Russian deception and Western naiveté go hand in hand. Potemkinism is the term for Russia’s misery hidden by a shiny veneer, a façade admired by French intellectuals 100 years ago who mistakenly lauded it as a "land of freedom."

In the Soviet Union, there was always a surplus of jobs, but a deficit of sufficient income. Wages were barely enough to survive until the next payday. Owning a house was a dream; most lived in small apartments, frequently subdivided among several families.

Vivat academia,
vivant professores!

International bodies pressured Baltics to naturalise former occupiers. The criminality of these 'new citizens' is markedly higher than that of natives. The immediate question: were the "persons with Latvian citizenship" in this report by chance named Ivanov, Kalinin, or Medvedev?

"By their fruits ye shall know them."

Russian influence is a thread across the West: no Brexit, no 2016 Trump, no funding for AfD or Le Pen. Their PMCs (Wagner, et al.) support autocrats in ≈30 nations, even aiding WMD programs for regimes like North Korea. Call them "insignificant"? Hardly.

Without Russia's imperial exports — Marxist ideology, military aid, and nuclear technology — modern China simply wouldn't be. Whether they'd be a capitalist success is unknown, but Russia's destructive global influence is undeniable and must not be underestimated.