Russia

💡 HISTORY: Did you know Russia invaded & occupied every single country to become part of the Soviet Union? Those are the "former Soviet Republics," including Ukraine, Estonia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan. In the aftermath of the 1917 February revolution against the Russian Czar, the Russian Empire collapsed and all these countries, as well as Finland, took the opportunity to declare independence. But when the new democratic Russian government was overthrown by the communists in the 1917 Bolshevik October revolution and subsequent bloody civil war of 1918-1921, the communist regime then proceeded to reinvade all these countries (minus Baltic states and Finland) and by 1922 recreated the Russian Empire under a new name - the Soviet Union. When Stalin & Hitler started the Second World War as allies in September 1939, the Soviet empire promptly invaded Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania and Finland, forcing the Baltic states into the Soviet Union and annexing huge chunks of Poland, Finland and Romania. So, Russia has already invaded Europe to build an empire twice in recent history. And now Russia wants to do it for the third time, but decades after the empire collapsed yet again in 1989-1991.