[haku]

Originally Posted by la aurora

When it comes to Western Europe it surprises me a bit how easy politicians & media turned USSR into one big evil. Yes of course the regime was bad. But we were allies in that war and without soviet army the result of this war could be really different. Most of west-european countries didn't have enough power to give Hitler a real fight. He wasted a lot of resources fighting on the East. And now everything is forgotten, words 'soviet' and 'communist' are like a curse, Germany easily got back to 'friends' list and all soviet army did in this war is occupy poor Estonia along with whole Eastern Europe.

The fact that the Red Army is not celebrated as an heroic force in the West is because the Red Army behaved as badly as the Nazi Army during and after the war (i posted in another thread this article about how the Red Army systematically raped millions of women and girls in Eastern Europe).
The Allied Armies on the western front defeated the Nazis and restored democracy and freedom everywhere they went, they did not abuse or oppress the local populations, and they gave back control to local democratic governments after a few months or a few years at most. The Red Army on the Eastern front defeated the Nazis as well but the similarity ends there, the Red Army abused and oppressed local populations, it installed puppet dictatorial regimes and continued to occupy Eastern Europe for 50 years, it crushed any attempts to restore freedom (Prague, Budapest) and democrats were persecuted.
Understandably this has left a lasting resentment in Eastern Europe, sure the Red Army defeated the Nazis, but what it did after that was just as bad as Nazis.

Originally Posted by la aurora

USA are planning to build those bases on their own, not as part of NATO (ie they aren't asking for permission of all other members of NATO)

Absolutely, and that's why i am opposed to the project. If the missile shield was a NATO project, i would support it, but not as a unilateral US project. That being said, the missile shield in Europe is no threat to Russia, the shield would only harbor a dozen interceptors (which are conventional weapons, not nuclear) while Russia has thousands of nuclear missiles, you don't stop thousands of missiles with a dozen interceptors.

Originally Posted by la aurora

Putin no likes when NATO expands to the East (it's against stragical interests of Russia)

The EU is simply creating an area of peace, democracy, and wealth for European people, and NATO is now mostly a US-EU military alliance, neither organization is meant as a threat to Russia (NATO no longer specifically targets Russia as an enemy, this doctrine was abondoned after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact).

Europe used to be divided between Western and Eastern Europe, this was an unnatural division and it was only normal for the EU (and NATO) to expand to the East up to the border of the former USSR. I do understand that it's difficult for Russia to accept the loss of its former satellite countries and that's why i do not support any further Eastern expansion of the EU (and NATO) to countries which were formerly part of the USSR (with the exception of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania because their annexation by the USSR was never recognized by the West). I think this is an acceptable compromise for the EU and Russia.