Apparently you do not understand the difference between “NATO encroachment” and countries formerly conquered or occupied by Russia fleeing to NATO with great enthusiasm—Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Checks and Slovaks, Hungary, East Germany, and many others (which I can’t necessarily spell correctly ;-) ).
This enthusiasm was displayed to the world with the rapid reduction of the great wall between East and West Germany to a pile of rubble, and souvenir fragments. I vividly remember people’s response with this great celebration. Perhaps you are too young to remember that great day, or maybe you were living in a country that would not allow you to see such a positive embrace of Western Europe.
I noticed with interest the story today of the attempted assassination of the the Russia-favoring Slovak leader. I do not know the status of this man’s life now (dead or alive), but it certainly indicates that however he gained power, others are not at all enthusiastic about him. Did he suggest Slovakia should leave NATO??
I decided to try to find an article not strongly linked with either Europe or Russia. The Al Jazeera link below seems to give a fairly even handed portrayal of the situation in Slovakia over the past few decades. Be sure to go past the frequent advertising as this is a long interesting article that will not make everyone here happy, whether they are pro Ukraine or pro Putin.
Makes him sound like a corrupt dictator-wannabee.
Nato eastward expansion is by definition encroachment.
Please don’t play leftist word games.
It’s just like saying “you don’t understand the difference between sex and gender” and just as moronic
Here were the key points, about the Slovak leadrer, I noticed in the article you supplied the link for:
“But in 2018, he [Fico] was forced to resign in disgrace after the assassination of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova led to countrywide protests against his governing Smer party and its perceived ties to corrupt oligarchs.”
“Fico threatened to cut state advertising to independent television networks and threatened their parent companies with ineligibility for state contracts – tactics that have gutted independent media in neighbouring Hungary.”
“On the day he was shot, parliament was scheduled to vote on a law restructuring state broadcaster RTS to give the government more direct control over it.”
Fico also got rid of a special prosecutors office that was looking into a ton of corruption cases.
What is similar about many eastern European countries and Russia is the economic dominance of oligarchs, which is a vestige of how political power moved quickly into personal financial power in all the former Soviet Soviet-alligned states with no dominant history of real capitalism and free markets. The oligarchs - all of them - begin with some vestiage of political or bureaucratic power-position and from it gain financial power for themselves, to the point where THAT - oligarch power - becomes power itself.
Russia is bereft of it as is Ukraine and many others.
“I decided to try to find an article not strongly linked with either Europe or Russia.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/17/assassination-attempt-opens-slovakias-wounds-some-linked-to-pm-fico
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Very informative article you posted, thank you very much.
Many Western countries seem to be utterly divided 50/50, (including America) these days.
This is a rather “new” phenomenon that started barely 10 years ago. But why? And how? Something surely happened in order to make this destructive phenomenon come about.
I think that West indeed has a number of flaws, but we could have tackled them if Russia and China had not been masters at “fanning the flames” on those issues - truly exacerbating it all. How did Russia and China managed to do that? Well... they used our very own tools : Social Media.
Social Media is slowly destroying parts of our Western societies by dividing us, making us distrust everything, or making us believe false things... It gives and IMMENSE power to those who want us ill. Social media is the perfect trojan horse giving our enemies a massive propaganda advantage against us.