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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

> The narrative "people want EU (aka freedom and democracy), but bad dictators won't let them" is a populist one.

Former eastern block members that are currently in the EU beg to differ.

It's no accident that there's such a developmental gap between those of the former communist states which turned to the west vs those who remained in Russia's sphere of influence.

You can't meaningfully prosper with Russia.

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It's terrible that people think like that, especially in Georgia where they are still not tied to the debt fueled pyramid scheme that is the EU.

They still think of Europe as how it was 20 years+ ago, they always only look at the surface and never if the whole concept really works out long term.

Russia is a tiny tiny economy built on corruption. Their whole economy is about selling energy. and right now their economy is failing. They're exporting less and less and less. They even have to import fuel because they can't produce enough for their own economy.

"They still think of Europe as how it was 20 years+ ago, they always only look at the surface and never if the whole concept really works out long term."

Poland today seems in a way better spot than in was 20 years ago, so it seems it worked out for them. Likewise all the other eastern EU members where I travelled around. As soon as I left EU territory, things looked way worse.

And the alternative is ... Russia? A corrupt dictatorship whose economy is kept alive with government war spending?

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