I think I agree with most of that. No way does Russia want a war with us.
With that said, it is a very corrupt country and one must be cautious in any dealing with them.
I've said before they are a different culture than us. Just what they went through during WWII is mammoth to what we suffered.
We lost about 400,000 soldiers. Russia lost 8-11 million soldiers and about 8-9 million civilians.
Those people went through hell. So am certain that plays a role in their not trusting anyone.
Agreed. Almost every country in Europe has fought the Russians at one time or another. But then again, almost every country in Europe have fought almost every other country in Europe at one time or another too. They sure love to kill each other over there....and for the damnedest reasons.
One a lighter note...You might like this story
My Russian teacher told me an interesting story about how cats saved Leningrad after the siege.
She said after the siege was lifted there were rats everywhere place eating the dead bodies laying all over the place.
In the streets, in homes, in alleys...everywhere. They were frozen, and it was hard during the siege to bury them.
Now that the weather was warmer, everyone was more "aware" of them.
Then the hordes of rats came and were taking over the city and getting fat on the dead corpses.
People were afraid to even go outside.
Some genius decided to ship in stray cats from all over Russia. People caught them and all were put on several railroad cars and sent to Leningrad.
As the story goes, almost as soon as the railroad cars were opened all these zillions of cats spilled out and immediately went to work killing any and all rats they saw.
The city was almost rat free shortly soon after.
I was told there is a monument to the "Cats that saved Leningrad" someplace, but don't know for sure.
Her mother and father were alive then and she said they still have a special affinity for cats to this day.
It is called St. Petersburg now.
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As a side note: Soviet troops during that siege and others learned to wiggle off a pistol bullet, which was .30 caliber (7.62X25), then wiggle off a rifle bullet, which was also a .30 caliber (7.62X54R), shake out all the rifle powder, then pour in a small amount of the pistol powder, then seat the pistol bullet over the rifle case. When you fired it in your rifle, the report was rather mild and pretty silent, but it would kill a big fat rat, so you would have some fresh meat that day to eat. The troops called those homemade rounds the "Cat's Sneeze", because it was deadly on rats and not very loud.