Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Alaska today for talks between Trump and Putin on Ukraine wearing a shirt emblazoned with the Cyrillic letters for USSR:

Americans don’t come out of school knowing it, but the USSR was among the most evil regimes ever to exist. It killed tens of millions of its own subjects and enslaved the rest. Horrific communist regimes likely would not have taken power in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia if not for the USSR — leave alone the satellite states of Eastern Europe. Preventing further Soviet encroachment on the rest of the world required risking nuclear Armageddon.

If the Russia government means well, it will make sure the rest of the world knows it is leaving its nightmarish communist past behind. But former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin, who has called the blessed collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” is not leaving it behind. A monument to bloodthirsty tyrant Joseph Stalin was unveiled in Moscow earlier this year.

Ukraine was part of the USSR. Lavrov’s choice of shirt was no accident. At least Trump knows what he’s dealing with. The Cold War is not over.