Probably a Microsoft and/or Gates injunction; all of Ukrainian data is hosted on Azure, gov't and military..

You realise the USA has its own slave labour gulag unmatched by Russia and China today, right? Though Soviet gulag was ruthless, born to meet rapid wartime industrialisation and unrelenting landowners (kulaks), it was more lax and informal than Auschwitz death camps that you wish to portray.

Meanwhile, Jim Crow and sundown towns in the USA oversaw its own apartheid underclass, many of whom looked to Soviet Russia for equity, Paul Robeson being the most notable.

Edit: replaced Tsarist-era 'The Black Russian' episode with more intended Soviet-era link, quite belatedly.

... let's get some historical conditions straight: USSR was a wartime communism born and deformed by Western invasion (from USA and allies, no less) and persisted under a state of seige, so it didn't have the luxury of a more democratic communism envisioned by Lenin. Even today, aligned with Trotskyist permanent revolution everywhere but their own govts, the same usual suspects are angling by invasion or insurgency to break up and loot Russia (along with China) who isn't caught off-guard this time. Existential then, existential now.

I would also love to know what you think of the standard bogies of Cuba and Venezuela, or heck, even ML Vietnam or Kerala.