Like all other Command & Conquer real-time strategy games, up until the expansion pack of Tiberian Sun, Firestorm, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 contains two distinct story lines depending on which faction the player wishes to play as. Both of the story lines differ in several distinct ways. However, the Allied story line is canon due to the way in which the expansion pack continues. After the attempted conquest of Europe, the Soviet Union is in utter ruin. Joseph Stalin is dead, and the Soviet military has been all but destroyed. The Allies determine that a regime change would cause mass unrest in the Soviet Union, and in order to gain both support and stability in the region, the victorious Allies name Alexander Romanov, a distant relative of Czar Nicholas II, as the puppet Soviet Premier. Romanov acquiesces to the Allies' demands at first, though he builds up the Soviet military for "defense purposes" – a cover for an intended invasion of the United States of America.