Gli europei percepiscono nei barbari russi la “gioia al pensiero che qualcosa da qualche parte possa essere distrutto”, – Fëdor Dostoevskij 150 anni fa

Sure. But also many of us were rooting for Russia, trusting it to do better, one day. Tiny nations with a border to Russia would share in any lawful success there. If Russia gets rich, many eastern European countries get a massive boost.

But nevermind that now.

No bloody idea what that quote, taken completely out of context…, is supposed to mean here. Dostoyevsky is obviously a very interesting and important writer, but after being released from prison in 1850s he was savagely anti-Western and against pretty much everything we in Western Europe stand for; it’s not a coincidence that one of the last public appearances by Putin before invasion of Ukraine was opening a Dostoyevsky centre in Moscow.

Dosto’s novels were polyphonic, and he indeed was pretty good at writing very persuasive characters who weren’t his porte-paroles at all, but still posting his non-fiction quotes on a pro-Ukrainian site means someone has to go back to school lol. Next time try Che Guevara’s diaries on r/neoliberal, I mean there must be at least one sentence hidden somewhere they’d upvote lol.

But all they do now, in year 2024, is to sustain such perception of the Europeans ..

Any country that has the misfortune of being neighbours with Russia knows that they have always been perfidious and dangerous.