Let’s talk about double standards for a moment.
The fact is that, for some reason, crowds attack foreign embassies in Moscow more frequently than anywhere else in the world, and those attacks most frequently target embassies of countries that were part of the Soviet Union prior to 1991. It seems these “concerned citizens” cannot stand to see the empire in pieces or get their heads around the fact that those former provinces are now independent states with diplomatic representation.
As recently as March of this year, young men stormed the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow, tore the flag, threw a couple of smoke bombs and scattered leaflets reading “Kiev is a Russian city.” What’s more, members of the Kremlin-funded Nashi youth group have vandalized the Moscow embassies of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia countless times, hurling ink, breaking windows and lighting fires. In fact, when Nashi activists tore the flag of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow in 2007, Vasily Yakemenko — a senior official in the administration of then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — made a point of publicly paying the requisite 500 ruble fine.
