Imagine there are two villages, you're in one, the other (called Russia) is run by some lowlife mafia too incompetent and unworthy to make their village as nice to live in as yours.

Problem is, that mafia has billions, that they have stolen to their villagers. Since they love shiny money and don't really care about their villagers, they are willing to spend just the strict minimal possible amount that will let them stay in power.

So they use their billions, locally, to brainwash said villagers so they never turn against them and believe the people responsible for their misery live in your village.

They also use those billions in your village, by sending their own brainwashed villagers to poison every discussion, and by buying idiots who will damage your village from the inside, because it's easier to drag everyone's village down than to put in (lol) the necessary effort to lift one's village up.

Some people in your village - maybe people like you - are not fooled, and see that mafia scum for what they are. Those people that can't be bought, the mafia threatens them with nukes, because unfortunately they also own nukes.

Of course, like most bullies, it's mostly bluff, they're not suicidal, just pathologically insecure, and what they really need is some good slapping of their fucking primate face by someone bigger than them, after which they'll cry and finally calm down (just for a bit though, because let's face it, their goal has never been to make their village a better place, so they'll sooner or later come back to the only thing they're good at: being brutal idiots with no real vision).

Those nukes are enough to scare the cowards in charge of your village, so they let do their thing, hoping they will magically stop at some point.

The truth is, they will only stop when the cost (for that mafia) of doing all this gets higher than the cost of caring for their village, which is what their villagers expect from them.

So, what you, in your village, can do, is:

• laugh in the face of their villagers who believe they're serving their whole village more than the tiny bunch of assholes ruling it

• never follow the idiots they've bought and the cowards they've tamed in your village, and denounce their weakness at every possible opportunity

• most of all, support measures that will make sure the costs, for that other village's mafia, of messing with yours, go through the roof.