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The typical Russian citizen living in the imperial holdings doesn't aspire to US free market style conditions, but they can see on social media and from personal connections / travels that other often even Russian speaking people living in the Baltic states and (pre-war) Ukraine enjoy significantly more personal freedom and often also higher quality of life.

This is a direct practical refutation of the dominant propaganda narrative of the Russian government that if anything changes it will only change for the worse.

How people in the US or even western Europe live is entirely irrelevant to this perception.

There is no point in asking what ifs, and the EU is certainly not trying to emulate the US even though it does have its own problems.

If you make posts to newspapers owned by Rupert Murdock you will get similar pushback, and that is a good comparism, just that how bad Axel Springer is, is lesser known outside German speaking countries.

With flights becoming significantly more expensive due to fuel prices and kerosene shortages that problem will probably sort itself at least for this summer. I suspect in a few weeks we will hear from the same person complaints about the tourism industry in distress.

What does this have to do with solarpunk technology though 🤔

Again, have the US out for what? And why would Lithuania try to appease the agressor preemtively when it is far from certain that Russia will succeed in their campaign to destabilize the EU (which is currently supported by the US).

The real fear the Russian government has is that some of their remaining imperial holdings also decide that enough is enough. So by attacking Ukraine and trying to cow the baltic states into submission, they are trying to frighten anyone that might see these states as positive examples how former soviet states can be much freer than they themselves are under Russian domination.

And the US is currently (intentionally or not) helping Russia in this information warfare against western European liberal governments.

And you are mixing up who is aggressive against whom. The eastern European states pose very little threat for Russia but feel (justified or not) massively threatened by them.

If there is no western European support (because for example Germany is ruled by the AfD, France by the FN and the UK by Reform... not exactly an unrealistic scenario right now, and the "algorithm" is helping them with that) then they can win, or at the very least pressure these smaller states to become vassals like Belarus is right now.

But even if you personally disagree that this is a realistic scenario, it doesn't change the fact that the large majority of the eastern European states believe so and thus will prevent any attempts at reconciliation with Russia on EU level.

Still needs shipping and the US prices given are usually without VAT, which means another ~20% on top.

That highly depends of the terrain and whats on top of it. Urban tunnels are much more expensive indeed.

Probably 120€ if you add shipping from the US and VAT to it. The weak US$ helps a bit so maybe 110€.

Hence me specifying roof-top parks. You know, with lots of waterlogged soil and trees. The static load of that is significantly higher, but of course heavy trucks cause lots of dynamic load, which is another difficult issue.

Building a large bridge like that, with the added complication of holding lots of protentially water soaked heavy soil and trees roots that try to break through the bottom isn't cheap. More or less the same reason why roof-top parks are prohibitively expensive in most cases.

What I find a bit surprising is that they didn't go for a tunnel for the cars, which is typically cheaper to do.