Russia/Ukraine tensions - Any concern?

An average old enough Pole undoubtedly dislike Russia, the USSR. The roots of mutual enmity are centuries deep. First of all, Poland was strictly Catholic country. Second, it was a typical Capitalist democratic western style place: its kings had constant conflicts with the noblemen, a democracy that is. Russia is Eastern Orthodox Christian since 988 AD. Also Russia used to rely on a centrified "vertical of power" with "a kind czar and his evil noblemen". 

Even nowadays in Russia Catholics are (unofficially) perceived as strange if not thoroughly alien people. For example, if Russian music video makers want to somehow laugh at the Christianity, they traditionally use characteristically Catholic clothing, interiors, Catholic three-dimensional elliptic halos around saints' heads (in Orthodox Christianity halos are drawn in two dimensions as circles like in Buddhism), Catholic rows of seats (in Russian Orthodox Christian churches there are only several benches along the walls for those who are not able to stand during the service), Catholic gothic architecture. 

You may look at this Russian music video to see a proof to my words. Its creators and the singer himself have indeed heard some bad words from various groups of Russian Christians about the video, but practically nobody on official level in Russia cared about it, and the public in general stood silent - because the church, the monks, the priest/bishop in the video are unmistakably Catholic... The singer is by the way an Orthodox Christian himself... If you're Catholic, the video will offend you. In Russia there's a law about offending the feelings of religious believers - but since the video doesn't concern directly Orthodox Christians, Muslims (who are too hot-blooded to touch them) or Judaists (who are, you know, it's the Jews' religion), nobody in Russia said an official powerful word of criticism against the creators of the video. Nobody sued them. 

Apart from that, Poland is your typical fine not-that-big cosy European country. Russia pretends to be messianic, at all possible costs - quite like the USA. I personally think of USA/Russia confrontation as the continuing contest between the West Roman Empire (USA) and East Roman Byzantine Empire (Russia). 

Given that, with all my respect and love to your friend Basia, I can easily predict what she has told you. Polish girls are terrifically beautiful. And I love Polish language, Polish culture. They are nice people. Poland and Russia are simply incompatible, they are very different in their approach. their views, their understanding of their role in the Universe. 

Well our respective profile mention Brussels & Vilnius, not Alkmaar & Den Helder  , so that didn't help 

(I suppose you are/were there for the NATO base?)
 

Eastern Europeans like generalising about how bad the USSR when they were part of the Soviet Union. 

Everyone compares the Soviet Union to the British Empire or contrasts it against the political system of the US - which isn't "democracy", incidentally, but more "consumerism" (and arguably plutocracy). Well. Why not compare it to the Roman empire, then ? Just as utterly pointless. 

There are other generalisations about how good / bad the USSR was (usually propaganda based but some with a factual basis). 

Everyone will throw up historical incidents to illustrate points, and whilst events like the Holodomir are still in living memory, what happened in East Germany in 1960 or Czechoslovakia in 1968 bear little bearing on the present day. You might as well bring up the battle of Borodino in 1812. "No relevance". 

There are hearsay reports on how Russians "long for the past" - having been there and spoken to the older generation, some do, some don't. The younger generation are quite different in outlook..... in some places. Go over the border to Georgia and the reverence for Stalin is just beginning to fade.

Russia is a big place, the term "Eurasian" was really coined in the 19th century as an insult to the Russian character. Part of Russia is Western, in geography and outlook, part is Eastern. I've stood at what some people consider the "border" - edge of the Volga - although others tend to look at the Ural mountains as the dividing line. Yes, you can factor in population numbers, but you can do that with any country. The outlook for Russia is Western, rather than Eastern. Power exists in Moscow and St Petersburg, not in the Kamchatka peninsula. 

"Russia has always tried to expand". Newsflash - most countries have a history of trying to expand in terms of territory. This includes the USA, and !!! Hello from England, where we used to be experts at it. War is generally economic in nature, or it was when I was doing a degree in History back in the early 90's. 

So what we get here is the standard internet argument where people present baseless opinion as knowledge (the situation is far more complicated and not black and white) which is coloured by nationality and prejudice and, in most cases, bears almost no relation to the current situation. 

Welcome to the internet. 
 

just testing if I was being read at all. 

Though I work in West-Friesland (between Alkmaar & Den Helder), and we don't have Mennonite or Amish villages in our area, the people's Dutch is quite hard to understand.