Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
After WW1 dealing with Germans was quite commonly seen as treason by many French and Brits. Even in the sixties and seventies, in the US there were people who thought owning a German car was morally questionable in itself.
(It's a big reason why Volkswagens mostly targeted the hippie generation at one point. People young enough to not remember the war were much more open to buying a German car.)
The only reason Germany isn't still suffering from that is that they were so fundamentally beaten and disarmed, and have been aggressively owning up to the horrors of Nazism.
Unless Russia is willing to disarm, give back everything they've taken from Ukraine (yes, including Crimea) and admit they've been the bad guys like the Germans did, there's not going to be forgiveness. If Putin remains in power and there's a peace deal that doesn't end in Russia giving back every part of Ukraine, it will just solidify the idea that Russia a fanger to everyone.
"Next they might attack us."
Russian leadership has already directly threatened both Finland and Sweden with military action and threatened to drop the ISS on Europe, just to sound extra crazy. We are not hearing the Russians saying "that's crazy, we shouldn't be saying that".
Russia has just fundamentally destroyed the idea that true peace with Russia is possible, that countries don't have to constantly worry about the threat of Russia attacking for no reason other than bloodthirst and hunger for power. They've destroyed people's faith in the hope that there will not be a war with Russia in our lifetimes. Fear breeds hatred.
There's just no way that fear won't spill over to average Russian citizens.
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Russia has surely destroyed its reputation and it will take decades to restore it. We can only hope that in our days of close international contacts on personal level and many multinational projects from playing online games to programming open sources together, it would heal up faster than in the past. I was already thinking that will probably identify myself as Jewish rather than Russian next time I will be in a foreign country.