I understand that not all people living under Soviet control were happy, or that the Soviet Bloc was some kind of utopia. But after seeing Russia devastated to the extent it was by the war, and given that there was serious collaboration with the Nazis in Western Ukraine and the Baltic States, from the vantage point of Moscow ensuring that nothing like it happened again was understandable.

This is clearly a deeply contested history across Eastern Europe, one that is tragically feeding into the current conflict in Ukraine.