Sometimes I feel that it's better for people like Guido Gianasso, PhD to say it straight: "I just don't like Russians". That's OK. I myself can easily find a lot of things I do not find appealing in Russian mentality. But when he said that people of particular nationality should be "contained" - how does it differ from what Hitler said? It is merely a discrimination by nationality/race.
If you'd like to analyze it without bias - it's worth to mention The British empire, French empire, Dutch empire, US empire, and all their invasions, including quite modern events. To find the answer why such leaders like Napoleon or Hitler have never existed in Russia. (Yes, Russian empire did invade countries, but it has never done it based on such reasons like N. and H. did. E.g., Russia has never had such issues like BLM on a country-wide scale.) Or why British or French colonies are so well-known compared to Russian "colonies".
And speaking about the fact of 70% support - it's better to dig deeper to understand what exactly they support and why. And how world sanctions (without court decisions) and such articles like this one helped to boost this number.
(It seems they don't feel how people perceive such articles. Articles that basically are saying that Russian nationality/mentality is not good compared to other mentalities.
Who Russian people can support if most of the western countries blame not the current events and decisions, but the whole their nationality, even Russian cats? If they see so much hatred - who can they support beside their own people and their own country? They should support the countries that hate them for their nationality? Seriously?)
And for sure to find an explanation why more than 80% of Russians liked US in the early 90s, and it's quite the opposite now.
These questions can lead to interesting insights (but they are not black/white), and I hope someday even people like Guido will challenge their fixed beliefs. Because “if you haven't asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have to want to know — in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”
P.S. Quite an interesting article to start with:
AK, Apr 2022
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