Western style of life is not only EU but also USA. I do not know how people can even doubt this lol.
If they wanted western life in russia, then establishment will make changes to have it there, no ? Russia is NOT democracy, it is tyranny, autocracy. Again it is not narrative it is what they do there lol
Hating the west is only an ideology given to plebs
`any != all` after all.
Your argument is essentially; because some Russian people send some of their children to be educated or buy some property in the west (as a portfolio of how many?) that the argument that the state of Russia dislikes the EU holds no water.
To me, it's hardly evidence of anything, just like how some people in the UK fetishise Russia- yet the UK government is actively hostile and condemns without hesitation- Russias actions towards Ukraine.
The "hate west" narrative is pushed because it makes sense during the war. If Putin decides now praising the west will let him keep the power the propaganda machine will do a 180 turn
so they HATE west no matter what they say, so you are correct in that.
but you are making wrong conclusion,
machine is not bad thing BUT they are good people.
They ARE bad actors no matter if they use propaganda machine that way or any other way or not use at all. they are bad actors period. propaganda machine is separate thing.
contrary to west, in russia you get beaten by police because your children in west posted something on Xtwitter...
Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, Boris Berezovsky, Sergei Magnitsky, Stanislav Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Natalia Estemirova, Anna Politkovskaya, yuri Shchekochikhin, Vasily Melnikov , Vladislav Avayev , Sergey Protosenya, Yevgeniy Palant, Yuri Voronov, Ravil Maganov, Vladimir Sungorkin, Anatoly Gerashchenko, Vadim Boyko, Vladimir Makei, Grigory Kochenov, Vladimir Bidenov + Pavel Antov, and thousands of others.
most spectacular was - Pyotr Kucherenko where two men holded him and third put shopping bag on his head, and noone saw nothing in whole plane... except three photos were taking of incident...
All the money, humanitarian aid, weapons, intelligence, training and geopolitical backing beg to differ.
So you can weaken your opponent without getting the backlash.
The only positive aspect of this is after the root cause is found, the grid will become more resilient in the long term (but these kinds of changes typically take long time).
The goal would be to create enough pressure from people - frustrated by problems like power cuts — so that governments must withdraw their support for Ukraine.
Any "WW III" fearmongering is similar : intimidate everyone into withdrawing support.
Many European countries have created emergency guides to help citizens preparing for crisis like this one. [2] This, I guess, has the underlying goal of maintaining trust in European governments.
[1] : https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-increasing-hybrid-att...
[2] : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-commission-urges-sto...
... Wait, how are you defining that? Much of the EU is about as close as it is possible to be to being at war with Russia without actually sending in troops.
so blackout is attack from russia. so stop spreading lies of terrorist russian state.
But Russia is an aggressive authoritarian state that was already caught for (smaller) acts of sabotage in EU, some of them quite dangerous. Why they are doing this? Who knows, war in Ukraine was not rational too. Perhaps some people want to be evil just for the sake of being evil.
As a Russian emigrant, I long stopped trying to rationalize Kremlin decisions. Why authoritarians are authoritarians? Who knows. Mad with power or something.
You cannot control stable governments, so you destabilise them with various tools for prolonged periods of time and then you end up with a country which is much easier to influence.
Same with the undersea cables.
Some Western side companies banned Russia by IP's like Intel, but in general, my list of websites to tunnel through a VPN is rather short, like a dozen and mostly to unblock youtube as meta and twitter are cancer anyway.
After the multiple sabotages, killings, corruption, as well as the invasion of a neighbor country, we have some reasons to think Russia is a bad state actor.
"Putin channels ultranationalist discourse, such as the Izborsk Club and the neo-fascist Alexander Dugin, in calling for quasi-religious rebirth of Russian dominance, an agenda that seeks to swallow “Little Russia” into a renewed Russian empire that stretches from “Lisbon to Vladivostok,” a phrase popularized by Dugin and repeated by Putin."
https://brill.com/view/journals/joah/4/1-2/article-p126_10.x...
>renewed Russian empire that stretches from “Lisbon to Vladivostok,” a phrase popularized by Dugin and repeated by Putin."
This is a direct lie. Putin has never said this.
And one of the greatest lies that is being spread about Putin that he intends to conquer Europe and recreate Russian Empire.
I would surmise that the Russians think that Spain and Portugal are cowed, and want to keep them intimidated and prevent them from increasing their aid to Ukraine.
Moreover, they are unable to just live-and-let-live and actively go out of their way to make other peoples lives miserable. This is due to pervasive zero-sum thinking in Russian strategic thinking. They are fixated on the idea that in order for Russia to 'win', others must suffer and lose.
They have already assassinated People in Spain last year
https://www.politico.eu/article/maxim-kuzminov-russia-ukrain...
I do not really think that this needed to be a russians work tho. Spain and Portugal are really kinda far and it would be massively idiotic move even for them.