China is pushing divisive political messages online using fake U.S. voters
npr.org
npr.org
China could pay a creator $1 or set up a Facebook page with only 1,000 followers and if any news orgs get a hold of it, it becomes "Chinese-based election interference." In an already highly-polarized environment, it would work really well.
Putin really believed he could defeat Ukraine in 2 weeks. Xi really believed his economy would roar back after unwelding citizens from their apartments.
What makes you say that?
He was expecting Ukraine to welcome him with open arms, the man is delusional and has done more to destroy his countries future than any Russian leader in the last 800 years.
There is the fact that his own agencies (FSB) told him that Ukraine would fall in 3 days and it almost did but through courage and effort they held on. 925 days and they have fought Russia to a standstill. Pretty amazing considering their size and readiness, they destroyed the 2nd army of the world and the future of Russia.
Ukraine cannot in any way be compared to some poorly equipped Vietnam of the 1970s.
This so second rate play.
Both of the disruptive political parties in Germany are weirdly Russia-friendly, and the bigger one of them, though not really full of "up to date" people, has a great TikTok game (with help from the Internet Research Agency, St Petersburg, perhaps). Trump's Russia connection... couldn't be proven. I will just say that they did a good job. Oh yeah, he wants to basically dissolve NATO.
My sense (from personal interactions, not the internet) is that while they do tend to be more skeptical of "the West", they are definitely not disposed to be sympathetic to Russia per se.
Folks above a certain age still remember the SED regime, its shenanigans and what it did so some of them personally (enough to make some of them visibly angry many years after the fact), after all. And also of course what Russian troops did on their soil at the end of WW2, and in 1953.
Then you have a huge blind spot. I'll let a man who was there describe it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ywe5pFT928
In total, between 1 and 2 million people were raped in Germany in the final months of the war. Not only German civilians, but everyone from Polish forced laborers to concentration camp prisoners. These stories are everywhere in personal histories. Helmut Kohl's wife, for example, sustained life-long injuries after she was gang-raped and thrown out of a window when she was 12. The Soviet war memorial in Berlin was known by locals as the tomb of unknown rapist.
Victims couldn't even speak about what had been done to them, because the glorious communist dictatorship brought along by the liberators denied for half a century that any of this ever happened. And it deserves a mention that people in Europe are subjected to this kind of "liberation" to this day: https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1820831971573973385
The way social media campaigns fan up emotions and make people ignore all this just shows the incredible potency of social media as a tool of mass manipulation.
Putting "liberation" from the Nazis in scare quotes does, however, betray some highly questionable historical attitudes. Are you really going to deny that the people of East Germany were liberated from the Nazi regime? Do you know what would have happened to concentration camp prisoners and Polish forced laborers if the Red Army had not defeated the Wehrmacht?
Well yeah, because one almost never refers to it anyway (except for conveying directions).
Are you really going to deny that the people of East Germany were liberated from the Nazi regime?
You're playing word games here -- specifically by raising a false pretense.
Of course the end of the NS-regime is universally seen as a liberation, in mainstream. The above commenter wasn't suggesting otherwise, and it is disingenuous to imply that they were, or would.
The point is simply that -- the fact that these folks are happy to have been liberated (on the whole) doesn't mean that they consider the SED regime and all the other circumstances imposed upon them after 1945 to have been a necessary part of this "liberation". Or that positive feelings toward the liberation translate directly to positive feelings toward the respective occupiers.
Enough to tell (right away) that you're bending words and implications around and saying well, some pretty weird things. Like this for example:
I have also never heard anyone in East Germany complain about what Russian (Soviet, actually - there were more than just Russians in the USSR and Red Army) troops did at the end of WW2.
First off as to "sympathy for Russia". It's very clear that folks in the East lean towards different view of what to do in Ukraine, in regard to Germany's Umgang mit Rußland on the whole, and to what you call the "desire for better relations" with same. One doesn't even have to go looking for polls to see that -- it jumps right out of last week's voting results.
But that doesn't translate into intrinsic sympathy for Russia as a country. It's not like they dislike Russia specifically, and a certain segment of society does view the country warmly (independent of current events). But by and large, Russia (as a country) is definitely not loved across the board, and for precisely the reasons I mentioned. .
As to people "complaining" -- I mean yeah, it's not like any of the events at the end of the war or in '53 are anything anyone would personally "complain" to you about. No one "complains" about the Wall anymore of course, but that doesn't mean that people have fond feelings about it, on the whole (though again, a certain social segment does of course). The overwhelming feeling toward it is of course overwhelmingly negative (to anyone with a brain), despite the fact that no one "complains" about it any more.
Nonetheless these events (both the mass rapes and '53) absolutely are a valid and robust issues in the societal discourse. Not talked about every day of course, but the record of these events very much shapes people's views of their historical neighbor. They've been extensively written about, talked about on TV, poignant documentaries have been made, there've been exhibits specifically about these events and their legacy ohne Ende. Both topics are still very much seen as quite relevant and still touch a lot of nerves. (As if the situation could be otherwise, given that there were 900,000 victims as far as the program of mass rapes is concerned, and 1953 was but a forerunner to the trauma of 1961 that affected virtually everyone).
And in short, the folks (in both East and West) take the positions they do in regard to guten Beziehungen zu Rußland and similar topics, and some of them lean towards parties like the AfD/BSW due to a whole host of factors -- but not because, as you untenably put it, the population is "much more friendly to Russia" per se. Because they quite obviously aren't.
And then you went on to say a few more weird things:
People are aware of the fact that Nazi Germany was the aggressor, that it carried out completely incomparable crimes on Soviet soil
No one said or even remotely implied that they were not or had forgotten. I'm genuinely puzzled as to what point you might be hoping to make by making this statement.
That the Soviets liberated them from the Nazi regime.
Yeah, they know the operational chronology of the war of course. That doesn't mean they simply see the Soviets as "liberators", at least not without some pretty hefty qualifications. So dumm sind sie nicht. (Also a good chunk of the population, including entire cities such as Leipzig, were in fact liberated by the US/UK directly and then handed over to the Soviets sometime later -- they haven't forgotten that either).
1953 is a different issue entirely.
"Different" yes of course, but nonetheless inextricably linked.
As it (along with the mass rapes, and their experience with the SED regime generally) gets to the heart of the matter of why the Soviets are definitely not seen as simply "liberators" in these parts.
I didn't say that it's "loved across the board." It's that there's much more sympathy towards Russia in East Germany than in the West.
This is not something that is artificially created by RT or internet trolls. It's a public sentiment that has existed for decades, and has its origins in the GDR.
Just to put a point in it: one striking fact is that East German public has a better opinion of Russia than the US. It's completely the opposite in West Germany.
It was just shorthand. "Much more sympathetic to" gets repetitive and takes longer to type.
One striking fact is that East German public has a better opinion of Russia than the US
So what is your basis for this "fact"?
The biggest problem with this bunch is that none of the 4 questions asks about pro-Russia sentiment directly. Rather, they are all proxy questions, and at best very loosely-fitting ones.
For example the question on media bias -- I someone answers that media coverage of Russia is 'zu negative berichtet', that doesn't mean its because they are sympathetic to Russia per se. While that could be the reason -- it seems more likely that the answer comes from a place of distrusting major media outlets, especially Western ones; and of being more skeptical about the Ukraine war in general (which they are, but again for a host of reasons, generally not having anything to do with their feelings about Russia as a country).
The other 3 questions have similar confounds. The one about sanctions can't be used at all in this analysis, really, as it refers directly to policy question with obvious impact on other spheres of life (in this case the effect of these sanctions on the Germany economy). You're just assuming it indicates ipso facto pro-Russia (as a country) sentiment, but that's far from a given in this case. In fact, given the degree to which people there talk about this particular facet of the sanctions debate (all the time), versus how much they talk about their fondness for Russia as a country (basically never) -- it would seem the economic tie-in (along with distrust of standard Wessi policy and narratives on anything) would be the far likely driver for the spread on the numbers here.
And lastly: what are these numbers actually telling us?
From the media bias poll -- even in the East, a solid majority among those who answered (45-33) consider the "establishment/Wessi" reporting on Russia to be "fair or too positive" -- meaning they basically agree with the overwhelmingly negative -- that is, "anti-Russia" spin of this reporting.
From one above it -- 77 percent agree that Russia is a threat to world security! There is a point spread here (Wessis are somewhat likelier to agree), but the main point here is -- to the extent that we agree that this poll can serve as a partial measurement of sentiment in regard to Russia, the actual content of sentiment expressed here is overhelmingly negative.
This is what I meant about why what matters is the context behind these questions, not the numbers in pure isolation.
Which again, brings us back to qualitative / interpretive analysis. And which of course we aren't going to come a unified position on, which is course perfectly fine.