No love lost for Russia in freezing eastern Europe

His every breath a visible plume, the elderly Belgrade resident railed against Moscow on Monday for a standoff with Ukraine that has shut off natural gas supplies to millions of eastern Europeans while those to the west have plenty of heat.

"Russians always gave us nothing but misery. They should never be trusted, as this gas blackmail of Europe shows,"

Mingled with the misery is a sense of betrayal in nations such as Serbia and Bulgaria — countries with traditional religious and cultural ties to Russia, but a complicated love-hate relationship with the Kremlin.

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