Trumpled (Alternative Leading)

[mateinone]

What you are not saying, but implying, is that the US Government and its minions, are more trustworthy than the Russians - again, an entirely baseless proposition...

I had not intended to imply it, I had intended to downright state it.
I also find it absolutely ludicrous that anyone genuinely believes that France and Germany, along with England are just proxies for the US and as for the former satellite countries, their basis for not trusting Russia as a nation is long established and nothing at all to do with the USA.

There is a reason that the the democratic countries in Europe (and here) follow a similar line to the US and China/Russia/Iran etc do not.

With Russia being less trustworthy... They allow less scrutiny and have often been known to trump up charges against dissidents who call into question their behaviors. This alone is a basis for questioning that trustworthiness.

I will state something else, anyone who thinks that European countries will not stand up to the US and tell them what they think, entirely misunderstands the continent and UK's relationship with the US.
All these years on they still consider US an upstart and do not want to be like the US and they are not afraid to state that.

What were the German & French positions on the war in Iraq?

They will have many common interests though and will often be on the same side of the table and this was obviously emphasised after WWII, where Europe was split firmly into communist Russia (and satellite states) and Western Europe. It was during this phase that Russia, through it's actions created a lot of mistrust, especially in some of the countries that were under it's control. For some to imply Euro countries mistrust Russia because the USA does and not because of their history in dealing with Russia is just simply not even close to true.