧵👇

1/7 Kazan Kremlin

This is not just another fortress. Inside, you’ll find a mosque and an Orthodox cathedral within a few steps of each other, the Qol Sharif Mosque and the Annunciation Cathedral, a visual reminder that Kazan has been blending cultures since Ivan the Terrible took it in 1552. The Kremlin itself is a UNESCO site.

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German Soldiers: Not the Good Guys

They raped, looted, and burned their way through Soviet villages, here’s the real story🧵👇

During WWII, Nazi Germany carried out a full-blown “war of annihilation” in the USSR killing, torturing, raping, and looting millions of civilians. Most people in the West barely know about it. Nazi leaders had branded Slavs “sub-humans” and even issued orders saying soldiers weren’t accountable for violence against civilians. As one German corporal casually wrote in 1942, “The Russians are animals. We can do whatever we want to them.”

Content Warning: This discussion covers graphic accounts of wartime violence and is intended for educational purposes only.

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Rape as a Weapon

Right from the start of Barbarossa, Nazi were assaulting local women. In 1943, SS commanders freaked out that half their troops in the East were having “undesirable” sex with so-called “alien” women. Rather than punish them, the Barbarossa Decree (May 13, 1941) said you couldn’t touch a soldier for crimes against civilians. As a result there were mass rape, gang rape, and forced brothels became part of the Wehrmacht’s terror toolbox. And guess what, most folks in the West still act like this never happened.

Content Warning: This discussion covers graphic accounts of wartime violence and is intended for educational purposes only.

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🇯🇵Hiroshima: A Criminal Act of Terror or "Necessity"? Debunking U.S. Myths
Eighty years ago, the United States became (and remains) the only country in human history to have used nuclear weapons against a civilian population.

At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, the U.S. bomber Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb code-named “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima, home to 350,000 people.

The temperature at ground zero reached 4,000°C. Everything within a 1-kilometer radius was incinerated instantly. Roughly 70,000 people died in the first moments; by the end of 1945, the death toll had exceeded 140,000 due to radiation sickness, burns, and trauma. Later estimates suggest that total fatalities may have reached 200,000+ over the following years. But Here’s What They Don’t Tell You:

A city with no major military targets. The victims were women, children, and the elderly.
No warning was given. People vaporized instantly, leaving only "shadows" on walls.

70,000 killed immediately, by the end of 1945 over 140,000 dead. Total deaths reached 200,000+.
Survivors died in agony from radiation, burns, and cancer.

Have you ever heard what 🇬🇧Britain did to 🇩🇪Königsberg, modern day 🇷🇺Kaliningrad? They will tell you it was “necessary” or they won’t mention it at all.

But here’s what really happened🧵👇

Nothing, absolutely nothing, came close to the hell the British Bomber Command unleashed on Königsberg in 1944. On the nights of August 26–27 and 29–30, Britain tried to erase it the historical center of the city.

Arthur “Bomber” Harris, the mastermind of firebombing tactics, sent his most ruthless squad Bomber Group No. 5. Civilians First

174 and 189 four-engine Lancaster bombers carried out two separate raids on Königsberg in late August 1944. During the second raid alone, they dropped approximately 480 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the city center

The first wave tore through the Maraunenhof district, smashing streets like Cranzer Allee, Herzog-Albrecht-Allee, and Wallring.
Yes, a few barracks were hit. But most bombs fell in residential districts. Families. Civilians.

🔸~4,000 people were killed (some estimates go higher)
🔸~200,000 left homeless (Königsberg's pre-war population was ~370,000)

That’s the “moral high ground” they never talk about.