Post B1caMP0tAg9m40EQT2 by older@mstdn.social
 (DIR) More posts by older@mstdn.social
 (DIR) Post #B1YKgoDIoMoo75uIAS by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       2025-12-23T21:15:12.114513Z
       
       0 likes, 2 repeats
       
       #Russia Internet shutdown allow lists:in russia, mobile internet is heavily restricted. in some regions, access to non-whitelisted resources is blocked entirely; in others, the speed is throttled to an unusable 14 kb/s (sometimes even lower), or in the worst cases, a complete blackout where even whitelisted resources become unreachable.Sample from domain entries:rutube.ruqueuev4.vk.comapi.vk.rucollections.yandex.rur0.mradx.nethttps://github.com/hxehex/russia-mobile-internet-whitelist
       
 (DIR) Post #B1YKgpTe75UC24YrHU by m0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.net
       2025-12-23T21:36:54Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @kravietz@agora.echelon.plThe only thing I use mobile data for these days is to connect Wireguard tunnel to my home network, where I have unfiltered access to the outside world over VPN 😅
       
 (DIR) Post #B1YOky6oMX4jmJ6raq by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-23T22:22:43Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @kravietz What are people using to get around it? Tor, i2p? Would be interesting if russia bought a great firewall from china, unless they already have done so of course.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1YWLkm9b590osw1LM by light@noc.social
       2025-12-23T22:06:26Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @m0xEEWhich VPN do you use to connect to the outside world?I'm wondering what I should use if and when the UK ever goes that way.@kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1YWLm5KjG52seuqsS by m0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.net
       2025-12-23T23:47:28Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @light@noc.socialI use Proton, I'm not sure I can still recommend it though. But not because of Andy Yen posting controversial takes on social media, but because in terms of overcoming censorship they are becoming not such a good tool. They seem to be more interested in their other products and with VPN they seem to be shifting away from using well-established protocols and third-party software you can use them with to "just use our app".They are prioritising WireGuard and their own Stealth protocol, which is WireGuart over TLS:https://protonvpn.com/support/discontinuing-openvpn-androidWireGuard is not a bad protocol, but it can be easily be filtered — in Russia on most days you can't expect it to work if you want to establish a connection to a host in another country, WireGuard-over-TLS/Stealth is not as easy to filter — it looks more like "legitimate" traffic, but right now it can only be used with their apps, you can't use it on a router.OpenVPN entry nodes get blocked too, but on IP-range basis, no one filters all OpenVPN connections, so for me the choice is obvious. However I need to figure out which entry nodes work for me — first this wasn't hard, I could just batch-download OpenVPN configuration files and find which work through trial and error. Proton removed the batch download option. You can still download configuration files one-by-one, but it's fucking ridiculous — I made my own tool which generated these files. Proton made the API endpoint non-public and my tool stopped working 🤦Okay, I can still use their app to figure out which entry points work, right? I could, it even had a nice option, which attempted connecting to them in random order — they've removed this function 😩And now they are phasing out support for OpenVPN from their apps, making downloading configurations manually the only option 🤬Right now I have a bunch of scripts that try different nodes and check if connection can be established and it still somehow works for me, but it's a mess — at this point I'm starting to have doubts: why do I have to jump through all these extra hoops instead of just renting a VPS in a jurisdiction without strict censorship and use it as my exit point.Even though it's less likely to happen — because it's not some popular VPN service and you are its only user, but in theory it can still get banned and you lose access to your VPN, and when you're using a VPN provider you have hundreds of others you can easily switch to, but on the other hand — many of them are likely already filtered.Each approach has pros and cons, but with Proton in particular — I'm just not sure it's worth the money for me, given that I even have to implement some stuff myself to fill the gap of removed functions and the fact that the company seems to have different priorities.I still like Proton — but in my case it simply doesn't get things done anymore. In any case, you can try and see if it works for you: their free tier AFAIR only requires an email address to sign up, and in free tier they offer exit points in Netherlands, US and Japan — it would likely be not good enough for 4k video streaming, but enough to read the news, browse forums or social media and even watch lightweight videos.@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       
 (DIR) Post #B1Z9DEIINKznyXtZ3Y by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       2025-12-24T05:36:28.258155Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @m0xEE As I understand this whitelist is for the Internet blackouts enforced during air raids. The whitelist logic implies even Wireguard should stop working during these blackouts, but how that works in practice you’ll need to check during an actual air raid :)
       
 (DIR) Post #B1Z9DFWrmeFHo1iiPI by m0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.net
       2025-12-24T07:02:47Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @kravietz@agora.echelon.plYeah, my point is — direct connection on Russian cell carriers is already pretty useless, since a lot of things are filtered, but as long as I could WireGuard home, I could live with that — if they take that away, why have mobile data at all?I doubt even loyalists are paying their ISPs and cell carriers to access Odnoklassniki and VK.Besides, this exists: http://duma.gov.ru/news/51827/You can file a request and your ISP has to provide access to state websites and banking for free, in regions where these whitelists get imposed for extensive periods, people would simply switch to cheaper plans or file such requests and stop paying their monthly fees. So the only thing they are going to achieve with whitelists is kill telcos outside big cities: people stop paying → telcos stop upgrading and maintaining their equipment → all communications but basic voice calling dies.And I don't even understand how this is supposed to help during air raids. Do they claim that a UAV is launched in Ukraine carrying a Russian cell carrier SIM-cards and they can't suppress it by other means of electronic warfare than Internet whitelist? What kind of bullshit is that?! Okay even if we assume that the UAV is indeed controlled via a Russian SIM-card, why don't they switch to Max, that is in the whitelist, as means of controls, they have a SIM-card anyway, so making an account shouldn't be a problem.I'm yet to find out how these whitelists work — usually restrictions in Moscow are more relaxed. Last time there was a real air raid they just shut the power off for everything but street lights. Most people don't know that air raid sirens do not exist in Moscow, so a lot of people went out to the streets wondering why there is a power outage on Saturday night. But I do — they stopped installing the equipment more than a decade ago, no one was expecting a war and Moscow's local authorities expect cellular communications to work to alert people about other dangers.That time there was no way to confirm it, but I started packing my cats and emergency supplies just in case. Eventually the power got gradually restored, but I still couldn't access network resources beyond my ISP, which is a couple of blocks away — a massive outage indeed. Some equipment kept running on backup power, but not everything and it's taken them two hours to get things up and running again.The next day the news confirmed that me packing bags was the right thing to do — it was a massive air raid, dozens of UAVs.Well, whitelists can't be worse than this, but I fail to see how they help. They expect people to start paying for surveillance, but they won't — no one is paying for VK Video and Max and if people can't access YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp, they would simply stop paying, telcos would run out of money. When POS terminals do not work most of the time, people resort to cash. If ridehailing apps start working poorly — people start using taxis the old way in face-to-face manner and with no unified point of data collection.The only thing they can achieve through imposing these whitelists is to kill off Internet communication and I'm not entirely sure it's what they want — because part of their massive surveillance would die with it, people only come to terms with it because it's more convenient than the way it was before, but if it gets unreliable they would simply stop and resort to the old ways.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZOzsVLfw3RtmekLI by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-24T09:48:18Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 @kravietz > What are people using to get around it?Xray+VLESS or Trojan. Tor bootstrap nodes and almost all bridges (which could be received through their website/e-mail/etc) are blocked. I2P hasn't access to the Clearnet, as I know.> unless they already have done so of courseIf I remember things right, at near 2022 there were some Chinese engineers, who worked in Moscow to help build the same system for our "three-letter agencies".
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZU2K5Gbfh9mhRSCG by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-24T10:56:36Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz Very interesting. Is it possible to setup Xray + Vless from the "inside" or does it require someone from the outside?
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZVy3sX7EiiH4a73g by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-24T11:18:09Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 I've heard about some "success stories" but I don't know the details. Possibly, those people just use some kind of not-well-known hosting providers, which IPs still not in the blacklists.The main problem here is not how to access the server outside of the country — there are still a lot of ways. The main problem is how to PAY for this server. Since fucking shitheads from #Visa and #MasterCard banned all the people inside the country from using their services for fucking virtue signaling (bc, if you are a bad guy and want to pay another bad guy — you obviously will not send your dirty money card2card, lol) — it became not so easy to buy the server outside of the country.And here the someone from the outside is required. You can send money in roubles to his/her relatives inside the Russia and (s)he pay some euros or dollars for your services like hosting provider, or domain name, or some goods, etc.Or you can use cryptocurrency, which saved a lot of people, since MasterCard/Visa became clowns and decided to help censoring the Internet.@kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZYbsylG7oVxgc0PY by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-24T11:47:51Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz But isn't the payment block  solved by pulling out of Ukraine? When it comes to the problem itself, I would have expected crypto to be the solution. Also a good method to ask friends/colleagues/family to pay for a server outside the region. If I used crypto and some old russian colleague I've worked with in the past asked me to help him, I would definitely do it.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1Ze25Dgs0tbE3uFYO by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-24T12:48:34Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 Oh, I don't know… I think, this block will stay almost forever, because it is very useful for Russian authorities. I'm pretty sure: when Visa and MasterCard notified the Russians about card bans — there were a lot of champagne bottles opened in the Kremlin. Because it is solved for them a lot of problems:1) A lot of Russians were cut from access to the Western sources of information, because they can't pay for servers/VPNs by the simple card-to-card transaction as it was done before.2) Some Russians lost their foreign jobs and big salaries — so the companies and the state became able to hire really good specialists, who simply doesn't have a choice and have a family.3) A lot of people became cut from the Western goods, like clothes, shoes, electronics, etc — so they have no choice, but buy "domestic" (i.e. Chinese) "goods", leaving more money in the pocket of the government.etc…@kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZgKBIbCrZPCVxZL6 by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-24T13:14:17Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz Ahhh... invaluable perspective that is completely absent from western media. I deeply thank you for this. This shows the power of the fediverse and how it sometimes does a far better job than the mainstream media.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZgONCCuqwdFyy8TQ by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-24T13:15:02Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz How do you think russia will be able ot get rid of Putin? And what would your worst, and best scenario be for russias future in 10 years time?
       
 (DIR) Post #B1Zi0Q6gdpF7F95oYq by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-24T13:33:03Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 @kravietz Sorry, but I can't answer to these questions — I think any answer potentially could be represented as an "extremism", "terrorism" and "calls for the overthrow of the state system" by the any interrogator who wants to close the plan for the closed crimes (and imprisoned citizens, ofc). Especially at the end of the year ;-)Even in the private mentions — any database can be leaked, any system could be penetrated.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ZyLd7n2F4kxtkDFA by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-24T16:36:14Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz I'm sorry to hear that. =( Very understandable given the current situation, and very sad. Let me at least wish you a merry christmas and the hope for a good 2026!
       
 (DIR) Post #B1a2euyZHwUXeGsqdk by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-24T17:24:29Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 @kravietz Thank you, and I wish the merry christmas for you too! :drgn_happy_blep:
       
 (DIR) Post #B1a50p06Nuh3ObAnvk by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       2025-12-24T12:47:49.066551Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandrBut Tor into Russia seems to be working, I’m sometimes using exit nodes in Russia to get geofenced content. Maybe they keep them for their own use too?
       
 (DIR) Post #B1a50qKLS8TpVfeU7c by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-24T12:58:21Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @kravietz Call me the paranoid but I'm pretty sure — these Tor nodes belongs to the our "three-letter" agencies.Any Russian, who knows something about Tor and/or the news (see the criminal case of Dmitry Bogatov: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/24/dmitry-bogatov-tor-russia/) — will not host the Tor node in the home or at the local datacenter — because connection to the ISP or bought server are matches with our government-issued IDs. It is almost impossible to connect to the ISP or buy a server anonymously inside the country (for a usual citizen).
       
 (DIR) Post #B1a50rWR0fkFDSJebY by m0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.net
       2025-12-24T17:50:05Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr@bsd.cafe @kravietz@agora.echelon.plTo my surprise, some of these nodes literally have it in their name: https://nosh0b10.m0xee.net/m0xEE/p/1765715086.805045Cozy Bear is APT with known GRU ties, lolAlso I believe they stopped filtering TOR just a few months ago, before it it was nearly impossible for it to gather enough info to reach connectivity, which made me think well-known nodes used to be hard blocked even on my home ISP, which takes a rather hands-off approach to traffic filtering.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1aVM7o4G1xSbvMZmK by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-24T22:46:05Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz Thank you. =)
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ba6zT3fmK9Kj6BQe by older@mstdn.social
       2025-12-25T10:10:14Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr It is absolutely not true that "there's no choice". I personally know many russians who, instead of working for the evil government, in 2022 desided to move to Georgia/Armenia etc. and keep their high-paid remote jobs. Many of them say opposite - there was no choice except leaving russia.On the other hand, Ukrainians who have to defend their homes and bein bombed by russia on a daily basis - don't have a choice.@h4890 @kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1ba70q8ZSNZaau82a by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-25T11:14:02Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @older @evgandr @kravietz My opinion is that everyones life situation is different. Some leave, some don't. Why? I can imagine many reasons. Sick parents, friends, the feeling of "f*ck you Putin, this is my land and you are not gonna force me to leave", children, etc. I have met exile russians in my local bar, wonderful people, and I have an old colleague who has relatives who remain, and they are frustrated and angry with Putin, but naturally do not dare to say so, since they value their lives. I see, among many people in the west, a complete inability to keep Putin, the war in ukraine, and regular russians apart. They all often get lumped together, as if all russians support Putin. My old colleague for instance, lost his job because he was russian and his employer did not like that. Completely illegal, but he got a new job with a 30% raise so all was well, and naturally I helped him with a brilliant reference. One last thought on this subject is that I often wonder how many russians would support Putin if they had free access to news and information? Propaganda is a powerful tool, and the russian countryside is far away from the west.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1bc1BNQgJzURKpA2K by older@mstdn.social
       2025-12-25T11:35:25Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890You have, of course, a right to your opinion even when it is a wrong one. Basing your opinion on some small subset of people who left the country and who you meat personally is realy not a good way to build an opinion.Anyway, it is remarkable how even in this situation, russians manage to present themselves as a victims. The same day their country bombed critical infrastructure and killed several civilians in Ukraine.@kravietz@evgandr
       
 (DIR) Post #B1bjAWTAKRsE8tuMd6 by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-25T12:55:31Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 > but naturally do not dare to say so, since they value their livesThis. If you "say something" and have relatives in the Russia — they will get problems: a lot of searches, which usually starts at the early morning, possibly the seizure of all tech (to "find some sedition things"), interrogations, etc.> I often wonder how many russiansI think, only the old ones, who lived in the USSR for a long time, and have some kind of resentment after it's fall, and think that "hard hand" is the best method to manage masses.I remember the times at 200x — we weren't so homophobic and close-minded — all of these happened definitely because only the one source of information was left, which played well on the resentment of old generations and the lack of historical education of the youth.BTW, history teaching in schools is a shit IMHO, fully occupied by the teachers from the old generations. So. you can imagine which worldviews they set in the heads of children. The young teachers usually prefer not to work at school because there are extremely toxic atmosphere (my grandmother was a principal and my mother was a teacher, so I saw a lot :drgn_flat_sob: )@older @kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1cXlMoy9wIudprvlI by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-25T22:22:29Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @older @kravietz @evgandr Can you present empirical evidence for why my opinion is wrong?
       
 (DIR) Post #B1cYOTAkTm1XdKhYFE by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       2025-12-25T06:10:43.407689Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @h4890 It’s not “virtue signalling”, it’s the first line of defense to prevent your enemy from using your system. Because it’s so simple, it’s also mandatory even if not 100% effective.When RT could buy their disinformation campaigns on X and FB directly with their Visa debit cards that not only reduced their operational costs but simply ridiculed the whole idea of Western regulations.They were literally boasting about it, like Lenin’s “the bourgeois will sell us the rope on which we’ll hang them”. So now they can’t.They can bypass it to some extent, so what? If you reduce their purchasing capacity by 50% commissions and volatility on cryptocurrency and other money laundering schemes, you’ve reduced their disinformation campaign output by 50%. Doesn’t sound bad for me. We’re at war. And that “ordinary Russians” are also suffering too? Sorry, they should have thought about it in 2012 and before, when they still had some influence on who’s in power. I know you’re not one of them and I appreciate you speaking here, but vast majority of your compatriots either didn’t give a shit or openly supported Putin’s “heavy hand” course. Choices have consequences – just like their absence.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1cYOUQNp87lW71YFk by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-25T11:56:13Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @kravietz> And that “ordinary Russians” are also suffering too?Ugh, there is some misunderstanding, I think. I always forget that I'm actively evading any communication with "ordinary Russians" and tend to lock myself in the "inner emigration", limiting my contacts with various computer tinkerers and some old good friends.Most of the people (maybe 80%, maybe 90%, I don't remember) don't have the special passport to travel outside of the country or have it and travel only to the Turkish resorts (where you were able to rest without Visa/MasterCard). And don't have experience in making purchases of foreign goods in the any foreign store or website (except AliExpress). So this Visa/MasterCard block weren't noticed by the most of the population and was used inside the country to support the narrative: "The global West are hates us and doing anything to make some shit for us, but we are strong and united!"So, this ban affected only those citizens, who didn't accept this cool-stories about "the West was always our enemy" and actively traveled to the EU or bought Western goods. This sounds for me as a "shot in the leg" from the side of Western diplomacy.> in 2012Too late. The laws against protests and protest organizers were already created. Before? Maybe, but people who lived in poverty since 1917 found that they able to not live in poverty and were actively filling the lower levels of Maslow's pyramide, which were empty all the time. When these levels were filled and people started to think about higher levels — e.g. representation in power — it became too late ;-(.I read some books about the history of some authoritarian regimes in the world and found that there is a common pattern. When some authoritarian/totalitarian regime was fallen or destroyed — then there is some period of "historical upheavals" caused by the legacy of this regime. Then, some authoritarian leader using this time period to blame the democracy and using some sort of resentment to get into the power. After that we got another authoritarian regime and only when/if it ends — people have some possibility to make all the things right. Or go to the second/third iteration if there are no support from the rest of the world.@h4890
       
 (DIR) Post #B1cYOVXrenhczbX2YK by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-25T22:29:27Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @kravietz This is very interesting. On could think about, is it possible to enforce democracy from outside? Or is democracy something which has to be "won" or claimed, in blood? Looking at arabia, and comparing with western europe, it does seem to me that democracy can never be enforced from without. If it does not naturally emerge from within, authoritarians will always step up, blame the foreigners and their democracy (cleptocracy?) and impose their own will again. Looking at russia, you had the tsars, then the communists, who were nothing but secularized tsars, then the west clumsily tried to enforce democracy through the drunk bear, and it is difficult to imagine a worse candidate, and then Putin slowly came to power. If Putin disappeared tomorrow, I would think that there would be a silent civil wars among his closest men. I do not think there is an appointed crown prince at the moment in order to secure a calm transition of power.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1cZqPTfuSKCEkROt6 by evgandr@mastodon.bsd.cafe
       2025-12-25T12:42:08Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @older > It is absolutely not true that "there's no choice"Oh, I can tell my story as a russian, who didn't managed to emigrate. First of all, before the Visa/MasterCard/SWIFT ban I thought about it. There were simple steps:0) Find a job in the desired country.1) Sell my apartment and all other goods.2) Pay a lot of money for the visa with working permit, for the healthcare in the new country, for the language exams (in case of GB), for the apartments rent, etc.3) Send rest of the money to the new country to have some funds for life.3) Pack things4) LeaveThen, there were established the aforementioned bans and I started to receive stories how russians, who even live as expats for a long time in e.g. Germany — got bans of their accounts based on their citizenship and in some cases even on the nationality (have a residence permit and a Russian name/surname — all you money are blocked in the bank, lol).While I was thinking about how to evade these new problems (skipping the one and a half of the year with an un-diagnosed depression) — the other countries' governments came up with new laws to make it difficult to move outside of Russia. So for now emigration is possible only if:1) You already have a lot of money and/or some relatives or good friends outside of the country, who able to help you and provide you some money and/or place to live. And the local laws of the selected country allows you to live enough time inside the country to search for the job (remember about current crisis in the IT jobs market).2) You have some cases in the past, which allows you to became a political refugee. And you are still not in the jail, lol.Why I'm not emigrated before 2022? I thought that we have a time and a future. It was a mistake. Ah, and also I had a job with 200 $ / month salary and a credits till 2016 so my savings were not in the good shape.Obviously, there was a choice — if you have money. If you don't have money — you don't have a choice (except became a homeless person).> russians manage to present themselves as a victimsBecause it is. Since 1917 no one in the world were interested about how we live (or survive). All this shit happens because rich 1st world countries gave zero fucks about what happens inside the USSR/Russia while the oil streaming outside.Even for now, politicians prefer to bite the ordinary Ivans, not the people in power — because it is simpler. The ordinary Ivan is meek and not even a citizen or refugee, so he will not do anything to protect himself — the ideal target. But people in power — they are scary, have a lot of money and the nuclear weapons, so it is easier to bite the ordinary Ivan and gain political points from it.@h4890 @kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1cZqQIMrysGly9su0 by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-25T22:45:47Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @older @kravietz "All this shit happens because rich 1st world countries gave zero fucks about what happens inside the USSR/Russia while the oil streaming outside."This is the truth. The EU is still happily buying oil and gas from russia, and weak EU politicians proceed according to the path of least resistance. They send money to ukraine, and let ukraine deal with the shit, while still buying oil and gas from russia. If the west would really care about the russian people, they would have joined the war on several fronts at the beginning, and the war would be over within half a year. Wagner advanced to moscow without any serious resistance and that shows how quickly the west would have won the war. Instead, as you say, the west pisses on the people, send money to ukraine to keep from feeling its bad conscience, and generally does very little to actually make the life of Putin hard. Putin will not care about the people unless they actually start to starve in the streets. The people will, I assume, do nothing until they have nothing to lose. So I think this makes perfect sense. I must also hasten to add that I am a libertarian at heart, so I think all nations are unethical and repressive to some degree. Putins russia is now close to one extreme, and the west is less repressive, but still based on violence in the end like all modern nations.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1caCND71GLvZnAPAG by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-25T22:49:46Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr @older @kravietz I have experienced the same in my little corner of eastern europe. The older people who are 55+ and _especially_ the ones who had parents who were high in the communist party, yearn for the past when they were kings and could live by exploiting the people. Now, in todays "western" eastern europe, they all have to work like commoners. When their parents were communist party members, there were favours, power, they could ignore the law, bribes etc. and they feel cheated of this power. So they resent the west and yearn for all the power they would have had if the soviet union would not have collapsed. I remember a story from one guy who's parents were high ranking communists, when he turned 18 he got a car as a birthday present. Imagine getting a car when you are 18 in the soviet union. That is how high his parents were in the communist party. Then he crashed the car into the gymnasium of his school and was expelled. A quick call from his parents, and he was back again in school. This man is very bitter that he now has to work on the capitalist market instead of coasting along like his parents did.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1caMP0tAg9m40EQT2 by older@mstdn.social
       2025-12-25T13:46:24Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @evgandr Thank you for writing all this. Exactly what I'm talking about. Russian is always a victim in their eyes, never a perpetrator. Everyone is to blame - 1st world countries, the evil government etc. Ordinary russian has no agency and can tell you numerous sob stories about hardships they have to endure.Ukrainians killed by russia in their sleep at home have no stories to tell.@h4890 @kravietz
       
 (DIR) Post #B1caMQ1dPOLbCbaXGi by h4890@alive.bar
       2025-12-25T22:51:34Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @older @evgandr @kravietz There is no "russian" there are only individuals with different choices and different lives. Judging everyone as a collective seldom results in justice. Another thing to keep in mind is that yes ukraine is horrible, but that does not matter when we are discussing the situation of russia. Two wrongs does not make one right. That is just "what about:ism" and is not a very good debating technique.
       
 (DIR) Post #B1dO0HE6RBNvFa3VdA by older@mstdn.social
       2025-12-26T08:07:49Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @h4890 That's a lot of writing to put blame for the war on anyone except where it belongs - the russian people.The west could do more but it does not change the fact. Listen to what Kasparov keeps saying:https://kyivindependent.com/garry-kasparov-without-decisive-military-defeat-there-wont-be-change-in-russia/@evgandr @kravietz