It's weird that so many Germans are sympathetic to Russia given that they were subjugated by Russia for decades.

Can someone please explain what's going on here? What am I culturally missing?

It’s not sympathy so much with Russia, more of a complete distrust of US-led causes for war.

The US has betrayed a lot of humanity with the catastrophic wars it has fought since 2003. But in Europe, the results are very, very clear: many Europeans actually have the temerity to establish relations with the refugees who have been arriving for decades now, and through that contact, seek to understand that the world is being kept at war needlessly.

Many Western observers tend to miss the fact that there was a period between the end of the cold war and the beginning of the Ukraine conflict where Europeans were kind of glad to have peace in Europe - like actually with Russia being considered a part of the European community, where after years of distrust, peaceful relations between Europe and Russia were actually kind of happening.

This has all gone to /dev/null now, but there is still an unheard/heavily censored group of European citizens - in pretty much all of Europes’ western sphere - who simply would prefer to establish peaceful relations with Russia, and go back to actually flourishing and prospering.

Oh, and ending all wars on the Middle East, so the refugees from the US’ wars can rebuild their countries and go back home. Some day. Maybe.

Of course you won’t hear about them much, but if you pay close attention in the cafes and bars and riverside grills, you will hear them: many Europeans do actually believe in and want peace and simply don’t think the current crop of leaders are capable of it. So they express this not as sympathy with Russia, but as a willingness to effect the political change necessary to avoid catastrophe.

The Eastern Germans remember the old days fondly (you know, before "the West destroyed their industry" and whatnot) while the Western Germany had a national policy of "not provoking Russia" and "accepting its sphere of influence" for basically all of it's existence.

From personal experience I would also say that Germans and Russians are alike in quite a few ways - both are pretty chauvinist societies looking down at other nations, and both have very low empathy. Obviously, there are big cultural differences as well.

We don’t know what country he was spying for, but we do know it’s not Russia. From the very short article: > The case does not involve Russia, according to information obtained by Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

From what I see here it’s a mixture of anti-Americanism, „Ostslgie“ (the longing for the good old times of the DDR, a feeling often inherited from parents) and a crap ton of Russian propaganda that floods social media.

Combine this with a step economic decline and voila you got the perfect conditions for autocratic sympathies

Similar to why there's a significant fraction of pro-mainland China people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Reasons include people who benefitted from the Soviet Union, often due to business and trade. Analogy would be Foxconn, a Taiwanese company which is dependent on manufacturing in China.

Nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses/rosy retrospection, Ostalgie in German.

Families that were ethnically from Russia, moved during the Soviet Union times and still have ties to Russia.

The former East Germany is way more pro-Russian than the former West Germany, showing the effects of these factors.

I would not say it's many but certainly there are some. I found it surprising that in recent sabotage or spy cases in Germany there were often Ukrainian or Latvian accomplices to the Russians. But then again it's obvious that not all Ukrainians have the same opinion about the war.

Some part of the population was subject to 60 years of continuous propaganda. That's three generations. You might say people should be able to see beyond that, but the ones influencing them were professionals too.

Are you sympathetic to MBS when you buy oil from Saudi Arabia?

> It's weird that so many Germans are sympathetic to Russia given that they were subjugated by Russia for decades.

Do you think that Germany might have done something right before this "subjugation"?

Maybe 25-40 million things?

> Can someone please explain what's going on here?

Putin got'em addicted to cheap Russian gas and paid up anti nuclear NGOs who also got cash from big oil.

Also Berlin still has some Russian minority since the GDR. That includes anti Putin Russian diaspora or people that just needed a break from paranoia and brespredel.

There's a certain subset of every population that just wants to be dominated. Some of these people don't have the courage to ask their romantic partner or a professional, so they try to realize their kink through political means.