Straightforward. Nazis and soviets had a military pact, jointly invaded and divided Poland, thus starting the ww2.

Lol, so the soviets did not have a pact with Nazis and didn't invade Poland just two weeks after the Nazis?

My friend, I understand your desire to see Soviet Union as some sort of dualistic opponent of the imperialist US (which the latter is), and use that to declare as the good side, but I'm afraid the USSR was just as imperialist and as terrible, just differently.

It was way more like two mafia gangs fighting each other. And the one that won is now finally showing its true colours.

The fundamental approach to equality in the early Soviet Union was via killing all those "not equal". Lenin was very adamant about using extreme violence to "convince" the population. So was Stalin. The following ones were a little less blood thirsty, but simply because their predecessors did a great job killing millions.

Sorry, Soviet Union was a tyrannical oligarchy, as far from socialism as its great opponent the US of A.

By the way, your argument that you don't know but I also cannot know because I was late to the party (pun intended) is... a very naive one. But I agree with you - you don't know and fight rather hard to retain your faith.

As someone who lived in USSR, slow me to adjust your statement.

Everyone was declared to have equal rights, not dissimilar to the constitutions of other countries.

Contrary to those declarations the soviet passports had "nationality" in them.

On top of that, while it was reasonable for everyone to have a common language, it was a common understanding that if one is too progress in life and career, they should adopt russian and, better, become one. Which was actively supported. While I grew up in Ukraine, in school we had Ukrainian language and literature as a foreign language, maybe 10% of what we spent learning russian ones.

So yeah, everyone was equal, as long as they are russian. Every other nationality was at best mocked. Ukrainians are greedy, Georgians are brainless machos, Chukchas are stupid, Jews are sneaky thieves etc.

On top of that, there was systemic discrimination of women which culminated in the joke-proverb "woman, keep your mouth shut, your day is 8th of march".

And of course the equality was topped by the oligarchy. See in a one-party system, people are either party members or not. The country was obviously ruled exclusively by the party members, which not only meant that the non-members had zero representation, it also meant that most members had equally zero representation.

Ironically, in that sense, there was equality since nobody had any rights.

So a small elite has formed, it was mostly replenished via nepotism and those were the "more equal" ones.

The patriotic movements you're mentioning, while they naturally picked the flag after the collapse, had little to do with the said collapse. It crashed because it was resistant to change.

And the soviets were well aware of the "nationalist danger", that why after causing holodomor they settled millions of ethnic russians into the emptied homes in Ukraine. That's why after the second world war (which the soviets don't call that because they actually started it together with the Nazis) they sent hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars to Siberia and replaced them with... more ethnically and loyal russians.

So yeah, everyone was declared equal, but only male, russian and well-connected were.

What a great way to show the inefficiency of sanctions! /s

They were expecting big slow drones that would take hours flying from Ukraine. Instead they got many small ones that took 18 months to arrive but were invisible until the last minute. A surprise zerg rush, when they were expecting and preparing against ultralisks.

(My analogies are very weak today)

Ah, sweet. I believe Finland joined Nazis after the winter war. Fascinatingly enough, during the winter war, the country that was on the side of Nazis was ... Soviet Union!

I'm still fascinated that soviets managed to play a victim card in a war that they started themselves.

If we were to take over the entire connectivity capacity for Ukraine and all the citizens, — we wouldn't be able to do that.

Luckily, that's not needed. Let's start with covering 50% of the frontline needs.

US' help was critical so far and when it was paused for six months Ukraine noticed.

On the other hand, when it was paused, Ukraine noticed, but didn't immediately fail. On top of that there were recent reports that Ukraine has enough supplies until summer. On top of that there Zelensky's statement that Ukraine is now producing up to 30% of what it needs in the battlefield. And on top of that, while US help was significant, the contributions from other countries were also nontrivial and many of them invested into increasing production.

So all in all, US' help was and stays important (even if it was quite often a little too late), but if it stops, I believe Ukraine can still win, but that will be quite bad for the States as Trump will not be able to claim this victory and also the military industry will lose quite a lot of advertisement when Ukraine wins with Owen, German, French, Korean or any other weapons.

And do it begins. Musk wants to become the new Hitler.

How soon till we start making time travel films about going back to stop him?

So now they're going to conscript him?

Yes.

On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to "help with extremism investigations".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-russia-ban-lift-messaging-app-encryption-download-a9573181.html

Which means KGB has full access to all messages.

the answer is - it doesn't matter. the biggest learning from the nazi germany was that you don't need the entire population of a country to be homicidal psychopaths. all you need is a small group of those psychopaths, control or media, propaganda and you get a perfectly functioning system where normal everyday folks go to their normal everyday jobs.

just those jobs are in gestapo. or in maintenance of gas chambers. or making food for the equally confused soldiers.

of course, we should avoid civilian casualties as much as we can (but apparently russian army is not required) but the system needs to be stopped.

russia has cancer. chemoterapy is not a pleasant procedure that affects both ill and healthy cells. the alternative is, unfortunately, to allow that cancer to spread to the entire planet.