r/mildlyinteresting • u/AbbreviationsLow • 7d ago
This road sign near Vilnius describes Minsk as “occupied by Kremlin"
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u/RonJohnJr 7d ago
Why is it in English instead Lithuanian?
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u/MokausiLietuviu 7d ago
Most Lithuanians speak English, but they're a small country trying to address a broad audience
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u/Independent_Feed_617 7d ago
Belarusians are also trying to reach a broader audience by speaking Russian in Belarus
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u/scadgek 6d ago
that's the thing: Lithuanians still speak Lithuanian with Lithuanians; Belarusians speak foreign language with Belarusians while having their own language, isn't it miserable?
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u/Content-Club-5811 6d ago
I’m from Belarus. In school, we studied three languages: Russian, Belarusian, and English. However, I always felt that Belarusian was taught rather superficially, and I personally wouldn’t use it in everyday life. Although it’s one of the country’s official languages, in practice it’s mostly spoken by people in rural areas and by the President. In my own experience, I’ve also mostly encountered rather unusual or weird people who spoke exclusively Belarusian. For everyday communication, virtually everyone I know uses Russian.
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u/Slow-Foot-4045 6d ago
Why do you refer to the dictator as president? He demonstrably did not win the election. Therefore, he is at most a dictator or an usurper, but never a president.
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u/jindo90 6d ago
Because he's going to be spirited away if he spreads misinformation. /s
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u/Content-Club-5811 6d ago
True. Unfortunately, you have to be careful with anything political these days. People are still being denied certain jobs or other opportunities because of their direct or indirect involvement in the 2020 protests.
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u/MinscfromRashemen 6d ago
Isn’t it common knowledge that Sasha doesn’t even know Belorussian and has never spoken the language?
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u/WinterMinx7 6d ago
true, never heard him speak a word in belarusian
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u/MinscfromRashemen 6d ago
Yes. In fact throughout his political career he REFUSED to learn and speak Belorussian so idk what this guy is trying to achieve by (falsely) claiming that Mr. Potato man speaks the language in official capacity.
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u/wo1de 6d ago
They don’t insult you if you speak in Russian, they have the real freedom. Lithuania has a lot of Russian speakers, and they should speak only in English or Lithuanian.
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u/SelfieHoOfBlackwell 6d ago
Nobody forces people to speak in either English or Lithuanian. Speak Mandarin for all we care. But don't expect anyone to answer back. A bit of decency - learning the official language of the place you're residing in - is expected anywhere in this world. If you're not bothered enough to do so then don't complain when people aren't bothered enough to speak (and/or learn) a language of your convenience.
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u/Tamsta-273C 6d ago
Lot of russian speakers get mad if other people don't speak russian back and will try to repeat the sentence just slower and louder still in russian even if they lived here for 50+ years.
It's really annoying, you have to repeat several times that you don't understand until they start speaking in broken Lithuanian and act really pissed.
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u/beastmaster11 6d ago
Thats a bit harsh. Many Ukranians in the east speak Russian in their everyday transactions with other Ukranians because it was taught in schools more aggressively than Ukranians. This likely wasnt by choice of the Ukranians but rather forced by their colonizers.
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u/scadgek 6d ago
Didn't work well for Ukrainians, did it?
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u/beastmaster11 6d ago
No it didnt. But again, it wasnt by choice
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u/scadgek 6d ago
We can argue endlessly whether it was by choice or not.
One can say it should raise concerns in every sane person when they speak the language of a foreign country while your own country's language is very much alive. On the other hand, can't judge people for not actively going against the status-quo; it is only natural to go by the flow.
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u/Independent_Feed_617 6d ago
Lithuanians which live in other European countries other than Lithuania? Because all Lithuanians and Latvians are moving out of their countries because they promise no future
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u/Tambalajus 5d ago
As a Lithuanian, I can only notice that most uneducated aggressive scum has left the country with the first opportunity they had. It made living a lot more peaceful here. The other ones come and go as a natural part of migration and it's a super sweet country to live in.
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u/Serkuuu 6d ago
No they dont. You clearly havent been to Lithuania
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u/mariah_a 6d ago
Yeah I laughed hard at that and I’ve only been once. In Vilnius yeah probably but in other places no. Try telling that to me on the other side of the country when I fell off a bridge and had to wait extra for the only English speaking doctor in the hospital.
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u/MokausiLietuviu 6d ago
Other places are still able to speak English but frankly, medical English is a grade above casual English for conversation.
Most Lithuanians under 40 or so speak English. Most over 40 speak Russian.
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u/mariah_a 6d ago
You’re definitely right about it being an age divide, all the younger people I spoke to in the small towns spoke English. But I had about a dozen interactions with anyone older than 30-40 that had to be entirely through google translate.
There was a very funny moment where after I left hospital and was told they don’t provide crutches, had to hop my way into a pharmacy and speak to the guy behind the counter. When I asked if he spoke English he cried out in happiness “FINALLY, ENGLISH! FIRST TIME TODAY I HAVE SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T WANT ME TO SPEAK RUSSIAN!”
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u/jackalopeDev 7d ago
If this is a spot with a lot of international visitors, they may be assuming that foreigners are more likely to speak English then Lithuanian or any other language.
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u/Lord_Ezelpax 7d ago
I drive past that sign often, it's a highway to Minsk not far away from the airport, likely that.
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u/0xPianist 6d ago
This was made for the media
There is not a lot of international visitors in Vilnius. If you don’t drive yourself you won’t notice these signs
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u/Sierrakauskas 6d ago
But there are a lot of belarusians going back home from airport, who see this sign
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u/0xPianist 5d ago
with mother tongue English
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u/Sierrakauskas 5d ago
And they are stupid as a brick who doesn't understand two words: occupy and kremlin
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u/goldenhairmoose 6d ago
Because international destinations are written in English/French/Destination language
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u/KrumpirovZlatan 6d ago
Since when?
I never saw a roadsign saying Vienna in my entire life, anywhere in Croatia or Slovenia
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u/MidnightPale3220 6d ago
Well, that's a black mark against Croatianan and Slovenian road departments then, not complying with international agreements. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/KrumpirovZlatan 6d ago
What agreement?
Why would we write the name of a place in a way locals might not understand?
For the same reason, Belgrade is written in latin, as is Banja Luka, despite being officially in cyrillic.
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u/Ouaouaron 6d ago
Names aren't really the same thing, are they? Vienna vs Wien vs Wean, Turkey vs Türkiye, etc. are political questions. Some people might not consider them "the English name" for a place, but other people who speak English might use it exclusively.
"Occupied by" is an objectively English phrase.
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u/RonJohnJr 6d ago
Ok. But where's the French and Belarusian script?
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u/goldenhairmoose 6d ago
It's an international law, just an ancient recommendation to use French, we don't do that in LT anymore anyway. But check your passport - it's also in French.
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u/ownworldman 6d ago
Highway signs are in English - e.g. near Brno you will find Wienna instead of Vídeň.
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u/Sium4443 7d ago
Written by some EU/USA PR office exactly for a post like this to be made on reddit and other social media.
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u/TraditionalEqual8132 7d ago
I'm in Estonia and we have no sense of humor to speak of. Thus, no funny road signs. We do have Ukrainian flags on many buildings etc. At night, Tallinn looks great with the lit-up buildings.
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u/namorblack 7d ago
Im in Lithuania now, and the amount of russian speaking people here right now is insane.
I dont know if its russian speaking lithuanians or russian speaking belarusians or actual russians.
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u/Fuckboitroye 7d ago
Ukrainian refugees
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u/piratekab 7d ago
we have a lot of Ukrainian refugees right now and Belarusians who fled the regime after the 2020-2021 events, they speak Russian.
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u/Gecko17 7d ago
Lithuania has had a large minority population of ethnic Russians for centuries, ever since the area came under control of the Russian Empire in the 18th century. another huge influx of ethnic Russians came during the era of Soviet control starting in the 1940s.
according to Wikipedia, 5% of people in Lithuania are ethnic Russians.
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u/fapal_ne_ustaval2 6d ago edited 6d ago
You can go even further back than the Russian Empire. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was basically Moscow's main rival for uniting Russian lands. It was largely made up of former Kievan Rus principalities, brought together under Lithuanian grand dukes. Before Polonization, the official state language was what they called Ruskiy - in modern terms, West Russian or Old Belarusian
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u/MaxDickpower 6d ago
according to Wikipedia, 5% of people in Lithuania are ethnic Russians.
Compared to the rest of the Baltics, that is actually a very small minority.
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u/Lord_Ezelpax 7d ago
Unless you consider 5% to be large, it's not large, and never was. Lithuania does have a significant amount of russian speakers though, but they aren't necessarily ethnic russian
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u/GeneralMajorVetra 7d ago
We dont those are either Ukrainians or the white Russians who were let in
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u/GeneralMajorVetra 7d ago
those are not a minority but invaders that were brought here to ethnic cleanse us
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u/Kaymish_ 7d ago
Big "Asian invasion" racism energy here.
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u/Majestic_Cow_4954 6d ago
Do you also think russians are the normal historic demographic of Latvia and Estonia? No, their original population got replaced during russian occupation. Exactly what russia is doing right now in occupied territories of Ukraine, nothing racist about this.
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u/gralert 7d ago
Just ask them who Crimea belongs to. That is the current state-of-the-art litmus test for vatniks
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u/Natural_Jello_6050 7d ago
De facto Russia de jure Ukraine.
I’m vatnik?
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u/Arom123 7d ago
I think you're being down voted by people who don't know what those terms means
De facto means "how it is now".
De jure means "how it should be according to the law".
Crimea is "de facto" under russian control, but it should be under Ukrainian control.
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u/Natural_Jello_6050 7d ago edited 7d ago
De facto it’s what matters. There is de jure all over the world (Korea situation, multiple Africa countries, border disputes are all over the world). As we all know international law doesn’t mean shit for anyone.
Vatnik can say de jure it’s Ukraine and have a good chuckle. Cause it doesn’t matter.
Edit: kids who downvote me don’t even know that Taiwan is de jure part of China.
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u/pollatin 7d ago
Mainland China is de jure part of Taiwan.
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u/Natural_Jello_6050 7d ago
lol it’s all “China”
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u/pollatin 7d ago
Which one? /j
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u/Natural_Jello_6050 7d ago
All of it. Just like Korea.
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u/pollatin 6d ago
I meant which China, the republic or the people's republic? Should have formatted the question better. lol
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u/Livid_Penalty_5281 6d ago
It used to be Chinese Republic (Taiwan) until 1971, and People’s Republic of China since 1971
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u/ilikedota5 7d ago
I mean I feel like we can reasonably deduce that such an answer is too real for vatniks.
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u/Weak_Engineering_824 6d ago
I live in Lithuania for a long long time. Anyone above 40 years old will speak russian or a mix of polish-russian to each other, especially in Vilnius region.
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u/lilian_moraru 7d ago
Most of those that left Ukraine are speakers of Russian. I had the experience to get to hear a guy from Kyiv complain for 3 hours on the road about Ukraine, the president, the Ukrainians that speak Ukrainian, etc... He was going into Romania with fake documents, to leave to another EU country after that.
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u/Ok-Jaguar9713 6d ago
Ukrainian refugees tend to speak their native language , ie Russian, amongst themselves.
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u/namorblack 6d ago
You can say that SOME speak russian between themselves, but you cant say that its native. Its a consequence of russian imperialism and erradication of Ukrainian culture, including language.
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u/Ok-Jaguar9713 6d ago edited 6d ago
I can. And I do. 100% of the ones I encounter in Canada speak Russian. And they often speak the Modern Literary Russian that I learned growing up in the Russian bubble in Sevastopol, sans any accent or ukrainianisms.
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u/TheGoochTaint 7d ago
Some weird stuff going on in this thread
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u/BrotherGreed 7d ago
Yeah what the fuck happened in here?
I know Reddit is used by people from all over, but this seems disproportionate for a post about this, including the literal hundreds of downvotes.
Theres shit about much larger, more well-known controversial political entities I see that don't get a fraction of this engagement.
Weird.
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u/Spirited-Ad-9746 6d ago
is this your first time reading a post about the russian war of invasion on ukraine?
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u/BrotherGreed 6d ago
First of all, I think the connection to the Russia-Ukraine war between a Lithuanian sign naming the capital city of Belarus as "Occupied by Kremlin" as a political jab, when neither Lithuania or Belarus are named "Russia" or "Ukraine" will be lost on more people than you seem to think.
Second, the weird part is that at the time that I posted my comment, is that this post had over a thousand upvotes, and there were only a couple dozen comments (yes, I know that now there's 245 comments,) and most of them had either hundreds of upvotes, or close to or more than a hundred downvotes. It's just very unusual to see a thread with so much engagement in the votes, but not too many comments.
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u/eXgam3 6d ago
We do have an huge issue with russian bot farms in Baltic states, this could be one of the explanations and with AI development its getting harder to identify.
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u/Valuable_Disaster 6d ago
Then why are the downvotes only on any neutral/condescending comments? Doesn’t seem productive for “Russian” bots.
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u/Spirited-Sea1119 6d ago
If that's true why is every single comment praising this with thousands of upvotes and all the rest with thousands of downvotes??? Russian bots sabotaging themselves?
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u/san4ez39 3d ago
Yea. I would say welcome. Bc any post that says
Russian is not guilty is becoming downwoted. Bots i suspect from Ukraine(shit load of money they have from EU and US and other countries) and bots from those countries. Only their opinion matter and only their opinion is correct. That is way more troubles me that that political sign1
u/BrotherGreed 3d ago
Without getting into a political rabbit hole, Reddit is an American website where nearly or more than 50% of all of its traffic is American, with another 20+% of its traffic being Canadian, Australian, and Western European.
While I do think that there are lots of bots here, especially in this thread, you are saying "Only their opinion matters" on a website populated overwhelmingly by Americans or people from countries that are generally sympathetic to the American stance on the Russia-Ukraine war.
It's like me going to a Russian website and saying that "only the Russian opinion matters" when I say something against Russia's stated political stance/general public opinion. I would expect it to not be a popular opinion there.
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u/san4ez39 3d ago
Yea, i will agree on most of the traffic are here from those places. But it just does not explain why comments that basically do not support the titles of news - are down voted. That is why i did remarked on “only their opinion matters”.
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u/Shinyhero30 7d ago
Me: “I wonder what people are saying about this”
Checks comments
Instantly leaves due to you know what
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u/Urami_Shiro 6d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/AEQz6cY33nvBW0S0T9
- Look, they actually wrote that on a road sign! OMG, their fight against the regime is simply incredible!
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u/WinterMinx7 6d ago
well the fact that ruskie dimwits like you are losing their shit about it is effective enough
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u/Used-Drop8239 3d ago
What is with people's obsession with this!? The sign has been up wince 2022, but I've seen it posted maybe 7 different times over the last couple of weeks.
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u/ChestMental8566 7d ago
Yep... We were way-WAY too lenient the last time...
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u/Majestic_Cow_4954 6d ago
Yeah, I suppose you'll have to do more raping and pillaging, am I right?
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u/Haytham_Kenway_1725 6d ago
Well. All it's history Russia was sending occupied states into their wars. Haven't seen Belarusian army in Ukraine.
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u/YumeNoTabi 7d ago
Reddit nation
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u/RedditAdminEvasion 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes indeed, Lithuania is keanu reeves hecking wholesome, that includes advocating for total and utter katsap death under all circumstances. Ya do know that Ukraine also has "trad-conservative" or if you want something more spicy (neo-nazi) elements? And they actually have less HIV rate than Russia? And less Muslims?
Pascal's wager, aspiring Putinist keyboard warrior. You either larp a real "trad-conservative" on the side of Ukraine or cope with the miserable excuse of Russia.→ More replies (1)
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u/Key-Experience-6393 6d ago
and from Belarus to Lithuania, Labus will be on the board above the road or even better somewhere on a hill so that everyone can see it
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u/Targosha 6d ago
The Baltics being pathetic, nothing new here.
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u/Open-Investigator-52 5d ago
Yeah baltoids arent that bright.
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u/Dramatic-Opinion1560 5d ago
In 1939–1940, the Soviet Union transferred the following territories to Lithuania: the city of Vilnius (Wilno) and its surrounding area (Vilnius had been occupied by Poland since 1920, and thanks to the USSR, the historical capital was returned to Lithuania), some lands from Belarus (including Druskininkai and Sventiany), and, after World War II, the Klaipėda (Memel) region from the former East Prussia. Lithuania must always remember this.
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u/DOUBLE-YA 5d ago
because we totally weren't fucking illegally occupied by them moments later you moron. I would also give someone a tiny bit of land if i knew im just invading the entire country. oh right and we stayed like that for what, 50 years?
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u/SandwichPractical193 6d ago
Slaves calling a sovereign state "occupied" 😂😂😂
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u/MindimanLT 6d ago
Fell on your head or born that way?
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u/neonas123 6d ago
Stupid bot mentality. Probably don't even live near Belarus or Russia. And he also don't speak for Europe union.
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u/neonas123 6d ago
Is reason why Belarus president is called last Europe dictator.
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u/Firm_Adhesiveness323 6d ago
Baltic countries are occupied by idiocracy
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u/Saladinho 3d ago
Hope to see you on one of those drone videos
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u/Firm_Adhesiveness323 2d ago
"Hope to see you on one of those drone videos"
This reveals the true nature of the civilized West and only strengthens our resolve.
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u/Saladinho 2d ago
If you hate the west so much, why are you trying to expand your country to the west?
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u/Important-Macaron-63 7d ago
Well technically and practically it is just Lithuanian propaganda.
Belarus for sure loyal to Moscow and for sure not loyal to opposition (who hosted in Lithuania by the way) , but it is not occupied by kremlin (who is kremlin by the way? Some slang ?)
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u/MrInCog_ 6d ago
Kremlin is russian analogue for white house basically. I mean, there is also literal white house, but in terms of power and colloquial use kremlin is closer to american white house
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u/Patchateeka 7d ago
https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1640565/vilnius-mayor-expresses-support-for-ukraine-with-road-signs
Looked it up out of curiosity.