My Norwegian girlfriend I were invited to visit Poland on an official state invitation by their communist government as we had sent my Polish friend there a letter and he had to go through his government with another letter for us to visit in December 1986. The Polish government wrote us back and approved our visa with an official document we received while living in Norway. So, me and my Norwegian girlfriend went there and from the moment we crossed the frontier into East Germany and then into Poland to the day we left it was the most depressing place I had ever been in my life. Everybody worked against the interests of the fascist communist government by trading money on the black market. "Not one slot for the government and we will bring them to their knees" was what they all told me. We spent the first three days there trying to get an official stamp from the government on our passports that said we exchanged five dollars American money with their currency as my buddy would not let us exchange the money as that would be feeding the beast. We went to hotels, police stations and government agencies and the look on those people's faces was pretty funny. We never got the stamp. They had no food to eat as Chernobyl had just happened and on every street stood government spies. When people passed by they never talked in front of large scary men in long black leather trench jackets as they were terrified by them. Every single Pole that I met told me, "Ronald Reagan good! Bomb Russia!". I was taken aback by this as my US upbringing and time in the US Army special forces had taught me that all the people on the other side of the Iron Curtain were commies that wished us dead. "We want democracy in Poland!" "Not your American, or British or French democracy but Polish democracy". We had a hell of a time getting out as we had no travel visa to go to Czechoslovakia so they took us off that train and shipped us back to Poland and then we had to starve all the way to East Berlin hoping that we could buy a travel visa on the train. And, since we had no stamp on our passports that showed we exchanged our dollars for their money they tossed a fit at the boarders twice with us. The soldiers came on the train and took off several middle aged Polish workers that went to East Berlin's factories to work as we were in the cart with them on the trains and the other workers blamed us for their plight. In the end, we made a couple promises to the Poles that I met there. The first was to never forget about their plight under the Russian boot, and the other was to never drink Russian vodka again. I may have broken that second promise but I kept the first and whenever I hear some no nothing loud mouth conservative or know it all university professor here in the states tell me that NATO forced Russia into attacking Ukraine I wish to smash them in the mouth. If you think the US and the West should give up on Ukraine's battle for freedom I suggest you go live in Russia, or China or North Korea or maybe Venezuela and tell me what you think then. You types that wish to toss away 45 million Ukrainians chance to have a free country are cowards of the worst sort if you ask me.