MOSCOW: "I am a Russian occupier," a deep voice says proudly as the video crackles to life with realistic gaming graphics that show a Kalashnikov being loaded by a soldier before the dramatic, throbbing music begins.
"And I am tired of apologising for it!"
The slickly designed YouTube video has been viewed more than five million times in two weeks and is the latest hit in a series of posts to an account apparently held by an enthusiastic young Russian merely trying to understand and explain his country's politics.
But upon closer inspection there is no young man at all, but a communications agency which openly admits being hired by people close to the regime to make the videos.
With patriotic slogans, anti-American diatribes and scorn heaped upon those who chose independence from Russia, the videos seek to rid Russians of any guilt over their imperialistic past - or doubts about a present in which their country is maligned for its role in the Ukraine crisis.
The narrator describes how Russia occupied Siberia, turning it from a place which "sold women for sable skins" into a producer of oil, gas and aluminium. How the Baltic States, after rejecting their Soviet master now "sell sprats and some of their people clean toilets in Europe."
For its part, Ukraine now only develops "dictatorship".
"I am an occupier by birthright" he says, as images of Russian heroes and historic battles play across the screen.
"Please, understand, I don't need your hypocritical freedom, I don't need your rotten democracy. Everything that you call Western values is alien to me," the narrator says to images of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and gay pride celebrations.
With a final warning that "I know how to fight better than anyone else," an image of the message being sent as an email to US President Barack Obama ends the video.
With subtitles in several languages the video has stirred curiosity outside the country. In Moscow, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin -- known for his anti-Western rants -- tweeted a link to it proclaiming he too was "a Russian occupier".
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