[HN Gopher] Russians are trying to flee - data from Google Trends
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Russians are trying to flee - data from Google Trends
Author : awb
Score : 336 points
Date : 2022-03-05 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| ridaj wrote:
| Instead of Google trends, it would be interesting to see how this
| shows up in geolocation datasets
| mkl95 wrote:
| There's nothing surprising about it. There is at least one
| recent, well documented case of mass emigration due to the
| economic collapse of an authoritarian regime. Millions of people
| have left Venezuela since the late 2000s [1]. Considering Russia
| is barely richer than Spain whilst having 3x the population and
| the fact it's about to get much worse, I would expect millions of
| Russians to leave in the next few years.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela
| formvoltron wrote:
| Seems like now could be a smart time to get back to Venezuela.
| Where are these 10M barrels going to come from for the west?
| And now you have Saudis not entirely taking USA's side in this
| conflict.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You'd have to capture Venezuela and install American or Saudi
| oil companies to make it work. The Venezuelan petro
| infrastructure is in complete disarray. Active rigs in that
| country hit zero and production was near zero at the end of
| 2020.
|
| Anyway, pumping out Venezuela is the worst idea imaginable.
| That carbon needs to stay in the ground. If you want to stick
| it to the Russians, deploy a national workforce installing
| solar panels all over Germany and Italy, then dynamite the
| Russian gas pipelines.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Dynamite them now. You could heat all of Europe with a
| yatch tax
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| tiny nitpick: immigration -> emigration
| hatsubishi wrote:
| Spain is a very rich country though, 10th in the world by total
| wealth. What you're comparing is the current GDP, which is a
| different thing than being rich, it's production. In Spain
| production may be lower but still people enjoy a great quality
| of life because they are living of the wealth generated before,
| i.e. everything is extremely cheap including real estate.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> wealth generated before_
|
| Yeah, "generated".
| rmbyrro wrote:
| "Generated"... by Africans and South Americans. But
| yesterday it was OK to do what Russia is doing now.
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| Ah yes generated at least 200 years ago and were
| absolutely untouched during a Civil War and 2 worl wars
| destroying Europe
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| > everything is extremely cheap including real estate
|
| If you have the salary of SV sure, the real state is cheap
| but for those working and living in Spain it is not
| [deleted]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| And consider throughout history what people have done when
| their government got more authoritarian and their nation's
| economy collapsed. Or just when the latter happens.
|
| I am quite intrigued at those who doubt this of all stories.
| itwillnotbeasy wrote:
| Leaving not because of the crimes of the current regime but
| because of the sanctions affecting their quality of life. I had
| many online "friends" and distant relatives from Russia, and most
| of them is like "not my business", i don't care about politics,
| even when you show pictures with all horrors of war. The other
| part is like: I'm against this, but what can we do, it's too
| risky to protest, i can get arrested for 14 days. Whereas in
| Ukraine: unarmed people stopping tanks at risk of being killed.
| Mind-blowing how different our nations is. So don't worry much
| about people who can't leave country now, they are complicit in
| their inaction no less than the regime itself.
| justinator wrote:
| "Russians are trying to flee Putin's chaos"
|
| We all are.
| [deleted]
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Haven't read the article but it's true that people are leaving.
| Some IT companies are relocating their employees in a company-
| wide efforts.
|
| Obviously not an option for everyone. The sanctions will be
| hardest for people will low income e.g. elderlies without family
| to support them.
|
| Also in the last 10-15 years there was quite a (non-governmental)
| movement to support kids with rare diseases or generally with
| complicated conditions. This becomes much more complicated I
| guess if just for the FX rate.
| peter_retief wrote:
| I dont blame them, South Africa is quite far away and friendly to
| Russians.
| [deleted]
| alex239 wrote:
| I am trying to find a way to escape now, and it gets harder every
| day. Land borders are still closed for a formal reason (COVID)
| and most likely will never open again.
|
| Unfortunately state television (the only television available for
| the most people) has been persistently making an enemy out of
| Ukraine since 2014. I don't know how it works, but propaganda can
| erase brains. The elderly and the poorly educated peolple really
| think that Ukraine is full of fascists and nazis who kill
| Russians. Orwell as is. it's horrible. On the other hand my
| friend who was protesting against the war was severely beaten by
| the police.
|
| The most disgusting thing is that Putin has apparently lost touch
| with reality and can really press the button. He has absolute
| power in Russia. He is a psychopath. Things are very bad.
| SSLy wrote:
| My acquaintance escaped via bus to Estonia yesterday.
| user-one1 wrote:
| For any Russians reading this, Uruguay has an open border policy
| for immigrants who want to come to live here. There's already a
| small Russian community here and it will be easy to settle.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'd be wary of hoping for a popular revolt against Putin-
| _typically_ when people in a country feel under attack they rally
| in support of whoever the leadership is. Look at George bush's
| approval rating right after 9 /11. When people are scared they
| look to whoever is in charge to protect them. This _might_ be an
| exception to the extent that Russians feel that the wounds were
| self-inflicted. But they may also start calling for retaliation
| against the west, if they feel that their country is being
| attacked unfairly. It's hard to say.
| optimalonpaper wrote:
| No one thinks that a regular Ivan from some russian city (on his
| own) is responsible for the war and should suffer. And I see how
| you could (and probably should, at some level) feel sorry for
| russians fleeing the country.
|
| But this is the only way to tell them that they -- collective
| Ivans, Russian society as a whole -- should stand up and act:
| they should articulate their content, they should protest against
| putin's policy, and they should stop the war (an alternative
| would be to accept Ukraine to NATO and finish this war is a day,
| but that won't happen).
|
| While they're suffering economically, the suffering of Ukrainians
| is just on another level -- it's not about restrictions (e.g. no
| ikea or facebook or apple products) or money (inflation), it's
| about flattened cities and destroyed lives.
|
| I woke up as I heard bombs falling on my city, and I definitely
| haven't felt any sympathy for russians since then.
|
| If they feel they don't support their country's aggression
| towards Ukraine, they should go protest and stop it -- even at
| risk of being fined or imprisoned. Otherwise they should just
| embrace all sanctions and become North Korea imho.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Acting in Russia puts you in a very dangerous situation.
| Already protestors are being jailed, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if the military starts firing at or bombing or
| gassing protestors. Someone who starts war like this doesn't
| respect civilian life, Ukrainian or Russian.
|
| Would you, personally, put your life at risk just to be one
| more protestor?
|
| I agree that Russians should stand up to Putin, but honestly
| it's a lot easier and likely more effective to do this outside
| of Russia.
|
| And also, targeting and blaming Russians as a whole is exactly
| _not_ what we need. The difference is a war against Russia vs a
| war against Putin and the high-level officials. Ordinary
| Russians didn't cause this and are victims similar to the
| Ukrainians. Even if they don't have it as bad, they're
| suffering greatly.
| pilate wrote:
| What life are they trying to preserve? Russia will be living
| in the Stone Age for the next several decades if this doesn't
| end soon.
| diordiderot wrote:
| What are they gonna do? Arrest everyone. Eventually the
| enforcers will get tired of it too
| optimalonpaper wrote:
| > Would you, personally, put your life at risk just to be one
| more protestor?
|
| I could share you a video of unarmed Ukrainians protesting
| against russian invasion today in Kherson in front of russian
| tanks.
|
| If I felt I was responsible for the country I live in, for
| the president I elected (and who decided to invade another
| country without any reason), I would put my life at 'risk'
| (realistically, would be fined or detained for a few days,
| not killed or jailed). And besides, the more people
| participate, the less risks are involved. So really it's up
| to them.
|
| > honestly it's a lot easier and likely more effective to do
| this outside of Russia
|
| but you all see the enormous and unprecedented support that
| the whole world give to Ukraine, you see all of these
| gathering in every major city of every major Western country
| -- and yet it doesn't effect putin sadly. So easier - yes,
| but more effective - I doubt it...
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Judging by the number of Russians taking the easy way out by
| just fleeing or complaining about the evil west closing their
| Ikea stores this nation at the moment has zero capacity to take
| responsibility for their own government.
|
| I'm afraid it has to get much worse before it gets better. They
| still don't understand that as much as the government is
| responsible for its people, the people are also responsible for
| their government.
|
| Putin didn't magically appear on the political scene with all
| the power he has now. Russians allowed Putin to happen; now
| they refuse to take responsibility.
| vlaaad wrote:
| Why would I take responsibility for something I have zero
| influence over?
|
| He did just appear when Yeltsin said that he's leaving. He
| blatantly fakes elections: 146% support is a very telling
| result of one of these elections. It is a meme in Russia
| because when you can't do anything about it you can only
| laugh or cry.
|
| His 20 years on the throne are a constant stream of murders,
| poisoning and jailing of people who try to do something about
| it, and their friends, and their families.
|
| I'm just a normal person, I want to live a normal live with
| my wife and kids, I didn't choose any of that. Why do I have
| to risk going to jail for 15 years for mentioning that war is
| war, only because I was born on the wrong side of the border?
| pilate wrote:
| Your prospects of a "normal life" are over. Whether you
| decide to do anything to improve it now is up to you.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > Why would I take responsibility for something I have zero
| influence over?
|
| Well, nothing will ever change in Russia even post-Putin
| with that mindset. And Russia's neighbors will pay the
| price of this passive attitude.
|
| Other European nations are definitely showing more
| responsibility. This is just disappointing.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Easy for us in the West to show responsibility when it's
| not our and our families' lives that are on the line. Our
| non-willingness (if political decisions can be considered
| collective, as so many here imply for Russia) to die is
| made obvious by the fact no one nation dares put a boot
| on the ground while Ukraine gets leveled.
| ip26 wrote:
| It may actually be worse for Ukraine if NATO and Russia
| were to face off there. I'm no authority, but a showdown
| might be even more destructive.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Or maybe it's the certainty of global nuclear
| annihilation and the end of humanity as we know it
|
| But you're probably right, the selfish cowards things
| makes sense. I guess that's why we haven't gone to war
| since 1945... Oh wait
| BbzzbB wrote:
| FWIW I'm not arguing we should, I just find it
| hypocritical to say Europeans (which I'll extrapolate to
| the rest of us in the West) are taking responsibility as
| opposed to Russians when we are doing so from the comfort
| of our intact living rooms.
| awb wrote:
| Large scale military invasions don't happen because of 1
| person's will. They happen as a chain of events that offer
| direct or indirect support that makes it possible. We are
| all in that chain. From the leader, to their government, to
| their funding sources, to the citizens.
|
| Do you not speak up? Do you pay taxes? Do you support state
| run businesses? Do you go along with the system as it
| violently oppressed others and assassinated dissidents? We
| all have some responsibility to bear.
|
| I understand you want a normal, peaceful life, but that is
| not what the world has chosen for you.
|
| You can't be neutral on a moving train.
|
| The question is how badly do you want things to change?
| What are you willing to do to break your part in the chain?
|
| If the answer is nothing, then you're exactly the kind of
| citizen a dictator wants. One that will acquiesce as things
| get worse and worse, while still keeping the trains running
| on time and willing to look the other way.
| diordiderot wrote:
| >I want to live a normal live with my wife and kids
|
| That's what Ukrainians want and unfortunately that's not an
| option for them, and now it isn't one for you either. Putin
| has taken that away from you.
|
| The faster Russians realize that their fate is in their own
| hands the better. It's a collective action problem, Putin
| can't arrest everyone.
|
| You won't live a normal life until he's gone so the
| question is, how do you make that happen sooner?
|
| Easy way: General strike, 5% of people quit working,
| government will change. It will require personal sacrifice,
| and be a thankless task. No justified violence in response.
|
| It's unlikely people care enough to make that sacrifice,
| therefore, sanctions.
|
| Sanctions exist to make the cost of doing nothing more than
| the cost of taking action.
|
| Medium way: Help accelerate discontent through low stakes
| capital sabotage. Pop tires, cut wires, set fires(didn't
| mean for these to all rhyme) break anything you can get
| away with.
|
| Hard way: let Russia build up national industry and suffer
| 3rd world standards of living through your childrens entire
| childhood until Putin dies, wait as Russia is engulfed in a
| bloody internal power struggle and hope the good guys win
| optimalonpaper wrote:
| > I'm just a normal person, I want to live a normal live
| with my wife and kids, I didn't choose any of that.
|
| That's what 2000+ civilians who died since 24th of February
| felt and wanted. They didn't choose to die. But they died.
| And more will follow if you don't start acting (not you but
| you as a society, you as a group of normal people who want
| a normal life). And so this is why you have to risk
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Well you can move abroad
| axg11 wrote:
| I see both sides to this. Yes, Russians should protest against
| the horrible actions of their government.
|
| On the other hand, if you're an average Russian with few/no
| international ties, would you really risk protesting against a
| government with a demonstrated track record of murdering
| dissidents and imprisoning protestors?
|
| NATO/the West is choosing to worsen the lives of 144 million
| Russian citizens due to the actions of ~several hundred people.
| I don't disagree with the sanctions but we also shouldn't
| pretend that it is a just or fair course of action. Sanctions
| are the best tool that we have, out of a selection of poor
| tools.
| adventured wrote:
| > NATO/the West is choosing to worsen the lives of 144
| million Russian citizens due to the actions of ~several
| hundred people.
|
| That's the single biggest falsehood of this whole thing
| propaganda wise: that the Russian people aren't responsible
| for what's going on.
|
| The Russian people are responsbile for their culture, which
| keeps producing and promoting authoritarianism, decade after
| decade, generation after generation, century after century.
|
| Oh those poor Russian people, applauding Putin when times
| were good, cheering the increase in Russian might, cheering
| the annexation of Crimea, rah rah rah. Oh no, Putin has gone
| into Ukraine, who could have seen it coming!?! It's all
| bullshit, they cheered him on. Putin's popularity went way up
| with the annexation of Crimea, so he's doing it again on a
| greater level, he's repeating what worked last time with the
| Russian people - they love conquest and the return of glory
| for the Russian empire. These are important beliefs of the
| Russian culture and Putin is very aware of that. Putin fed
| them endless images of strength, all those ridiculous photos
| of him pretending to be strong doing a thing, it was all
| propaganda for his people (now ask yourself why it worked,
| why that propaganda; because Putin understands very well the
| Russian culture and what to feed it).
|
| They are responsible.
| ugjka wrote:
| Would you say in the same vein that North Koreans are
| responsible for the dictatorship they are living in?
| optimalonpaper wrote:
| To the same degree that russians are responsible for the
| political regime they live under -- it's the result of
| their inactivity and tolerance of the horrific things
| that are happening right now, no?
|
| Of course if you're in North Korea, it's much much harder
| (if possible at all) to do anything. But unless russians
| wake up soon, they're heading in the same direction as
| North Korea for sure.
|
| So they should act before they become North Korea, act
| whilst they can
| tsol wrote:
| And western people are responsible for a culture that
| colonizes half the world. Why do you always escape
| punishment?
| mancerayder wrote:
| ColonizeD half the world.
|
| There've been empires for many thousands of years, and
| for a number of decades now (we can't say a century yet),
| there haven't really been any. There've been foreign
| interventions and neo-colonialist activities and
| exploitation, but on the grand scale, and relative to all
| of the past, you have to be honest and admit the worst is
| over. There's a complete culture shift in countries like
| Britain and France which, by the way, have a large number
| of immigrants, and specifically from their ex-colonies.
| These folks vote, and without a large amount of
| propaganda, people don't readily want to bomb other
| countries.
|
| Point is, there is a lot less rampant hawkish nationalism
| than there was in the middle of the 20th century, where
| the mores were very different as was the foreign policy.
| We're not perfect, but we've evolved.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| First of all - most of the countries recognized their
| mistakes and got rid of governments pushing for such
| things.
|
| Secondly - many ghosts of the past are still torment
| western countries (e.g. last year BLM protests), and in
| general they are at least recognized as a problem, by
| general population, not that stubbornly deflected and
| "whatabouted" as we can observe now in Russia.
|
| BTW I'm not westerner. I'm living far closer to the
| Russia, than I would prefer to - because honestly whole
| world moved ahead, and in general got better (admittedly
| very inconsistently), and Russia is well... Russia - same
| for as long as I know.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| All the polls in Russia show more than half the population
| supports the special military operations in Russia.
|
| So it's way more than a few hundred. Not to mention the
| hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are literally invading
| Ukraine right now.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Not sure how legit the polls are. However, most of the
| people will support security and safety over freedom.
| Supporting war seems to be the only safe of living under
| Putin's regime.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > All the polls in Russia show more than half the
| population supports the special military operations in
| Russia.
|
| When dissent, both personal and published, is criminalized,
| that less than half of people will tell a stranger
| promising anonymity and purporting to represent a media
| organization that they dissent doesn't mean anything like
| that less than half of people actually dissent.
|
| Opinion polling can be problematic in a liberal democracy
| with a strong tradition of freedom of political opinion and
| expression, but in regimes that aren't it is beyond
| problematic.
| opportune wrote:
| Yeah, it's unreasonable to expect everybody in a corrupt
| regime to sacrifice their life to stop it. At least Russia is
| not stopping them from leaving.
|
| These Russians leaving their country is still a "vote with
| your feet" type of play. It hurts the regime of Russia to
| have professionals leave, especially since the people who
| leave are more likely to be more skilled. It's better than
| doing nothing at all.
| optimalonpaper wrote:
| > if you're an average Russian with few/no international
| ties, would you really risk protesting against a government
| with a demonstrated track record of murdering dissidents and
| imprisoning protestors?
|
| I think one has to decide what's important for them -- if I
| think that my participation in collective action (protest)
| could somehow prevent or stop killing of other people, then I
| think I would try at least (and if I knew there were other
| people who I can rely on, who share the same feelings that I
| have). In this case, if nothing changes, at least I know I
| did all I could, but if it works (in best case scenario),
| then the war is over. Worth risking right?
|
| This is how the Revolution of Dignity happened in Ukraine:
| you just knew you had to act -- and act as a group not as an
| individual -- when the president you elected have failed your
| nation (and before running away he also proposed fines and
| imprisonment for those who took part in protests, so there
| were risks obviously).
|
| > I don't disagree with the sanctions but we also shouldn't
| pretend that it is a just or fair course of action. Sanctions
| are the best tool that we have, out of a selection of poor
| tools.
|
| Completely agree
| tyrfing wrote:
| Putin has popular support, and there's no evidence that
| Russians are against the war. This sort of argument is about
| as intellectually dishonest as saying Trump didn't represent
| the US. Factually, he did. A small minority fleeing the
| country isn't evidence that everyone opposes the country's
| leadership, and most of the anecdotes from Russians are about
| avoiding personal involvement - the fear is of being drafted
| into the war.
|
| edit: I know this is an unpopular point, but there is just
| zero basis for saying that Putin isn't supported by his
| country. He absolutely is, which makes the situation much
| more complicated.
| optimalonpaper wrote:
| This might be true (as horrible as it sounds - and many
| people in Ukraine think exactly this), but I still hope
| that a vocal minority acting together could start something
| new - and then we could see another, better Russia (Russia
| that returns Crimea, Donbass, and don't start new wars).
| pelasaco wrote:
| The only people that can stop Putin are the russian People.
| verygreen9487 wrote:
| I find it strange that so many people in these threads keep
| saying things like "go home and fight putin." Imagine if this had
| been the western response to the German physicists to whom we
| offered refuge before/during World War II. When the intellectual
| capital of your enemy is trying to come over to your side,
| turning them away out of spite isn't "being tough" or "holding
| people accountable" - it's just counterproductive.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Solid take. We should offer visas with moving bonus for every
| stem master / phd
| jmyeet wrote:
| Russia is seizing foreign currency reserves (effectively, by
| forcing conversion to the ruble) held by average Russian
| citizens. These sanctions are going to be a bad time for them.
| There are no military options so what else can you do? Still, we
| shouldn't forget that sanctions are a form of collective
| punishment that disproportionately affect average citizens.
|
| My faint glimmer of hope here is that the West finally takes
| actions to stop enabling oligarchs and they can start with
| denying them real estate in Western urban centers (primarily
| London and NYC). The UK too could enforce disclosure of who the
| beneficial owner is for an LLC, something they're meant to do but
| are incredibly lax about.
|
| The US in pareticular seems to be compltely fine with civil
| forfeiture (which, for the record, is a disgusting practice that
| targets people who can't fight back). The least we could do is
| seize the assets of oligarchs, particularly when identified as
| having enriched themselves from state theft.
|
| I'm not that hopeful.
|
| As for the Russians trying to escape, I would too, just like I
| would if I were in Ukraine right now. Best of luck to both
| groups.
| samstave wrote:
| May someone ELI5 what a 'Reserve' is exactly, and how it
| relates to common folk?
| roveo wrote:
| It's a huge pile of money and other stuff (like gold) that
| the central bank can sell if the want to support the Ruble.
| Basically they sell dollars and buy rubles on the open market
| to keep the price from falling.
| tiahura wrote:
| The EU needs to do something about Cyprus.
| samstave wrote:
| Do ypu recall when RUssian oligarch assets were seized in
| Cyprus as it was their 'carribean' money laundering banking
| system.
|
| Cyprus is literally the hoard of Russian oligarchs, yet I am
| sure they have been divesting from Cyprus to other locales..
| of which were exposed in Panama Papers..
|
| "the bank of switzerland is seizing accounts" (lit just
| reported n NPR)
|
| ---
|
| the author of the book on klepto is talking about laundering
| wealth via anon companies to "park" (his words) wealth in
| straight economies.
|
| "there is an entire industry servicing kleptokrats from
| across the world"
|
| --
|
| Deleware being a core component t money laundering...
|
| Kleptopia...
| tiahura wrote:
| Agreed, but my understanding is that Cyprus also sells EU
| citizenship.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| >> My faint glimmer of hope here is that the West finally takes
| actions to stop enabling oligarchs and they can start with
| denying them real estate in Western urban centers
|
| Recently, Italy seized real estate and other properties of
| Russian oligarchs and their lackeys, worth ~$150M.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Wish they'd start doing the same with our own oligarchs.
| Every superyacht is a crime against our children. The amount
| of resources those absorb that could have been spent
| combating global warming, on health care, on housing, is just
| absolutely disgusting. Not to mention the 10000 dollar
| bottles of champagne, the massive mansions.. so gross.
|
| And if you don't think we have oligarchs.. why do you think
| you pay 200 dollars for a vial of insulin? Where do you think
| all that money goes?
| jotm wrote:
| They need to be properly taxed, but then again they are the
| ones making the rules, so that's hard...
|
| However all the luxury shit is made by "normal" people,
| there's a lot of profit in selling $1000 bottles of wine
| and underpants to the idiots who would buy them.
| samstave wrote:
| I have always been amazed that there is not an org that
| specifically seeks to scuttle super yachts.
|
| Bezos $500 million dollar yacht is an example (dismantle a
| bridge to get the yacht through, where is the talk about
| re-mantleing said bridge, did it make it better? Stronger?
| Refresh components?)
|
| Regardless, if youre issues' require actions against, mega
| yachts should be target #1.
| jotm wrote:
| If one guy can severely damage a yacht (happened recently
| to a Russian oligarch), yeah an organization would do
| very well. Not sure how much it would help, but yeah.
| SXX wrote:
| I escaped from Russia on 25th of February. We bought tickets
| immediately after bombings started. Since I been in Rostov on Don
| our airport was closed so we have to take train and then flight
| to Istanbul. Some of my close friends already joined me here and
| some strongly consider taking same route as well. Though it's
| could be too late for them...
|
| I never supported Putin and did what I could to support our
| opposition leaders - both Navalny and Maxim Katz. I suported them
| financially, but yeah I did not participate in protests on
| streets and I certainly wond not do it if there was a risk to
| spend next 15 years in prison.
|
| PS: I have to look for a job that offer some kind of relocation
| since my current game development project only lasts till August
| and I'm not sure what to do next. I have 10+ years of experience
| with a bit of everything, but recently mostly frontend with
| TypeScript / Angular / Vue and backend with Java / Spring Boot or
| PHP / Laravel.
| option wrote:
| I feel bad for the Russians who oppose putin.
|
| Anecdotal story: I am originally from Ukraine (now a US citizen)
| and currently host 2 Ukrainian refugees (relatives of mine).
| Yesterday we were walking in Santa Barbara, CA chatting in
| Russian (our native language). An angry American passed by
| listening to some Ukraine-Russian news on his phone (via
| speakers), recognized we speak Russian and angrily told us
| something along the lines of us having to go back to Russia ...
| snek_case wrote:
| That sucks and I'm sorry you had to endure that. If it happens
| again, I would encourage you to just tell them "we are from
| Ukraine!", they might realize how stupid they are being and
| hopefully be a bit more careful next time they want to pass
| judgment. It's hard, but it is possible to change (some)
| people's mind, even with small interventions. Worth a try IMO.
|
| I wish you and your relatives the best. Long live Ukraine.
| jotm wrote:
| Just say "Slava Ukraine" heh, it seems to have become a
| rallying cry and a way to immediately see where most Russian
| speakers stand.
| [deleted]
| AnonHP wrote:
| The number of people who can flee and are able and/or willing to
| do it must be a tiny percentage, no? Among those, many may also
| be privileged in certain ways to actually do it.
|
| I wonder how those who are left behind (or stay behind) may
| react. This whole situation is very messy, and it's difficult
| (for me) to see how this will shape up, when the conflict will
| end, and at what cost.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I'm in Istanbul right now, and it's absolutely full of young
| Russians who've escaped. Random people who don't even know each
| other are hugging and crying all the time. They've also been
| treated very well by the Turks. One lady in a hostel was just
| totally flustered trying to figure out how to accommodate a
| Russian family with kids at the last minute.
|
| Just another eye-witness perspective.
| pintxo wrote:
| I was wondering before if this whole "special operation" is a
| 1961 thing? Remember der Berlin Wall? The local communists had no
| compelling story to offer to their population so especiallz the
| young and well educated voted with their feet and migrated
| westwards. Essentially leaving the German Democratic Republic
| with few options, the one they took was basically imprisonment of
| the remaining population, to prevent any further brain-drain.
|
| Is this whole shit we have witnessed over the last days Putins
| realization that he has nothing of value to offer to the
| population?
|
| And that he therefore cannot allow a culturally well connected
| big western style democracy at his side? With all the connections
| between Russia and Ukrain, this would be like a massive
| advertisement what Russians are missing out.
|
| Food for thought.
| [deleted]
| daenz wrote:
| This may very well be true, but I'm having trouble believing
| anything, from anyone, about the conflict. There is so much
| propaganda around the subject, that unless you are personally
| connected to an official source, I believe you can't know with
| any reasonable certainty. The primary source for this story
| appears to be public Google Trends data.
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| This is what russian trolls want.
|
| So much uncertainty, that you don't belive anything.
|
| Not even truth.
| droptablemain wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Seems like most of the disinformation is currently coming
| from the NATO/Ukraine side.
|
| Sure... /s
|
| That's probably why the West has just enacted a law that
| whoever talks about the _war_ in Ukraine in terms of war
| will face all kinds of trouble. Oh, wait.
|
| Really, you can't make this stuff up, do you actually
| believe that people on HN will read what you say and then
| dutifully turn to Pravda for their news from now on?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| > West countries have similar laws.
|
| Sorry, but no, we don't.
|
| > They even have an entire culture: Cancel Culture.
|
| You are either unaware of what cancel culture means or
| you are changing the subject.
|
| > While I hate every discrimination of speech freedom,
| you can't paint Russia as something unique, West is an
| example they follow.
|
| I think the repression of the free media in Russia is
| quite uniquely all it's own.
|
| It's the only country that I'm aware of where the head of
| state gets a dead journalist for their birthday.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > Sorry, but no, we don't.
|
| https://www.praguemorning.cz/expressing-support-for-
| russia-o...
|
| https://spravy.rtvs.sk/2022/02/za-podporu-vojnovej-
| propagand...
|
| I don't see any difference.
|
| > You are either unaware of what cancel culture means or
| you are changing the subject.
|
| Of course I'm aware what does it means. I'm also aware of
| "deplatforming" and other ways to silence unpleasing
| speech. Which could be described as a single word:
| censorship.
|
| > I think the repression of the free media in Russia is
| quite uniquely all it's own.
|
| I thought the same until Europe started to ban Russia
| Today and other websites. And don't even tell me that
| it's different. It's a perfectly legal website which
| tried to present alternative view point. But West is too
| afraid that its citizens might believe to something other
| than official propaganda.
|
| > It's the only country that I'm aware of where the head
| of state gets a dead journalist for their birthday.
|
| Baseless accusations. I could say that western agents
| killed him. It's just as likely.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I don't see any difference.
|
| I suspect that may be on your end.
|
| > I'm also aware of "deplatforming" and other ways to
| silence unpleasing speech. Which could be described as a
| single word: censorship.
|
| Well, you're still speaking, aren't you?
|
| > I could say that western agents killed him. It's just
| as likely.
|
| Sorry, but you are not arguing in good faith here.
|
| It's funny because for sure you will see that as
| confirmation of your claims of censorship but all you
| seem to want to do is to project the weirdest kind of
| positions that have no support in reality and I really
| can't be bothered to debate if that's the case.
|
| Not all speech is worth engaging.
| jlokier wrote:
| > West countries have similar laws
|
| Recent Russian law: 15 years imprisonment for protesting
| or even just calling the war a war.
|
| Western countries have nothing of that scale for such
| general offences. Neither in law nor in culture.
|
| The nearest things I can think of are holocaust or
| genocide denial laws, and protest-limiting powers. There
| are some similarities, but also very significant
| differences, so I think you are using the fallacy of
| false equivalence in your argument:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I posted two links in a neighbor thread, I'll repeat
| those here:
|
| https://www.praguemorning.cz/expressing-support-for-
| russia-o...
|
| https://spravy.rtvs.sk/2022/02/za-podporu-vojnovej-
| propagand...
|
| Those are European countries.
|
| I agree that probably state of freedom of speech is worse
| in Russia. I agree that political diversity is basically
| zero in Russia and all Putin opponents are either dead,
| imprisoned or gone from the country. That's a terrible
| state of things and it must be improved. Hopefully after
| Putin's rule, he's not eternal after all.
|
| And if you think that everyone in Russia is going to jail
| for calling it war, you're wrong. Putin himself called it
| war. Plenty of people called it war. This is just fear
| mongering. And potential reason to put in jail some
| people if they crossed some line. At least I think so.
| Just as I hope that links above are fear mongering.
| droptablemain wrote:
| > That's probably why the West has just enacted a law
| that whoever talks about the war in Ukraine in terms of
| war will face all kinds of trouble. Oh, wait.
|
| Right, in the West, we'd never do something like ban a
| news outlet. Oh, wait.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let's have your list then of news outlets the West has
| banned.
|
| Even all of Rupert Murdoch's shite is still operating
| last I checked and until last week Russia Today was
| spouting its propaganda 24x7. Fortunately that one has
| now been squelched but let's not pretend that it was
| news.
|
| Or was that not what you meant?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Different sources have different biases. To contrast, if
| you go to RT you just hear about joint task forces between
| Ukraine and Russia to protect Chernobyl, or Russian forces
| handing out food to grateful Ukrainians, both of which
| aren't representative at all either, and likely staged.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I have given up on 'troll' almost as much as 'literally'.
|
| A troll would pretend to support Putin and so on.
| __s wrote:
| They're using the word in the context of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_farm
| agumonkey wrote:
| Just today someone posted of a video involving brit
| journalists' car being shot
|
| It's a 'shocker' sequence, but then someone explains "one of
| the journalist was involved into staging false interviews
| before". So I thought it would be nice to share the article
| talking about the previous staged interviews, as a cautious
| tale for all to avoid responding to shocking civilian shot
| videos. Few minutes ago someone told me that the article may
| be staged by another group to spread lies about brit
| journalists.
|
| "lies" all the way up
| bnralt wrote:
| That article was strange. The journalists say that they
| were in an area controlled by the Ukrainian government,
| full of tense checkpoints, and at the time thought that
| they were being fire upon by Ukrainian soldiers at a
| checkpoint. But then the Ukrainian government claimed it
| was Russian saboteurs, so all the news just uncritically
| repeated that.
|
| It's not that these checkpoints aren't prone to shooting at
| people. Here's a Twitter thread[1] by an American
| journalist where the unit he's embedded with kills people
| in an ambulance that didn't stop at a checkpoint. Again,
| the ambulance is labelled as Russian saboteurs.
|
| Keep in mind 7 days ago the New York Times were reporting
| about intense gun battles in Kyiv[2], which again, were
| blamed on undercover Russian squads. "Ukrainska Pravda, a
| Ukrainian news site, reported combat 400 yards from Maidan
| Square in central Kyiv." But there hasn't been much
| evidence of a Russian invasion of the city yet from what I
| can find, or that the city is crawling with Russian
| soldiers.
|
| I think it's at least an open question right now of where
| the violence inside the city is coming from (and how much
| of it could be connected to flooding the civilian
| population with guns).
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/terrelljstarr/status/14980673625951
| 55968 [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/25/world/russia-
| ukraine...
| hidudeurcool wrote:
| bluejekyll wrote:
| And this is the exactly why lies and dis/misinformation are so
| dangerous to society. It makes every source questionable, even
| one's like the economist that have tended to give fairly
| accurate balanced news.
|
| The first amendment is a double edged sword, but all false
| statements need to be challenged so that a free and Democratic
| society can function properly. The problem is that lies are
| cheap to produce, and the truth is expensive to prove.
|
| That imbalance of cost is a real struggle to overcome.
| dolni wrote:
| Are you suggesting that free speech is responsible for
| misinformation?
|
| The first amendment is absolutely not a double-edged sword.
| The alternative is STRICTLY worse. You end up with
| governments, like China's, who lie and challenging that lie
| is punishable.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| It fits a pretty strong definition of a double edged sword.
| It protects the rights of people say false statements as
| equally as true statements. The false statements are
| dangerous as it makes it difficult to make good decisions
| with it because those are based off of bad information.
|
| Calling it a double-edged sword is not meant to say it's
| not valuable. It absolutely is. It's the bedrock of our
| democracy in the US. The question is only, how do we make
| sure the truth is more widely known than the lies?
| karpierz wrote:
| Another alternative is Canada, where free speech isn't an
| absolute right but somehow the whole country hasn't
| descended into a totalitarian dictatorship.
| lowkey wrote:
| Censorship has always been a thing in authoritarian
| regimes. My concern is that it increasingly an issue in
| traditional western liberal democracies.
|
| Whether it is by state decree (see Covid), state-subsidized
| media self-censorship (see Canada), de-platforming (see
| Google/Twitter/Facebook), or cancel culture - the effects
| of censorship are equally chilling.
|
| Free speech is only legally protected from government
| intervention - and only in the US. Canada for example
| imposes strict limits on allowable speech.
|
| I stand with Elon Musk as a free speech absolutist so I
| think it is high time we revisit free speech protections
| beyond their current boundaries. I struggle to call our
| current system truly free.
| [deleted]
| blfr wrote:
| What made media outlets questionable and untrustworthy is
| their blatant agenda, not outside misinformation. I don't
| even need them to be accurate, balanced, or some other high
| quality, but they have turned into straight-up propaganda and
| present almost fact-free moralistic view of the world.
| loufe wrote:
| Herman and Chomsky effectively disproved the notion that
| mainstream media gives "balanced" perspectives on news in
| Manufacturing Consent. The trouble is that media has a
| massive reliance on government institutions for sourcing
| information and advertisers for revenue. The way that
| information is withheld from government sources in the case
| of dissent from doctrine, or money is held back from
| corporations in the case of dissent from their interests
| creates patterns and frameworks of self-censorship and
| framing that twist information. None of this means our news
| networks are evil, but they are subject to the rules of the
| game and the only reason they are still going today is
| because they learned to play ball.
|
| You can question the lack of a perspective in reporting, or
| doubt the framing of provable information without losing
| faith in the system. It should almost be seen as your job as
| a responsible news-reader to look past the propaganda (i.e.
| systemic limits on information conveying) as best you can,
| while not becoming entirely jaded or entirely untrusting.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Chomsky is/was a regular on Al Jazeera and RT, but his
| appearances on domestic news networks are extremely rare
| (he was a regular on PBS in the 80's and 90's).
|
| But I ignore him since the enlightened here told me it's
| all propaganda.
| lowkey wrote:
| To be fair, if the best endorsement you can provide for the
| Economist is that they _tend_ to be _fairly_ accurate, then
| it doubles my resolve to be skeptical and vigilant of any
| claims made by media.
|
| This article sounds reasonable, even logical - and it may be,
| but I was manipulated by so much propaganda in the past weeks
| about the Ukraine situation that I no longer trust any source
| without verification from multiple sources that I seek out.
|
| Propaganda is by far most effective on those who believe
| themselves immune to its effects. The first casualty of war
| is the truth.
|
| For example, how many of you believe you are not manipulated
| by Ads and yet companies spent billions and billions to
| advertise to you. Why would they do that if it had no impact?
| bluejekyll wrote:
| I used some weaselly words there, mostly because I agree
| with your broader point that it's important to question
| sources, question the information. There is media that
| tends to do a decent job on fact checking sources, etc.
|
| At the end of the day, all I can do is go off the track
| record of those sources, and that's why for pretty much any
| media source the best we can say is _tend_ and _fairly
| accurate_ because even if they are telling the truth most
| of the time, there is a question on if it contains all the
| context and nuance.
| diordiderot wrote:
| The ole, "the science is unsettled argument" a classic.
| Repurposed for propaganda very fresh, Tasteful even
| berberous wrote:
| I generally agree with you for most stories and facts about the
| war, but this one is just obvious.
|
| The ruble has declined and the Russian stock market has been
| closed all week. Russia has been sanctioned. Russia is sending
| people to fight in a war. There are rumors (whether true or
| not) that Russia is planning to close borders, impose martial
| law, etc. Those are all verifiable facts.
|
| In the face of the above, of course people are considering
| leaving Russia. That is just smart and human nature.
| daenz wrote:
| If it was clearly obvious, then why wouldn't the Economist
| use these other sources directly, instead of leaning so
| heavily on Google Trends data? It's a flimsy way to present
| truth.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The Economist is a short-medium form publication. It has
| excellent reputation. I am wondering about what's causing
| you to be overly skeptical? Have there been major reputable
| publications who have misled you (specifically about
| Russia)?
| daenz wrote:
| I mentioned in another comment, and I don't want to spam,
| but I wasn't able to verify their Google search trends
| claim, using the source country as Russia, and searching
| both English and Russian translations of the terms they
| quoted in the article.
|
| EDIT>> This is wrong! I am able to confirm the Google
| Trends data now.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Did you double-check the region in which you're
| searching? By default it shows trends for where Google
| thinks you are. I had to use Google Translate to get
| terms to search in Russian, so take my results with a
| grain of salt, but, even so, I was generally able to get
| some nice hockey sticks when I told Google to show me
| what people in Russia are searching for instead of what
| Russian-speaking people in the USA are searching for.
| daenz wrote:
| My first search was the English terms in Russia region.
| When someone pointed out I should have searched the
| Russian translation (I assumed Google normalized this), I
| accidentally switched the region back to US. So both
| searches had incorrect results. It would have been nice
| of the economist to include the direct links to the
| sources they were citing!
| mumblemumble wrote:
| That closing question is maybe a bit too open-ended? I
| will happily defend The Economist as one of the highest-
| integrity journalistic publications in the world, but
| they've still misled me in the past. Not in any way that
| I suspect is intentional, but people do honestly get
| things wrong sometimes. My own mother has misled me
| numerous times, always with the best of intentions.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I meant as an inquiry, I would love to see major
| publications spreading false information (such as
| Economist, NYT, etc.) and we can discuss about it,
| referring specifically to the claim of western propaganda
| against Russia. Not more generally.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Because those things don't really directly support the
| article's lede the way the google trends results do. They
| aren't a demonstration that there is a trend; they're
| ancillary information explaining why that trend might be
| happening.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Do you expect the Kremlin to tell The Economist "We will
| indeed declare martial law in X days" and nothing short of
| that is believable? Or for the media (don't recall which it
| was) that announced the rumor based on a source to reveal
| that source's identity?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I am confused by your stance.
|
| On one hand I _do_ agree that there is a lot of propaganda
| on all sides, so one should be especially critical about
| data sources.
|
| On the other hand, I think then that using Google Trends
| data for this is a pretty _excellent_ source for this data,
| and a prime example of something that would be difficult to
| game. It 's publicly available, so anyone can verify it. I
| guess a true conspiracist might think Google is faking the
| data, but that seems extremely unlikely and bizarre, given
| that there are whole swaths of terms you could search for
| to make similar points.
|
| You may reach a different conclusion based on what a 4-5x
| increase in "Visa" searches means, but if anything this
| would be an example of data I would have a ton of
| confidence in.
| daenz wrote:
| At the time of my post, I was unable to verify the Google
| Trends searches (I was using it incorrectly, and have
| verified it, see other comments). My main point about
| using the Trends data is that if there are so many more
| clearly substantive sources (videos, interviews,
| history), why lean mainly on Google Trends.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Google Trends is actually a _much_ better data source for
| this kind of thing, precisely because it 's so difficult
| to game. The examples you give (videos, interviews,
| history) are trivial to use to give a biased view - just
| show only the videos that back your viewpoint, for
| example. It's easy to find a hundred videos on YouTube
| with "proof" the Earth is flat.
|
| The other thing that is great about Google Trends data is
| that is essentially a window into "things people are
| actually searching for when they think nobody is
| looking." Yes, I realize the irony in that every Google
| click is tracked, but you'll get much more "honest"
| results looking at Google Trends data vs. plain
| interviews. For example, the country with the highest
| volume of "gay porn" searches per capita is Kenya, a
| country that is pretty vehemently anti-gay. The reasoning
| behind that is open to interpretation (I suspect many
| people are just genuinely curious given images of gay
| relationships in the media are so much less acceptable
| there), but for a society that basically deems gay sex
| extremely deviant, there sure are a lot of folks
| interested in what it looks like.
| dandanua wrote:
| To filter a lie you can try to use logic and critical thinking.
| It's clear that sanctions and isolation are gonna be
| devastating. Many people joke that Russia is heading towards
| "stone age". Thus, it's absolutely logical that people just
| want to flee the sinking battleship.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| I live in Estonia. If I see news reports where they interview
| people from the border guard who say that there are more border
| crossings than usual, owner of coach company says that they
| have added more trips to St. Petersburg and number of russians
| traveling has increased, also Russian-owned bus companies have
| added more trips to Estonia, where busses leaving here are
| alomst empty but packed full of travelers when leaving St.
| Petersburg. Also bus companies have said that more people
| travel with pets or large luggage.
|
| Are they all lying?
|
| https://news.err.ee/1608521780/passenger-numbers-on-lux-expr...
| roveo wrote:
| Also Estonia isn't a prime destination for Russians in this
| situation. Countries that don't require a visa are. Yesterday
| 42 passenger planes landed in Yerevan (Armenia), normal
| number being 3-4 daily.
| vertis wrote:
| I had wondered how welcoming Estonia was being to Russians at
| the moment. I suggested a couple of Russians that are leaving
| reach out and ask, because Estonia is one of my favourite
| countries in the world and I had faith that you would be
| helping Russians flee.
|
| Hopefully, I will get to come visit again once this all calms
| down.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Go on Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, anywhere. You'll see plenty
| of primary videos and accounts corroborating this. You're
| right, 1 source alone isn't reliable. But there's a massive
| body of evidence out there, this whole war has been televised.
| And the Ukrainian narrative has way more evidence than the
| Russian one...
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Those are all primarily western platforms. Even if they did
| show what you are claiming, it wouldn't prove your point. RT
| is blocked on Telegram and YouTube for instance.
| cguess wrote:
| Telegram was created by a Russian.
| [deleted]
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Telegram is owned by Russians and operated out of Dubai...
| Western countries have literally warned about it for that
| reason... Twitter has large shareholders in the Middle
| East.
|
| Also I forgot TikTok. Plenty of vids there. Owned by the
| Chinese. You can check that out.
|
| But hey, keep swallowing that Russian propaganda...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Except that there is plenty of evidence that this is really the
| case. Russians are crossing the border in unprecedented
| numbers, for instance:
|
| https://yle.fi/news/3-12345301
|
| Flying is getting harder and harder so while the borders are
| still open (there is talk of martial law in Russia, which, even
| though it was just denied does not seem to have much effect on
| calming things down, in fact the denial seems to have the
| opposite effect), people are getting out via the land, either
| by car or by train.
| mbesto wrote:
| I think you missed the parent's comment.
|
| FTA: "Buses travelling from St. Petersburg to Helsinki,
| Tallinn and Riga are also fully booked."
|
| How do I prove:
|
| - This is true without actually seeing the data that buses
| are fully booked
|
| - Yle is a trustworthy media outlet and what they are saying
| is true
|
| - The Finnish government isn't booking the buses and then
| telling the media that buses are booked
|
| For the record - I believe that Russians are trying to do
| exactly what you said and what the article says. I _trust_
| this.
|
| However, this is precisely the issue - what outlets do you
| _really_ trust? Stuff that comes from BBC? CNN? New age
| "influencers" on YT/TikTok? _This_ is the problem.
| mach1ne wrote:
| You can estimate the trustworthiness by analyzing the
| motives of the source. YLE is the Finnish equivalent of
| BBC. They have a record of being extremely trustworthy
| (this can be analysed retrospectively). Do they have a
| significant enough incentive to lie about this subject to
| throw that trust away? I see no such motive here, thus it's
| highly probable that the source is not intentionally lying.
| The same is true when it comes to the Finnish Government.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't actually care what your personal threshold for
| believing something is, I care about mine, and mine is more
| than satisfied.
|
| People say the same stuff about the number of Russian dead
| claimed by the Ukrainian defense forces. Are they
| exaggerating? Probably yes. Is it with a factor that
| changes the facts in a meaningful way? Probably not, given
| the portion that has been independently verified. Even if
| that's all there is then it is already enough to count as
| fact, and it very, very likely isn't all there is.
|
| Something similar is happening here: the amount of evidence
| that Russian cosmopolitans are reading the writing on the
| wall is ample, it is reflected in the restrictions in how
| much capital Russians can take with them abroad, it is
| reflected in the number of trains running (those things are
| pretty hard to fake) and it is reflected in all of the
| personal stories and cries for help from Russians to try to
| get settled where ever they arrived.
|
| Personally I won't give them quarter until the last of the
| Ukrainian refugees has been settled, but I _do_ believe the
| fact that many Russians are fleeing Russia while they can.
| But they are fleeing for economic reasons, Ukrainians are
| fleeing so they can stay alive.
| [deleted]
| andi999 wrote:
| I thought you need a schengen visa to enter finland, and
| there would not have been time to get one from the time the
| war started. I would like to hear more details on this news.
| lostmsu wrote:
| A lot of Russians do have visas they obtained for tourism.
| daenz wrote:
| >there is talk of martial law in Russia
|
| I want to highlight this, because I think it illustrates my
| point about propaganda. I dug around for a source on that
| statement, and this appears the most reliable source[0]. An
| anonymous EU official picking up on "signs". Again, this also
| may be totally true, but it's presented in such a flimsy way,
| how can a reasonable person be expected to believe it at face
| value?
|
| Am I saying the quiet part out loud? Should I not question
| the propaganda if it is something that I think helps the
| situation? It's not my nature, but it seems like that's what
| people are doing.
|
| 0. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-says-it-is-
| picking-u...
| grey-area wrote:
| Rumours are not propaganda.
|
| No you haven't discovered a vast EU-wide conspiracy or
| someone 'saying the quiet part out loud'. Nobody knows what
| is going on and naturally there is lots of speculation to
| fill the void.
| derefr wrote:
| Rumours are not _official_ propaganda; but they can
| certainly be a psy-op.
|
| (Not suggesting that that's the case here; just that you
| shouldn't forget how e.g. the US CIA engineers coups in
| other countries, when thinking about how other large
| states work.)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Rumors can absolutely be propaganda.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Rumors is how politics gets done in my backwards country.
| You start a rumor about the opposition, they start rumors
| about you. You start rumors about great projects, the
| opposition starts rumors about how bad it is. The
| opposition shits on your project, you start rumors about
| their vested interests in stopping it. Before elections
| you start rumors about anything and everything and then
| back again.
|
| Someone in your way? Start a rumor that they do X and
| then attack them for not stepping down from power. Want
| to check if people agree or disagree with something?
| Start a rumor on Friday, monitor for responses, fight in
| rumors during the week-end and next week, if the rumors
| align, maybe start that something.
|
| I don't see how rumors are never propaganda.
| grey-area wrote:
| I didn't use the word never. I said they are not, i.e.
| the two words are not equivalent.
|
| Yes there are rumours, are they propaganda? I don't think
| so in this case - young male Russians are being
| questioned at the border, flights are being stopped, and
| the idea has been floated of forced conscription of anti-
| war protesters. Even mentioning the word war is a crime.
| Russia is very close to martial law already and I'm not
| surprised there is speculation about it.
|
| Also, quite frankly no one in the west cares much if
| Putin imposes martial law, it's already a pariah state
| and a dictatorship. As propaganda this rumour would be
| pretty useless.
| [deleted]
| throw-me-out wrote:
| Well, this was coming straight from Russian officials:
| https://tass.ru/politika/13873997
| soared wrote:
| Ah found it - it denies they will institute martial law,
| but that definitely qualifies as it being talked about
|
| https://tass.ru/politika/13980355
|
| (Clearly very a pro-Russia site fyi)
|
| Does anyone understand what this means: "Russia is
| considering the decriminalization of economic crimes,
| especially damages"?
|
| Very interesting site to read! Perhaps you linked the
| wrong article though, that one is about Russia being
| kicked out of some EU groups and them saying they don't
| care.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I mean, does it even matter what the Russian government
| claims or denies at this point? They were clearly dishonest
| about Ukraine in the months leading up to the invasion. The
| West was clearly sharing good intel on the Russians'
| intentions. There is obviously propaganda on both sides,
| but that does not make the information from our respective
| governments equally worthless. I think the government that
| just shut out most foreign and independent press, spins
| insane stories about Jewish Nazis and make it illegal to
| even print "war" is probably the less credible propaganda
| maker in this situation. The truth may be the first victim
| in war but that does not mean it's dead.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Historically, if the news wasn't good or the situation
| needed a larger boot to step on people then martial law was
| taken out of the cupboard to control the population. With
| 8000+ Russian protestors arrested, a ban on factual news,
| lots of other restrictions put in place and so on talk of
| martial law is not all that strange.
|
| Maybe for you it is strange, but for me it is a fairly
| logical next step in a series of domestic escalations. The
| same happened in Poland in the 80's in response to the
| Solidarity movement, authorities used it to be able to use
| the military against their own civilians. Not that that
| worked, but that's besides the point, they did in fact try.
|
| And just like with the invasion being a total fabrication
| of the West right up to the point that it was a fact you
| could of course do the same thing with martial law.
|
| But some elements of martial law are already present today,
| some more may follow and who is to say when it becomes
| enough to say that it actually happened? Would you be
| satisfied with 8000 people jailed and a ban on the media to
| report the facts or will it take a Russian army battalion
| shooting at protestors? Maybe some kids protesting the war
| jailed? Oh, sorry, that already happened. Or do you believe
| that is Western propaganda?
| daenz wrote:
| That makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is why it
| is presented in such a duplicitous way. It's one thing to
| say "When a country has this kind of internal turmoil,
| martial law is something that we need to watch out for."
| It's another thing to say "Unnamed official sees 'signs'
| on social media about martial law."
|
| One way is transparent, re-enforces critical thinking,
| while the other way is "believe this because we told
| you."
| jacquesm wrote:
| I see the same signs, I am thinking in the exact same
| direction as that unnamed official. Mostly because I
| lived under official 'martial law' for a while to
| understand what it means and when dictatorial governments
| reach for it: when they can no longer control the
| narrative. As soon as that becomes the danger martial law
| is on the menu, because it allows the government to crack
| down on the second order effects (since they can't do
| anything about the root cause, bad news is bad news).
|
| The main thing that right now seems to keep martial law
| at bay in Russia is because, besides being a tacit
| admission that not all is well and that there is an
| internal problem in Russia that that would require Putin
| to give the military more power, something that he is
| absolutely loathe to do because that very same power
| could be used against him. But if not for that I am
| pretty sure we'd already be there.
| akamaka wrote:
| > Am I saying the quiet part out loud?
|
| Yes, in some sense. This is your own internal process of
| turning all the information into a picture of what is
| really going on.
|
| When you start projecting it on other people and making
| judgements about whether they are "reasonable", you're
| going find out that they have a very different picture from
| you. There are a lot of people who have lived or worked in
| that part of the world, speak the local languages, and have
| a much higher ability to filter the news stream into an
| accurate picture of what's actually happening on the
| ground.
| gostsamo wrote:
| There was a story on front page yesterday for russian IT
| specialists who want to get out.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are 100's such stories, all of which center on the very
| lucky few who still have the means to move themselves around
| and some hard currency. For the remainder it will be very
| hard to do anything at all.
| gostsamo wrote:
| It will be, but it does not mean that they don't want to
| try.
| jstx1 wrote:
| You should still believe the reporting of actual events done by
| the major international news orgs. You don't need to go into
| opinion pieces or into hypothesizing.
| qiskit wrote:
| > You should still believe the reporting of actual events
| done by the major international news orgs.
|
| Would you say we should believe major russian news orgs?
| Healthy skepticism is required, especially during times of
| war. There is a reason why each side banned the other's
| media, social media, etc. So that they can spread propaganda
| without pushback. The first casualty in war is the truth.
| jstx1 wrote:
| Skepticism is fine but this isn't a symmetrical problem
| where you should treat the two sides equally. Their
| incentives and credibility aren't the same.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Official sources are less reliable: Russia is heavy on
| propaganda at the state and media levels, and destination
| country reports will be spiky, slow, or nonexistent.
|
| This presentation is interesting because it is a data
| presentation that is large, direct, and open: Of Russian IPs
| using a Google, search terms associated with leaving are going
| up, even pre-war. Your own research can now be on alternative
| hypotheses like maybe Google became that much more popular in
| the last few months in spikey per-keyword patterns, or that the
| Russian population using Google is big (some X%) but has
| opposite beliefs of all non-Google users. For both, you can
| check against something like Yandex, which has a similar
| feature.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Of course some people would flee from Russia. What's so hard to
| believe about it? If you can leave country, you don't support
| the government and it's obvious that conditions are going to be
| harsh, surely you'd do that and in big country there will be
| thousands of people in those conditions.
|
| Just don't make conclusions like the entire country wants to
| leave.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I hope you still believe that Russian is shelling civilian
| cities, because that is on video
| hidudeurcool wrote:
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Really? They all have cellphones now filming it.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Don't fall into the trap of thinking things are unknowable.
| Madness lies at the extremes of believing everything and
| believing nothing
| ModernMech wrote:
| This is very important. I used to believe that keeping an
| open mind was the most important thing, so I listened to
| everything. Sounds great but the problem is it leaves one in
| a state of complete inaction, because you're never sure of
| anything, and people use that to their advantage. While
| you're sitting around trying to figure out the state of
| things, they are acting on convictions which may not be 100%
| right but at least they are getting things done, and that
| means they're going to win. So while it's important to be
| factually right it's _also_ important to have convictions,
| even if you can 't justify all of them without bias.
|
| No matter what any of the media say my conviction with this
| conflict is that Putin is a psychopath. You can make pretty
| good predictions about his intent and how the conflict will
| unfold, and who is doing what, and what atrocities which side
| are willing to commit, based on that fact alone. For example,
| everyone who thought he wouldn't invade and was shocked when
| he did saw him as a tactician rather than a psychopath. If
| you saw him as a psychopath his invasion of Ukraine was
| inevitable. The thing that shocked me was how slow-rolling
| the build-up to an invasion is, and how many people are not
| willing to call a spade a spade. I thought it had to be done
| in secret, but you can do it in the open if you just lie to
| people about your intentions. You have the history of his
| actions in Syria, Chechnya, and Crimea to know that at least
| what Western media is saying about Russia has a lot of
| precedent.
|
| Now you could say I'm wrong about that but again that's my
| conviction and I'll need more than a little proof to sway me
| from it (because bad actors love to use just a little bit yet
| deceiving proof to sway people from their loosely held
| convictions)
| rblk48 wrote:
| Many Blacks, Asians faced racism near Ukraine border. But
| according to reddit they are all Russian propaganda, some met
| even with more racist comments. Of course HN cleverly avoided
| it by not discussing it as all.
| jdrc wrote:
| it s not like there are no checks at airports, it should be
| obvious if there is a trend
| smoldesu wrote:
| What motivation does Google have to falsify their Trends data?
| If anything, I think this is _more_ valuable than anecdotal
| evidence. It 's a relatively trustworthy source delivering the
| same data they always have, and letting _you_ draw the
| conclusions.
| slim wrote:
| maybe someone else is falsifying google trends ?
| daenz wrote:
| I can't even confirm their statements, but I may be using
| google trends wrong:
|
| >More Russians are asking Google "how to leave Russia" than
| have done so in 18 years since such data became public.
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&g
| e...
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The article gave you the search terms they used. Why
| would you make up your own? https://trends.google.com/tre
| nds/explore?date=today%203-m&ge...
| gabereiser wrote:
| The problem with this assumption is you think people
| "don't know how to leave" so they must look it up on
| Google. I'm pretty sure people flee with family and
| friends together and don't need instructions on how to
| get out of Dodge. You can look at news reports of the
| foot traffic coming from Russia. You can look at social
| media on the dissent with the war before Putin axed
| access. This skepticism is good for assessing the
| feasibility of a solution, it's not good when peoples
| lives are on the line and there's plenty of reporting
| from the ground. Wake up.
| moonshinefe wrote:
| Why would they be searching in English? Also those
| numbers are "relative popularity" on a scale of 0-100.
| I'm seeing what the article claims here, more or less.
| But it's a little unclear exactly what search terms they
| were all checking.
| daenz wrote:
| >Why would they be searching in English?
|
| Good point, here's the Russian translation of "how to
| leave Russia", which doesn't appear to be much different
| than the English version.
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y
| &ge...
|
| EDIT>> This is wrong! My mistake, when I translated, I
| accidentally switched the source country back to USA.
| moonshinefe wrote:
| I'm not sure what some of the spikes in years past were
| about, but again it's a scale of 'how popular the terms
| were' from 0-100 not a raw count. You can see it spiking
| hard recently compared to the average. Without seeing the
| raw numbers it's hard to tell exactly how significant it
| is though.
| hervature wrote:
| Here is the Russian translation (I am not Russian
| speaking, just used a translator) that is much more proof
| and addresses another comment on your post. https://trend
| s.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
| ajross wrote:
| It's an aggregate over (almost) all the search traffic on
| the internet. That would be an awfully tall order even for
| the US government to pull off undetected.
| [deleted]
| bsedlm wrote:
| but what about Yandex? as far as I recall, they're bigger
| than google in russia, hence any google data is missing most
| of the picture
| stavros wrote:
| I don't trust the conclusions I draw. The average person is
| very bad at coming up with explanations, and the pandemic
| misinformation has illustrated this.
|
| "If you die _with_ COVID they put you down as having died
| _from_ COVID, therefore they 're trying to inflate the
| numbers" is an explanation. If you aren't good at coming up
| with multiple alternatives and selecting the best one, you're
| likely to select the one that fits, or the one someone
| already gave you, and not the real one.
| bsedlm wrote:
| it's very counter intuitive, there's so much information that
| we cannot know anything (for certain)
|
| trust is at an all time low and getting lower
| therusskiy wrote:
| I managed to escape the country yesterday, had to flight to Egypt
| of all places, because ALL (even business) tickets were sold out.
| The recent news is that starting March 6 all international
| flights are suspended, the trap has closed.
|
| The disheartening thing is that even if you never supported
| Putin, other countries treat you as enemy.
|
| I am at Georgia now and banks refuse to open bank accounts to
| Russians, and I need one to continue working as a remote dev for
| US companies. Older generation (who are pro-Russian) suggested
| being careful around young people as they may be hostile to
| Russians, even those who are running away from Putin.
|
| A lot of my IT friends have fled the country, almost everyone who
| could. My heart is bleeding thinking of friends who wanted to
| leave on March 9, not sure what they can do now.
| einarfd wrote:
| > A lot of my IT friends have fled the country, almost everyone
| who could. My heart is bleeding thinking of friends who wanted
| to leave on March 9, not sure what they can do now.
|
| Depending on where in Russian they live. They could flee in
| their car. Finland seem to be popular
| (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60624500). The Baltics, Norway
| and possibly Sweden on a ferry or boat could also be options.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Land borders are closed and require special permission.
| bsedlm wrote:
| a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for
| the actions of the government.
|
| maybe these people have grown in better functioning democracies
| (unlike Russia or my own country) so they act as if the people
| were well represented by their governments; unlike reality for
| most countries with a serious corruption problem.
| akomtu wrote:
| I have another explanation for this. Most people, even the
| decent ones, get an uncontrollable build-up of anger when
| they learn about the war, and they have a need to release
| this anger somehow. This need is like the need to pee: it
| won't go away by itself. These people rightfully realise that
| "peeing" at the true offenders - the putin's gang - isn't an
| option, so they turn to easy targets, I mean the average
| russians. Somewhere in the back of their head they realise
| that it's wrong, but their much stronger animal part of their
| brain strongly supports punishing members of the enemy tribe.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| By peeing do you mean sanctions or just hostility towards
| russians?
| lottin wrote:
| This is just how international relations work... Russian
| citizens who are being affected by sanctions also benefit
| from trade agreements and treaties that their government has
| signed.
| ajross wrote:
| > a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals
| for the actions of the government.
|
| What's the option, though? Inaction? Sanctions hurt the
| people because hurting the support base is the only way to
| exert pressure on those unrepresentative governments.
|
| At the end of the day, _all_ governments operate via the
| consent of the governed, even autocracies. But the expression
| of that consent gets really ugly the less democratic the
| environment. The international community can 't fix Russian
| democracy, so all that is left for us (absent military
| action) is to change the reward structure for those who can.
| therusskiy wrote:
| what's going to happen with so many countries / companies
| cutting Russia off is that it's going to play into Putin's
| narrative that Russia is surrounded by enemies. Imagine you
| are a neutral teenager who never cared about politics, then
| Playstation takes all your games, you don't have access to
| any of the media sources that can explain the situation
| (they are all banned now), you can only hear what
| government tells you.
| ericmay wrote:
| If the pervasive narrative is that Russia is surrounded
| by enemies (hence invading Ukraine) _anyway_ then why
| does it matter? This narrative has been around for
| awhile, not recently.
|
| And the sanctions also result in oligarchs losing their
| assets. Want to be an ass and disconnect from the west?
| Fine. But you're not taking your toys. They can be in
| prison together with the people they constantly barrage
| with these narratives. If sanctions don't work and not
| sanctioning doesn't work, might as well sanction and be
| done with it.
| yoavm wrote:
| Repeating the parent comment - What's the option, though?
| What better things can we do to help the > 1,000,000
| Ukrainian refugees, and all the other millions that are
| currently being bombed by Russia?
|
| Putin _is_ getting his power from the Russian people.
| It's unfortunate they believe his lies, but they do, and
| that's what makes him strong.
| therusskiy wrote:
| to be honest, I don't know, that is the reason I left, I
| have no hope and don't know how to change things. What
| could help is all these companies that are blocking
| Russians sending information to Russians about this war
| and about Putin's actions. If all Russians on Google,
| Playstation and etc saw more information it would help
| get through the blockade. Companies haven't been doing it
| because it requires more effort and risk getting blocked
| by Russia. By cutting these people off you are turning
| these people into Putin supporters. It's so much easier
| to just cut off Russians than actually trying to solve
| the problem.
| yoavm wrote:
| I understand that you are in a difficult position, but
| western companies using their power to send information
| to Russians is essentially the same as leaving Russia
| completely. Do you really have any doubt it would not
| even take a few hours before they're blocked by Russia?
| We're all just fast-forwarding this and leaving Russia.
|
| Maybe it will turn people into Putin supporters, and
| maybe, hopefully, with time, it will push them to revolt.
| [deleted]
| bitcharmer wrote:
| pydry wrote:
| Negotiate a truce with Putin that involved decoupling
| NATO from Ukraine and devolve centralized power to
| Ukrainian states.
| ajross wrote:
| A settlement like that is what ended hostilities in 2014,
| and yet he's back for more. What happens when he comes
| for the rest of Ukraine in another 8 years, or Moldova?
|
| Or Finland. What then? Negotiated peace only works if it
| _works_ , and it clearly doesn't with Putin. We tried
| your suggestion already and it failed.
| pydry wrote:
| Except hostilities werent ended in 2014 and the Ukrainian
| government was pretty explicit that they didnt like the
| minsk protocol and didnt particularly feel obliged to
| adhere to it. So they didnt and the war continued for
| another 8 years.
|
| The point is we DIDNT try adhering to minsk, zelensky
| decided he 100% wanted to be NATO rather than neutral and
| NOW look where we are.
|
| A bit of decentralization, some restored Russian language
| rights and a promise for NATO to back off would ALL have
| been easier.
|
| >What happens when he comes for the rest of Ukraine in
| another 8 years, or Moldova?
|
| How exactly does neutral make that happen?
|
| What happens when NATO tries to do to Russia what it did
| to Libya?
| ericmay wrote:
| So only some countries have the right to decide their
| international affairs? Might as well make the same
| argument for Germany or France. Putin is mad so therefore
| decouple these countries from NATO.
|
| Ya know The Us feels very threatened by Belarus. They
| should have to withdraw from their alliance from Russia
| and decouple. Otherwise we'll invade and neutralize it
| ourselves.
| pydry wrote:
| >So only some countries have the right to decide their
| international affairs?
|
| Should Russia schedule a delivery of nuclear weapons to
| Cuba for this week or next?
|
| >Ya know The Us feels very threatened by Belarus. They
| should have to withdraw from their alliance from Russia
| and decouple
|
| Is that because of its close proximity to Maine?
|
| I guess it's closer than Iraq...
| ericmay wrote:
| > Should Russia schedule a delivery of nuclear weapons to
| Cuba for this week or next?
|
| Frankly, I couldn't care less. But if you think a country
| choosing to ally with a country is the same as
| positioning nuclear weapons, well, that's your problem.
| Recall that _Russia_ exited nuclear arms treaties and
| controls, which were the result of an insane arms buildup
| and included activities like putting missiles in Cuba.
| Even the Soviet Union got it.
|
| > Is that because of its close proximity to Maine?
|
| So you can only feel threatened by a country that you
| share a border with?
|
| > I guess it's closer than Iraq...
|
| This is called whataboutism and it can safely be
| rejected.
| pydry wrote:
| >But if you think a country choosing to ally with a
| country is the same as positioning nuclear weapons
|
| I think encircling your border with an offensive military
| alliance is very much like placing nukes 100 miles away
| and pointing them at you, yes.
|
| I wouldnt want the military alliance that destroyed Libya
| anywhere near me if I thought I could be a target. Having
| a strict "dont end up like Libya" policy is actually a
| fairly sensible.
|
| >This is called whataboutism
|
| It's called sarcasm.
| gspetr wrote:
| >Recall that Russia exited nuclear arms treaties and
| controls
|
| From game theory stand point that is the only course of
| action to maintain MAD.
|
| If you're falling behind in drones and high precision
| weapons, it would be very disadvantageous if everyone
| went nukeless.
| ericmay wrote:
| Which only holds true if you _want_ to be an adversary.
| NATO countries don't care about Russia as a military
| adversary except to the degree that they want to be one.
| The Cold War is over. Russia could just grow into a
| prosperous economy and ally with the west. They choose
| not to.
| gspetr wrote:
| If that's true then if you were a rational actor why
| would you overspend on military, even if we adjusted by
| cost of labour, GDP per capita and other relevant
| economic parameters? US spends more than the next 10
| countries by military spending combined.
|
| US was the dominant influence behind economic reforms in
| Russia in the early 90s, so I do not understand how that
| argument can be made in good faith. It's Dr. Frankenstein
| blaming Frankenstein (his creation) for being a monster.
|
| Also, if the Cold war was over - why did NATO even
| expand? A lot of people on HN say that it is a purely
| defensive alliance, why would you expand if you were
| acting in good will, _especially_ when you said you would
| not?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Recall that Russia exited nuclear arms treaties and
| controls
|
| The US repudiated the ABM treaty before Russia did any of
| that (Russian withdrawal from START II was a direct
| response to that), and also exited the Open Skies Treaty
| first. There are many, many things to blame Russia for,
| but collapsing the arms control and verification regime
| that developed during the Cold War was entirely the US
| (and specifically an active partisan project of the GOP.)
| giantrobot wrote:
| Any actions taken by "the West" will be turned into
| propaganda inside Russia. Economic sanctions are the only
| action that won't automatically lead to nuclear war or
| embolden Putin to try to retake all the USSR's former
| vassal states.
|
| Russia invaded a neighboring country and is racking up
| the war crimes against civilians there. A Russian
| teenager unable to play XBox is maybe slightly less
| important than the indiscriminate shelling of hospitals
| and nuclear power plants.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > A Russian teenager unable to play XBox is maybe
| slightly less important than the indiscriminate shelling
| of hospitals and nuclear power plants.
|
| And straight up shooting civilians on the street with
| assault rifles... this is literally happening in Ukraine
| :(
| coldtea wrote:
| > _maybe these people have grown in better functioning
| democracies (unlike Russia or my own country) so they act as
| if the people were well represented by their governments;_
|
| I think they're mostly grown in countries doing the imposing
| of sanctions. If they had to suffer the consequences of
| sanctions imposed on them, for what their own countries did,
| they'd have a much different understanding.
| grujicd wrote:
| These people also have no idea, except abstract one, how it
| is to live in authoritarian country, when access to non-
| government news is hard or impossible, and even saying your
| opinion can be dangerous.
|
| As someone who was on the receiving end of sanctions in ex-
| yu, despite being antiwar and going to protests, I can't
| ever support wide sanctions which affect all people. Years
| we were under sanctions were the worst years of my life.
| The worst thing is they harm oposition and make regime
| stronger. Government can tell "the world hates us, and
| those who want to colaborate with west are traitors and you
| should not vote for them", and that's easy sell to
| population directly suffering from sanctions.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > These people also have no idea, except abstract one,
| how it is to live in authoritarian country, when access
| to non-government news is hard or impossible, and even
| saying your opinion can be dangerous.
|
| Many Polish people still remember communism. I was born
| in communism. And we still support sanctions.
|
| Tell us what do you propose as an alternative to the
| sanctions.
| grujicd wrote:
| Frankly, I don't know. I'm just sharing my experience and
| opinion that sanctions don't help.
|
| It's quite possible that there's nothing at all that can
| be done right now, apart from humanitarian help. No
| matter how much we wanted the war to stop. At least if
| we're only looking at options that don't lead to worse
| outcomes.
|
| The time to prevent this was probably years ago. But I'm
| far from geopolitics expert, I can just speculate lake
| enyone else.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| If you propose no alternative, you propose doing nothing.
| In this scenario russia takes everything outside of NATO
| and Chinese influence. And by "takes" I mean hundreds of
| millions of civilians killed, with a faster rate than
| currently, because if we show russia we're too soft to
| react, there's really nothing demotivating putin, or
| whoever comes after him, to do anything he wants.
| politician wrote:
| You oppose sanctions. Do you support a global nuclear
| exchange? Sometimes bad things are necessary to forestall
| worse things.
|
| The stark reality of Mutually Assured Destruction is that
| America will turn Russia, its military, its cities, its
| dirt into radioactive glass if they launch their nuclear
| weapons. Look at this reality in the face and then decide
| if you still oppose sanctions.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Do you support a global nuclear exchange? Sometimes
| bad things are necessary to forestall worse things._
|
| Who said sanctions would "forestall" that?
| politician wrote:
| The strategic apparatus of NATO, the folks that have been
| studying this issue since the Cold War, have said it by
| doing it ("actions speak louder than words"). With 73k
| karma, I'm confident in asserting that you've been around
| enough to know that NATO has a playbook for this and is
| working through it. Or how did you think they not only
| settled on a course of action but gained consensus so
| quickly?
| grujicd wrote:
| Most sanctions have inverse effect of strengthening the
| authoritharian government. Maybe if you have free press
| and strong oposition you can use sanctions to turn
| population against governemnt. However, my experience of
| suffering under combination of sanctions and authorian
| government is that dictatorship gets stronger in these
| cases. I would even support sanctions in the 90-ties
| against Serbia if they increased our chances of
| overthrowing Milosevic. But they didn't, quite the
| oposite. He only went after NATO bombing and defacto
| loosing all wars Serbia participated in.
|
| It looks to me sanctions are implemented as a punishment,
| as a feel good move, as "we have to do something". What's
| the realistic end goal of blocking internet access, or
| software, or Visa/MC/Apple pay to Russia? Does it help a
| goal of overthrowing Putin, or strengthening his case?
| "We have to do something" is not a good reason if there
| are no positive effects, but there are negative ones.
| politician wrote:
| A weak, underfed population whose military cannot keep
| its vehicles in working order isn't going to be invading
| its neighbors with any degree of success.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| That sounds humanitarian...
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| I'd rather have Russians starved to death than other
| countries invaded by them.
| politician wrote:
| Addendum: Look at Russia's conventional military on
| display in this conflict. Reliant on undertrained
| conscripts, poor discipline, poor planning. If NATO
| imposes a "no-fly" zone over Ukraine, Putin has no where
| to turn except to his nuclear deterrence forces. He has
| no dry powder except for his estimated 6000 nuclear
| weapons.
|
| "Backed into a corner" is a phrase that is tossed around
| too easily these days. NATO does not want to force him
| into that corner with a "no-fly" zone over Ukraine.
| Brutal, backbreaking sanctions and the loss of support of
| a brainwashed public is the current alternative. I am
| certain that there are even harsher options in the
| pipeline. For example, cutting off oil and gas purchases,
| and sacrificing Western economies in an era of record
| high inflation. In my opinion, NATO will gladly make that
| trade to keep Putin from abandoning MAD.
| retrac wrote:
| I think it's just how we tend to think, unfortunately. We
| conflate individuals into uniform groups. Americans certainly
| do it with domestic politics. ~100 million people become "the
| Republicans" or "the Democrats" and are spoken of as if they
| have a single, united mind behind them.
| mancerayder wrote:
| We do it everywhere:
|
| You'll hear teenagers talking about their generation in the
| third person: "I recognize that my generation has a lot
| more to deal with than previous generations". College
| students in a similar way.
|
| You'll hear us paint the enemy, as you described with "the
| Republicans" and "the Democrats" - although each will use
| other terms less endearing.
|
| Politicians always talk about what "American families want
| .."
|
| The recent culture wars as well, whether it was about Covid
| stuff, or the racial conversations that were prominent up
| until recently. Am I a "privileged X" or a "member of the
| community"? Either way, I will start the sentence with, "As
| an X, I want to say ...". Are "they" "anti-maskers"? Or are
| "they" "triple vaxxers"?
|
| It's almost like people have internalized sociological
| statistics as identity, and internalize the language used
| about us, but from the outside.
|
| It must be a great time to be alive if you work in a
| marketing department of a big tech company, given how easy
| it is to "target the market segment"[1] or perhaps engage
| in state-sponsored information warfare that pits right
| against left and left against right.[2]
|
| 1 - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-segment.asp
|
| 2 - https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2
| 021/0...
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Maybe because Ukrainian men don't have the choice to flee.
| It's not like Russians are moving away during peaceful times.
| It's a full on war in which one party is bombing the
| civilians of a democratic country, threatening NATO with
| nuclear war and Russians are the only ones who can actually
| stop it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I still do not see the logic of punishing people who left
| russia - as they obviously do not support the war.
|
| If they stay and get drafted to fight in the war for real,
| how does this help?
|
| And sure, they could try to organize revolts - but would
| you? That is extremly dangerous and a million times easier
| said than done.
|
| Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the
| other hand. Helping those people will mean helping an
| opposition that one day maybe wants to go back to russia to
| build up alternative structures.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > I still do not see the logic of punishing people who
| left russia - as they obviously do not support the war.
|
| Just an idea: perhaps it's easier to circumvent sanctions
| if you can move abroad in order to make money transfers.
| You could also make money transfers for your family and
| friends while you're there. Or even create some kind of a
| business, where you're a middleman. Perhaps the sanctions
| can be improved in a way to not hurt people leaving
| russia, but obviously as it increases complexity, it also
| requires more time to prepare.
|
| Still, a russian may make money abroad and then return to
| russia with the money. So "improving" those sanctions
| would effectively decrease them.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| >Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the
| other hand
|
| No, it just ensures that the only people left in Russia
| are the ones who support Putin.
|
| And like I said, Ukrainians have no choice. Why should
| Russians? As another poster said, even autocracies need a
| certain level of support to operate. It's not fair to
| punish Russians but their country is literally waging a
| full scale war while threatening the west with nukes.
| They can stop it.
|
| Or we can all wait until Kyiv looks like Grozny, millions
| have died and we're sacrificing the Baltic states to
| "prevent nuclear war"...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "No, it just ensures that the only people left in Russia
| are the ones who support Putin."
|
| It does not, as only a very tiny fraction of those who
| want to get out, can actually get out. And some choose to
| stay because of family, buisness, whatever.
|
| But those who left will be the reminder of the status quo
| for everyone - especially if it was the well educated who
| left.
|
| "And like I said, Ukrainians have no choice."
|
| But this is the choice of the ukrainian government. I am
| against mandatory conscripting and would not accept to be
| force drafted myself. And I would not want to fight next
| to people who might flee any second.
|
| "They can stop it."
|
| And have you stopped the iraq war? Or closed guantanamo?
| Or stopped the war in yemen?
|
| Why not? Or are you in support of them?
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Russia declared a cease-fire to evacuate civilians but
| has already broken it.
|
| > And have you stopped the iraq war? Or closed
| guantanamo? Or stopped the war in yemen?
|
| I'm not American. Ask a yank.
|
| > But this is the choice of the ukrainian government. I
| am against mandatory conscripting and would not accept to
| be force drafted myself. And I would not want to fight
| next to people who might flee any second.
|
| Ask a woman who's been raped why she wore a short
| skirt... You should be asking why Russia is killing
| civilians, not why Ukrainians are defending them.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| So which state are you from? I know only of a very few,
| with their hands mostly clean.
|
| But you get the point, that your possibilities as an
| individual (with maybe responsibilities for a family) are
| quite limited to stop the actions of a whole state?
|
| And like I said, leaving the state _is_ very effective
| protesting. No more state support anymore from that
| person, but one more who had enough. That gives the
| remaining something to think.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| > Russia declared a cease-fire to evacuate civilians but
| has already broken it.
|
| Any support this is actually the case besides "the
| ukranian officials said ... "?
|
| https://tass.com/society/1417395
| croes wrote:
| The Nazis were stopped from outside and the USSR by
| people from it's government because of it's economic
| downfall.
| pelasaco wrote:
| but do we all agree that the World history would be
| different if the ordinary german people would oppose the
| concentration camps and genocide? The ordinary russian
| people are IMO in the same position right now.
|
| They. Have. To stop. Putin!
| SXX wrote:
| Warning: I do not support this war in any way. Or Putin,
| or his propoganda and cronies. And I also supported
| opposition in Russia financially as much as I could
| afford. And I publicly codemned this war.
|
| Yet here is the problem: western countries allowed Putins
| regime to exist and grow in it's power for 15+ years and
| no one cared until this terrible war started. But before
| there been a lot of other events.
|
| No one gave a damn when Putins olygarchs got rich and
| moved hundreds of billions of dollars out of Russia. They
| owned tons of real estate abroad, their children study
| abroad and most of their families moved to live abroad.
|
| Around 2012 mass protests in Russia was supressed and a
| lot of people landed in prison. Some opposition leaders
| were killed.
|
| Then Russia invaded Ukraine and annexied Crimea. Again
| there been little resistence from EU and US who
| supposedly have to guarantee sovereignty to Ukraine after
| this country gave up nuclear weapons.
|
| When Navalny was poisoned and then imprisoned. Again no
| one really cared.
| pelasaco wrote:
| > Around 2012 mass protests in Russia was supressed and a
| lot of people landed in prison. Some opposition leaders
| were killed.
|
| "Maximum penalties were fines of several thousand rubles
| or imposed labor of up to 200 hours" https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot...
|
| That's how it works, but can he incarcerate millions of
| people?
|
| We have good examples of non-violent protests that won
| against such regimes:
|
| We did in GDR. We went to te streets. The machine guns
| were mounted on the top of every single train station. We
| went to the streets anyway. Not with stones, but candle
| lights.
|
| We have examples as in
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otpor#Strategy_and_tactics
|
| We have literature about it https://www.nonviolent-
| conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
|
| We have as well examples of violent protests through the
| History that worked (I don't support it, but we cannot
| deny their efficiency)
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-violent-
| protests-...
| SXX wrote:
| Could they incarcerate millions of people? Nope, but even
| in Belarus it was possible to incarcerate tens of
| thousands of people. Half a million people on street
| couldn't win against 20,000 of people with guns.
|
| Main problem that in Russia people who live in Moscow are
| too well-fed and their standards of living are too high
| to go and protest with a risk to lose everything. And
| protests outside of capital mean very little since
| distances are too big. No one gonna notice if 1000 people
| in small russian city will land in prison.
|
| Again I wish that people in Russia were as brave as those
| in ukrainians protecting their home, but I personally is
| not the one of brave ones. I wish I could do more to
| prevent this. Sorry.
|
| Is fleeing make me a bad person now? Nope, I dont think
| so.
| pelasaco wrote:
| > Is fleeing make me a bad person now? Nope, I don't
| think so.
|
| For sure not. You do what you have to do. But it is
| important for us to reflect about it. Who is able to do
| more damage to Putin without any risk of a new nuclear
| war? The russian people.
| SXX wrote:
| I totally agree with you on this point, but unfortunately
| it's will take months or even years of economic crysis
| before reasonable amount of people in Russia understand
| this. Little too late for Ukraine or Russia itself.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| So you would have been in favor of punishing german jews
| like Einstein, for getting out and not staying to change
| the system from within?
| pelasaco wrote:
| If he was supportive to Adolf H. until the point that it
| wasn't comfortable for him anymore? Absolutely, but that
| was never the case. I have/had a lot of friends in the IT
| industry from Russia. You absolutely couldn't engage in
| any political discussion without them exercise their
| whataboutism.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| We live in beautiful times. We can ask everyone, e.g. the
| OP, if he can give some links to his opinions here on HN
| or on twitter or elsewhere - where he criticized russian
| government for attacking Ukraine. Surely some russians
| did it, but most sadly didn't.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Exactly. They had a lot of chance to do it, while the
| Putin monster wasn't as powerful as today.
|
| Examples:
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissenters%27_March
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > The Nazis were stopped from outside
|
| Yes, after killing 30 million+ people. It would have been
| much easier if Germans didn't enable them or someone took
| out Hitler in 1938.
|
| And we punished Germany for generations because of it.
| The US still has military bases there to this day.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > And we punished Germany for generations because of it.
|
| Poland, who fought Germany with the biggest % casualties,
| ended up in a much worse state than Germany, because of
| russian occupation in the form of communism (Germany had
| a healthy part to take over after USSR collapsed) and no
| participation in the marshal plan.
|
| So I have doubts if we can speak about Germany being
| punished for generations.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Germany has been fully sovereign since 1991; they can ask
| the US troops to leave whenever they want to. The
| existence of US basis there now can hardly be considered
| "punishment".
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Ah well, we do have quite some Reichsburger (think QAnon
| people) who indeed say, germany is still occupied.
|
| But after Trump made the actual decision to pull out all
| US troops, there was rather lots of whining, because the
| military bases are important for the local economies ..
| abnry wrote:
| I looked it up and the ratio of German soldiers to US
| soldiers is about 2:1 in Germany. Pretty remarkable when
| you think about. They are kind of outsourcing their
| military to the US. And that's a choice the Germans made,
| and are starting to reverse.
| asats wrote:
| Right, if you were in power people fleeing over the
| berlin wall would have been shot from both sides, not
| just by the soviets. Cause they should have stayed inside
| and overthrown the soviet government. Same goes for north
| koreans, shoot them and send them back, let them fight
| the government.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| ^ the above is a nice example of a strawman[1]. Obviously
| putting sanctions on citizens of an invading country is
| very far from shooting them, and yet asats decided to
| portray his debater as a leader who would murder other
| people, because perhaps it's too exhausting for him to
| have an actual, substantive conversation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
| asats wrote:
| The argument was not about the imposition of sanctions on
| the citizens but about punishing the mostly anti-
| government people that are currently fleeing the country.
|
| Also my debater accepted the argument and wrapped himself
| in that straw.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| The Soviet Union was ended from within... Thanks for
| proving my point.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| And the people who wanted to flee, played their part in
| it. It is bad for the morale, if you have to shoot your
| people for wanting to leave. And they did get shot - but
| not from the other side, too. They were welcomed once
| they made it. And still it worked.
| [deleted]
| asats wrote:
| The only reason it didn't fall sooner is because you
| didn't shoot enough fleeing refugees. Got it.
| lolinder wrote:
| Every Russian who leaves is a Russian who won't get
| conscripted, who will pay no more taxes to Putin. They
| know what's going on on the inside and can share with the
| rest of us so we can make informed decisions. And aside
| from all of that, they no longer have to fear for their
| lives if they oppose the regime.
|
| From both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective,
| embracing Russian defectors is the very most important
| thing that we can be doing right now that we aren't
| already doing. The only reason not to do so is hate.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > From both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective,
| embracing Russian defectors is the very most important
| thing that we can be doing right now that we aren't
| already doing. The only reason not to do so is hate.
|
| No, the most humanitarian thing to do is end a war in
| which civilians are actually being killed.
|
| Not embracing those who supported Putin get to this point
| but suddenly flee when they're personally inconvenienced.
| lolinder wrote:
| How does persecuting Russians who flee Putin's regime
| help end the war sooner?
| ericmay wrote:
| To make it fair why not have them renounce citizenship
| and publicly disavow Putin or something? State their full
| name, former address, etc. Just to make sure they don't
| support Putin and never have.
| utrack wrote:
| North Korea imprisons friends and family of their
| defectors, btw.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yep. And to take this further this would be like someone
| strongly supporting the North Korean regime and then when
| they faced the consequences of their actions just skipped
| down to South Korea and lived happily ever after while
| millions have suffered for the regime you actively
| supported. Sorry no sympathy.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I think many would, if they can find a state who gives
| them papers instead. Being stateless is no fun.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea I can't imagine. The whole situation is just shit and
| it is all because of one guy.
|
| My wild hope for this situation is that somehow Putin and
| his gang are ousted, and we can Marshall Plan Russia into
| a successful, prosperous European democracy. Even make
| them a partner with NATO like we tried to do before.
| Admittedly the Russian people would have to want that, so
| that's a precondition, but I'm hopeful.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > it is all because of one guy.
|
| It's not. There's many ways in which you can get in
| contact with russians. And many of them actually support
| putin.
|
| Yes, you can say people are indoctrinated. But maybe so
| is putin - that's the problem with determinism.
|
| hitler was not one guy. putin is not one guy.
|
| I'm against lifting sanctions when putin dies. Much more
| has to be done.
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea you're right.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Putin is persecuting them. I just said we shouldn't
| embrace. There's a lot of middle ground.
|
| Ask someone like Alexei Navalny or Mikhail Khodorkovsky
| why they stayed to fight and be jailed instead of
| fleeing. Fleeing doesn't help.
|
| Russia hasn't been conquered since the most recent
| Russian Empire was formed. But regimes have fallen from
| within...
| gspetr wrote:
| Stayed?
|
| Khodorkovsky hasn't stayed after he got out.
|
| And Navalny overplayed his hand. It appears he really
| thought it was about him, not the movement he had
| created, otherwise he'd have had his wife run for office,
| which is what wives of those arrested in Belarus did.
| croes wrote:
| Wrong question. If Russians have a choice, why not
| Ukrainians?
|
| People who don't wont to fight are bad as soldiers so why
| force them?
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > Wrong question. If Russians have a choice, why not
| Ukrainians?
|
| Ask the Russians who are bombing them and preventing them
| from leaving. Russia has already broken the cease-fire
| meant to evacuate civilians.
|
| Or ask the Russians who started the war. Ask the Russians
| carrying out their leadership's orders.
|
| Russians are the ones taking away Ukrainians' choices.
| croes wrote:
| Their government prevents them leaving too if they are
| male.
|
| https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/02/25/russi
| a-i...
|
| And that people on the outside are helpful was proven in
| World War II were many germans fled.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > And that people on the outside are helpful was proven
| in World War II were many germans fled.
|
| Ah yes so effective. Only 40 million killed.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| So you would have been in favor of punishing german jews
| (like Einstein) for leaving nazi germany?
|
| They were german citiciens after all, so they were all
| 100% responsible for the war and holocaust?
|
| It is a complex world and oversimplifying solutions
| rarely help.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| > Russia has already broken the cease-fire meant to
| evacuate civilians.
|
| Russians are claiming the contrary.
|
| https://tass.com/society/1417395
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Of course they are. It's the Ukrainian Nazi-Jews killing
| civilians, not the people who invaded their country and
| are currently levelling it...
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| The ukranian army benefits from the human shield. The
| russian don't since they can't attack without causing
| civilian deaths (and the associated backlash).
|
| But I guess you believe the Russians are eating civilians
| alive if they can.
| trhway wrote:
| You're repeating Russian propaganda that is straight from
| the German Nazi playbook. "If you don't defend your
| cities we wouldn't have to kill your civilians there."
|
| >the Russians are eating civilians alive if they can
|
| the Russians are indiscriminately bombing Ukrainian
| residential areas, including using prohibited cluster and
| vacuum munitions.
|
| When it comes to eating, the Russians are marauding
| stores for food and alcohol as Russian military supply is
| broken and stolen in typical Russian fashion.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I don't know what nazi propaganda was. The narrative of
| the russian officials is like the ukranian army places
| its heavy units in residential areas which makes them
| difficult to attack without causing collateral damage.
|
| Cluster likely, vacuum unlikely. They are not covered by
| geneva convention and I don't think Russia signed no-use
| treaties for them (it doesn't make these munitions less
| horrible).
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-oldvideo-
| notrussia...
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| The guy you are responding to posts nothing but pro-
| russian propaganda.
| christophilus wrote:
| You're right. I like to think that I'd stay and fight /
| protest if I was single. But as a father with young kids,
| I'd be getting the hell out of dodge; and I'd hope to
| find a safe place of refuge. The rest of us need to be
| supportive of refugees from both countries.
| [deleted]
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals
| for the actions of the government.
|
| Its easy to say that but you have to look at the bigger
| picture.
|
| It's easy to say "just punish the government / the
| oligarchs", but as most Westerners know, these people have
| become extraordinarily adept at hiding their money and
| distributing their assets. So it is very difficult indeed to
| target them per-se, hence you need to make it difficult to
| move money/assets around, sell assets and gain new
| money/assets.
|
| You also need to look at the even bigger problem. How do we
| stop Russia attacking Ukraine ?
|
| Nobody wants World War 3. Even the Americans who are usually
| keen to test out their latest toys are being remarkably
| disciplined about sitting on their hands.
|
| So, you don't want to engage in a direct fight with the
| Russians, what's left on the table ?
|
| Diplomacy ? Well, they've tried and are trying, but not much
| light at the end of that tunnel as of yet.
|
| So your only option left is to accept that running a war
| needs two things, money and supplies. If both of those dry up
| then its only a matter of time before the war grinds to a
| halt too.
|
| Hence you end up doing things that affect banks, the central
| bank, transport and logistics.
|
| Regrettably its not just about targeting the military and the
| government, you have to target the supporting structures too
| (food, parts, consumables), hence you need to go big and go
| fast on sanctions.
|
| Yes your average Russian will get caught up in the sanctions.
| Yes it will be difficult and unpleasant for families.
|
| But frankly the alternative, full-blown war across Europe and
| the potential for nuclear bombs being used is unfathomably
| worse for everyone both inside Russia and outside.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > Nobody wants World War 3.
|
| Small point but this isn't exactly true, especially among
| US policymakers and media people. All you need to do here
| is read the chorus of people in official / corporate media
| going "nuclear war would be bad, but [...]". You can also
| rewind to the enormous shit-fit Washington types threw last
| summer when Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, or go even
| further back to the Iraq war.
|
| Washington is full of chickenhawk warmongers dying to send
| other people's children into battle, consequences be
| damned. It's the rare thing that is really bipartisan, too.
| A lot of people's careers depend on support for World War
| III, so they find a way to be okay with it.
| foxfluff wrote:
| There's also people who see it this way: world war 2
| ended Hitler, world war 3 may be needed to end Putler. A
| war might be the only way to take out a genocidal
| dictator-terrorist who threatens the entire world with
| nukes.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Yes right, this is what I mean by "they find a way to be
| okay with it." Well-meaning and high-minded establishment
| types like Tom Friedman or Jeffrey Goldberg or David Frum
| wouldn't let themselves indulge in outright bloodlust;
| that would be too crass, too icky, and too honest. So
| they concoct little children's tales like "WW3 may be
| needed to end Putler" to rationalize it. This is an ego
| defense: a mechanism to protect against the anxiety of
| seeing yourself as something horrible (seeing yourself
| honestly, in this case).
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I'm keeping an eye out for future headlines "No-fly zones
| will mean WWIII and why that's a good thing"
| artificial wrote:
| Lots of NGOs and bad actors. Speaking of which looks at
| this post by Edward Norton! [0] as far as strategies
| scope this paper by the Rand Corporation from 2019
| discussing what looks like a lot of policies already in
| place. Banning Russia from international institutions,
| strategies such as providing lethal aid to Ukraine,
| destabilizing neighboring country Belarus, PysOps to
| damage internal credibility. [1]
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/edwardnorton/status/1498025965875
| 875844?... [1]
| https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| I'd seen some of the Rand stuff but the Edward Norton
| shit is terrifying/hilarious. I haven't seen liberals
| this frothy for other people to kill on their behalf
| since right after 9/11. Lmao "please CIA FBI"! War makes
| fascists of us all.
| artificial wrote:
| Kinda weird that most media outlets don't have foreign
| correspondents, local news rooms, or even reliable
| sources on the ground. Look at what talking points are
| used and who they interview. I suppose something
| encouraging is despite the massive effort people don't
| want the war.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Speaking of which looks at this post by Edward Norton!
|
| Specifically which parts of that post do you take issue
| with?
| pstuart wrote:
| Let's not forget the Rapture seekers who look forward to
| Armageddon. The previous US Secretary of State (Mike
| Pompeo) being one of them:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-
| christ...
|
| One of many terrifying elements of our times.
| tsol wrote:
| simion314 wrote:
| >but I can see why they want Ukraine, a country that is
| in their borders, to stay in their orbit.
|
| Ukraine is not a Russian region that wants to separate,
| it is a independent democratic country and Putin pretends
| is part of Russia.
|
| I can also see why Putin wants Ukraine, Moldova,
| Georgia(he said he wants to restore URSS) but why should
| we say "bad luck, let him have them and let's buy more
| gas"
| tsol wrote:
| >but why should we say "bad luck, let him have them and
| let's buy more gas"
|
| The whole point of my post was responding to the idea
| that "we must oppose Russia to prevent nuclear war". If
| that's the real objective, then yes it makes sense to say
| "well too bad" and but intervene like we do in Tigray and
| most of the conflicts around the world. I don't see why
| this particular human rights violation is inexcusable
| when there are children dying in areas that we are more
| directly responsible for(ie Iraq or Afghanistan)
| [deleted]
| BossingAround wrote:
| > I don't support Russia, but I can see why they want
| Ukraine, a country that is in their borders, to stay in
| their orbit.
|
| This is a complete red herring. They don't want Ukraine
| to "stay in their orbit," they are colonizers that are
| fighting against Ukraine's independence. Putin said he
| doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO. Nobody in NATO is
| eager to accept Ukraine. Ukraine said they'd stay
| independent. Now, Putin is saying that Ukraine is
| essentially Russian, and he's bringing up fake news about
| genocide and neonazi government.
|
| If you think that Putin will stop at Ukraine, you're
| sorely mistaken. It's Ukraine now, Georgia right after,
| and then we shall see.
|
| You do not negotiate with terrorists. We've tried. Ever
| since Crimea in 2014, the west has been in one large
| negotiation with Russia, and obviously, nothing worked.
| At this point, it's all-out everything except actual
| troops on ground, because it's obvious Putin won't stop
| unless he's stopped in some way.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| I find it weird this idea that Putin was so scared of
| Ukraine joining NATO because he fears some NATO
| aggression. By now the most likely objective as far as
| I'm concerned is that conquering formerly soviet Ukraine
| has _always_ been in his mind. I could be wrong as I 'm
| not in his head, but to me this war wasn't avoidable by
| assuring Ukraine's neutrality as some pundits say, at
| best it was delaying the invasion to the time of his
| choosing, seemingly now.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| Yes, anyone believing Putin is scared of NATO offense (he
| just doesn't want NATO defense) has to reconcile the
| conflicting viewpoints that he's simultaneously scared of
| NATO attacking Russia but not worried about them just
| defending the invasion of a sovereign country, Ukraine...
| aszantu wrote:
| Looks like merica does negotiate with Neonazis though
| https://www.stpete4peace.org/Ukraine
| mynameishere wrote:
| _colonizers_
|
| Colonizers? That's a new one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27
|
| But even if they did want to "colonize" something they
| had ancient roots in, they don't have the birthrate to
| justify it. A total _non sequitur_.
|
| _Georgia right after_
|
| Oh, no. Anything but that.
|
| _and then we shall see_
|
| True. As they say at Davos, "As goes Georgia, so goes
| Azerbaijan". And then they (at Davos) add a little
| ominous aside, "...and then we shall see".
|
| _troops on ground_
|
| You first.
|
| _Putin won 't stop unless he's stopped in some way_
|
| That's true of everything. A falling object also won't
| stop unless it's stopped in some way. Maybe barring
| Russian Blues from cat competitions will do the trick. Or
| maybe starving the poor people of Egypt will wake him up.
| tsol wrote:
| I disagree. There are highly respected political
| scientists that disagree such as John Mearsheimer of
| University of Chicago. Here's an article from the New
| Yorker; https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-
| mearsheimer-...
|
| He explains exactly how nato has made moves to expand,
| the puts Russia in a position to respond;
|
| >"I think all the trouble in this case really started in
| April, 2008, at the nato Summit in Bucharest, where
| afterward nato issued a statement that said Ukraine and
| Georgia would become part of nato. The Russians made it
| unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as
| an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand.
| Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time
| is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the
| West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's
| border. Of course, this includes more than just nato
| expansion. nato expansion is the heart of the strategy,
| but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes
| turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy,
| and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential
| threat"
|
| You say I don't know why Putin is acting, and then
| baselessly go on to claim a reason with no support. The
| idea that all it takes is some strong action, without
| taking into account the valid objections actual experts
| have, is ridiculous. This isn't propaganda it's valid
| foreign policy discussion that many others agree with.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > The other option, if we are really trying to do our
| best to avoid nuclear war, is to capitulate to Russia.
|
| That is not our choice to make (assuming neither of us is
| Ukrainian). Our choice is only to cut off support and let
| Ukraine fight truly alone.
| tsol wrote:
| Yes that's my point, that is capitulation to Russia for
| us. To not get involved.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Amounts to appeasement and assumes they would stop at
| Ukraine, risks Russia becoming more powerful after
| annexation of Ukraines economic wealth.
|
| FWIW I don't think your post should be flagged dead, it
| is a contrarian opinion but doesn't break any rules.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| The problem is that Ukraine has the same security
| implications for Europe as it has for Russia.
|
| I agree that the bear shouldn't have been poked for
| everyone's sake, the Ukrainians most of all. But now that
| it has, capitulation is not an option for Europe, no more
| than it was for America wrt Cuba's alignment in the 60s.
| tsol wrote:
| Sure.. but I don't know why capitulation isn't an
| option-- again if the chief concern is nuclear war then
| why should we resist to the precipice of a world war?
| That's the puzzle piece that doesn't fit-- how we're
| making nuclear war less likely by getting involved.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > but I don't know why capitulation isn't an option
|
| There's a school of thought that says capitulation
| emboldens the attacker. Say Crimea and the whole of
| Ukraine had been handed over to Russia with no
| resistance, why would they stop there? Diplomacy fails
| when the other side misreads your intentions; a seemingly
| somnulent NATO may wake up to a reconstituted USSR
| invasion of Poland because Russia is confident fear of
| nuclear conflict will deter any action. No one wants
| that.
| fprct wrote:
| > If Mexico has a treaty with China and begins stationing
| Chinese troops, USA certainly would have a big problem
| with that.
|
| Sorry, but this is nonsense analogy. The correct one
| would be: China attacks Mexico against its will.
|
| If Ukraine wanted to be part of Russia, they would do so
| via a referendum, just like UK left EU. The referendum
| would have high turnout and at least 50%+ of population
| would vote YES, we want to integrate with Russia. That's
| how things are done when there is a legitimate reason to
| believe that some country and its residents want such
| geopolitical change.
|
| "I fail to see why it's a bigger deal than lives lost in
| Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Tigray, Palestine, or any of
| the other places in recent history where there have been
| scores of human rights violations"
|
| In terms of tragedy of individuals, it's not "a bigger
| deal". It's a bigger deal in terms of global security of
| the western nations and their values. And spare me
| condescending tone about those values not being ideal or
| ideally followed - if you have doubts about them then try
| to change them or relocate to better places - I don't
| know, maybe to Moscow?
|
| " But if we're really concerned about war with a nuclear
| power above all else, we shouldn't be poking the bear in
| its backyard at all "
|
| The bear has entered your backyard.
| lowkey wrote:
| I feel like you are conveniently skipping the part where
| millions of ordinary Russians are being economically
| devastated by broad brush sanctions that punish the poor
| and middle class Russians who are innocent of war crimes,
| simply because they were unfortunate to be born in the
| wrong country and they may justifiably be afraid for their
| lives if they protest.
|
| For those who say beat the war drums, punish them all, just
| so we can make it harder on the authoritarians and
| oligarchs - are you ready to enlist in the Ukraine militia
| or is that too much to ask?
|
| It seems a little too facile to be willing to put others
| lives on the line when you are not willing to risk your
| own.
| na85 wrote:
| Did you miss this part of the comment to which you
| replied?
|
| >Yes your average Russian will get caught up in the
| sanctions. Yes it will be difficult and unpleasant for
| families.
| sharpneli wrote:
| The tax income produced by those people is being used to
| fund the war. It is unfortunate but it's better to have a
| person become poor than another person being bombed.
|
| In a world without nukes they would be bombed too right
| now, because wars have a tendency of doing that
| regardless of who fights.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think a counter argument is that these measures allow
| the situation to be described in Russia as a 'west vs
| Russia' situation which lines up well with media
| narratives people have been hearing for years rather than
| a 'Russian army sent to kill Ukrainians' which is less
| popular (eg many Russians will have close ties to some
| people in Ukraine). It feels to me that the best thing
| western governments could do is to signal reasonable
| conditions under which sanctions would be instantly
| lifted and give Russia a way to back down, though it
| isn't clear to me what that way would be.
| sharpneli wrote:
| It's abundantly clear what the conditions are: Stop the
| attack against their neighbour and the sanctions are
| lifted.
|
| Anything less let's Putin get away once again. And right
| now every country in Europe, and their citizens, are sick
| of Putin getting away every single time.
|
| I do have a personal stake in this. We're the only
| western neighbour of Russia that is not in NATO and has
| not been attacked by them after the fall of Soviet Union.
| We're basically next, and it wouldn't be the first time
| Russia would "defend" itself by driving tanks here. I
| heard enough stories from my grandparents who had to flee
| due to them. I thought that it's a thing of the past, but
| it very clearly is not.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> We're the only western neighbour of Russia that is not
| in NATO and has not been attacked by them after the fall
| of Soviet Union. We're basically next_
|
| Moldova?
| sharpneli wrote:
| Moldova has a separatist area maintained by Russian
| troops. Transnistria. So in a way Russia has already
| attacked them, though not yet tried to conquer, yet. Also
| Moldova shares no land border with Russia, yet (and very
| much hopefully not).
|
| Finland is the only land border sharing non nato country
| left.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| What makes you think Russia would invade Finland? I
| seriously doubt that would happen.
| sharpneli wrote:
| I recommend reading some material about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
|
| It's very influential book in Russia that has influenced
| their policy goals. It was written in 1997. A lot of it
| feels rather prescient considering the current world
| situation, which is likely not a surprise.
|
| What they considered for US was that they should
| "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American
| activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic,
| social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all
| dissident movements - extremist, racist, and sectarian
| groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes
| in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to
| support isolationist tendencies in American politics"
|
| UK was to be cut off from European politics and Germany
| should be the new lead of central Europe. Well, UK did
| distance itself. And up to few weeks ago Germany was the
| one most against united front against Russia.
|
| There is plenty of other stuff there. Annexation of
| Ukraine is just one of them (alongside annexation of
| Belarus which they have de facto achieved). Annexation of
| Finland is one of the goals too. Hence I have no doubts
| that it would happen at some point.
| ddalex wrote:
| > : Stop the attack against their neighbour and the
| sanctions are lifted.
|
| That would be too easy - there needs to be war
| reparations paid to Ukraine too - although nothing will
| bring back the lost lives.
|
| So what about - yes, sanctions lifted, and the 300
| billion Russian state stashed away is given to Ukraine.
| lowkey wrote:
| Meanwhile the White House Press secretary, yesterday,
| defended the US decision to continue buying Russian oil.
|
| Since the US is also directly funding the Russian's
| ability to wage war in Ukraine, would you advocate for
| the US and other Western countries who continue to buy
| Russian Oil to sanction themselves?
| sharpneli wrote:
| Germany also buys Russian gas. It's basically the last
| thing Russia has to lose anymore. If they escalate the
| conflict even more (by even more brutally bombing
| civilians) I'd be surprised if energy was not part of the
| sanctions.
|
| In essence it is to maintain some leverage, on top of the
| usual practical and selfish reasons.
|
| In addition Americans are notoriously sensitive to the
| price of gas (in a similar vein the joke goes that Russia
| has had two price spikes in Vodka, first in 1917 and
| second in 1991, maybe we'll get third one soon). If it
| rises too much they might start to oppose the whole being
| uppity to Russians thing going on now, which would be
| bad.
| lowkey wrote:
| If I understand correctly, you are fine with broad
| economic sanctions on everyday Russians, most of whom are
| already poor especially after the collapse of the Ruble -
| and who frankly don't have as much say over their
| authoritarian governments as American or German citizens
| who enjoy living in liberal democracies.
|
| At the same time you excuse rich countries such as the US
| or Germany who actively _choose_ to continue to buy oil
| from authoritarian regimes even as they invade our allies
| - simply because buying oil elsewhere would be expensive
| and politically inconvenient.
|
| I don't understand your logic.
|
| Remember, the sanctions against average Russians _will_
| absolutely result in shortages of food, medicine and
| other essential supplies. Many everyday Russians will
| likely starve or die from these sanctions. This isn't
| about how quickly they can replace their old iPhones.
| sharpneli wrote:
| > simply because buying oil elsewhere would be expensive
| and politically inconvenient.
|
| Like I mentioned in the previous post, the main reason is
| to keep some leverage. It's the biggest financial
| sanction that can be thrown at them. Essentially all
| other sanctions were taken, but the last one was kept
| unused. If Putin escalates against civilians this
| sanction would likely be used too.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> [...] broad economic sanctions on everyday Russians,
| most of whom are already poor especially after the
| collapse of the Ruble [...] Remember, the sanctions
| against average Russians will absolutely result in
| shortages of food, medicine and other essential
| supplies._
|
| You are completely wrong here. The sanctions are against
| Russia to cripple their war machine, not the Russian
| people.
|
| And Russia, with its immense natural resources, could
| easily afford to care and feed its citizens regardless of
| the relationship with the west, if only their oligarchs
| hadn't dilapidated the country's wealth for their
| personal gain. So it's hardly the west's fault that the
| Russian government steals from its own people (literally)
| and spends whatever wealth it has left bombing innocent
| people in Ukraine instead of spending it caring for its
| people.
|
| Russia is not the victim here, and Russian people
| starving is not the west's fault but it's Russia's own
| fault and their leaders' fault. Period.
| lowkey wrote:
| The net effect is the same. Average Russian citizens are
| being treated as pawns and they will face the most brutal
| effects of these sanctions.
|
| Oligarchs and authoritarians in Russia have options and
| resources to weather the storm. Many everyday Russians
| live close to hand to mouth and they _will_ suffer. I
| don't accept the decision to dehumanize an entire
| nation's citizens for the acts of their authoritarian
| elite.
|
| The Russian kings and knights and rooks and bishops will
| be fine. It is the pawns or plebs who will suffer the
| most.
|
| They are innocent in my eyes, having only committed the
| crime of being born within the wrong arbitrary political
| boundaries.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> The net effect is the same._
|
| It's not though. The west doesn't come to Russia and
| shove their grubby hands into the bank accounts of
| ordinary Russians to steal their money, resources and
| taxes, and starve them to death. Russia does that to
| their citizens and bares the sole responsibility of these
| actions, not the west. Like come on, Russia can choose to
| stop the wear at any time and the sanctions would be
| lifted but they're not doing that.
|
| _> I don't accept the decision to dehumanize an entire
| nation's citizens for the acts of their authoritarian
| elite._
|
| So we should just let Russia invade whatever country it
| wants and kill their way through Europe because otherwise
| ordinary Russian citizens might suffer? What about
| Ukrainian citizens and their suffering? What about the
| poor pensioners in Eastern Europe who won't be able to
| afford the increased energy bills due to the war and
| might die because instead of buying medicine, now have to
| pay insane energy bills? What about the European
| taxpayers who will now have to pay increased costs to
| house and care for millions of displaced Ukrainian
| refugees? So Russia and Russians are not the only ones
| paying the price for Putin's actions, all of Europe is.
|
| By your logic, you would have let Hitler exterminate an
| entire continent because fighting Germany would have been
| tough on the innocent people of Germany for the acts of
| their leader (not that it wasn't, but Hitler had to be
| defeated and that was the price). Except that now, to
| defeat Putin, instead of going to war with Russia and
| have millions of people needlessly die on both sides, we
| can bankrupt Russia and cripple it from the inside, and
| have minimal casualties on both sides (Europeans will
| also suffer from the war and these sanctions but the
| important thing is we save Ukraine and as many Ukrainians
| as we can, as I doubt Putin will ever see a trial in the
| Hague for his war crimes).
| lowkey wrote:
| > So we should just let Russia invade whatever country it
| wants and kill their way through Europe because otherwise
| ordinary Russian citizens might suffer?
|
| No, absolutely not but that is a false dichotomy and I
| think you also know that. This isn't a simple binary
| choice between doing nothing and imposing broad-stroke
| sanctions on every single citizen of Russia.
|
| One simple first step could be for the US and Germany and
| the rest of Western Europe to simply stop buying oil from
| Russia and thereby cut off further direct funding for
| Putin's war. We know that sanctions on regular citizens
| hurt regular citizens while cutting off oil purchases
| directly impedes the Russian state's ability to wage war.
| Which do you think would be more effective?
|
| As for increasing energy costs on Europeans and also
| Ukrainians who I understand are paying up to half their
| take-home wages to heat their homes, I think the easiest
| course of action would be for Western governments to
| directly subsidize energy prices in the short term while
| simultaneously cutting fuel and carbon taxes on those
| affected.
|
| I don't agree with your assessment of my logic that I
| would let Hitler exterminate anyone and I would
| appreciate it if we could keep the discussion civil.
|
| I am not your enemy. I want this war to end ASAP as much
| as you do. We are simply advocating different strategies
| to achieve the same goal - peace.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> This isn't a simple binary choice between doing
| nothing and imposing broad-stroke sanctions on every
| single citizen of Russia._
|
| Again, the west is not attacking Russian citizens, but
| the Russian government. We can't change the fact that
| ordinary Russians are subject to the Russian government
| and therefore will also suffer to a degree no matter how
| you try to slice the sanctions. Especially when Russia
| would rather destroy European food rather than give it to
| its starving people.[1] So if Russia is actively harming
| its own people how can we expect to protected them if
| their own government won't?
|
| You can't just keep repeating the trope that the west is
| actively harming the Russians citizens when its their own
| government doing it. Yeah, living in a corrupt country
| with shitty leaders is bad for the people living there
| but it's not the west's responsibility to improve it for
| them. Ultimately, it's up to the Russian people to revolt
| against their government and fight for a better future,
| same how other countries did it. The price of freedom is
| always high.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/nrLwLuWv7rA?t=380
| lowkey wrote:
| lowkey wrote:
| It is though. The west does shove their grubby hands into
| the bank accounts of ordinary citizens - all the time -
| to steal their money, resources and taxes.
|
| - A few weeks ago it was Canada freezing bank accounts of
| their political opponents.
|
| - The US still allows for civil forfeiture of arbitrary
| assets with no presumption of innocence or conventional
| due process.
|
| - A little while back Cyprus arbitrarily stole private
| funds from innocent civilians who had committed no crime
| - just because the gov said they needed it to bail out
| their bankers
|
| - The EU has had negative nominal interest rates for some
| time stealing money from savers for the benefit of
| central bank policy
|
| - Nearly all western governments have had negative real
| interest rates on savings for some time. This is a
| conscious policy to inflate their currencies through
| money printing in order to more easily manage their
| national debts.
| retromario wrote:
| I think it's only a matter of time until the US and
| Germany stop buying gas from Russia. It's going to cause
| a lot of pain, especially for us in Germany where nearly
| a third of gas is imported from Russia. But that's the
| point, there are no more easy ways to put pressure on
| Putin. We are all going to feel a lot of pain before
| things get better.
|
| What is happening to the Russian people is tragic, but it
| pales in comparison to what the average Ukrainian is
| experiencing (shortages of food, medicine, water and
| basic shelter, psychological terror, maimings, deaths).
|
| We have no other means to put pressure on Putin save
| arming Ukraine or attacking Russia.
| leshow wrote:
| I'm sure the world would love to hear your solution for
| how to end the conflict in Ukraine with zero collateral
| damage anywhere. To me, it seems like there is simply no
| way to make the ruling class of Russia suffer without
| invariably harming the average Russian.
| lowkey wrote:
| Unfortunately I don't have the perfect answer to
| immediately end this conflict with no collateral damage
| to anyone as you said.
|
| That doesn't mean I advocate arbitrarily punishing
| innocent civilians for the actions of their rulers -
| especially when those rulers are proven to be
| authoritarians who can and will ruthlessly crush dissent
| from their populace.
|
| If you read my other comments on this thread you will see
| I shared some ideas that I believe would both be more
| targeted towards Russia's elite, while also bringing more
| direct pain to defund Putin's ability to wage war.
|
| Namely the west should cut off Russia's supply of money
| by banning the purchase of Russian oil.
|
| I realize this action _will_ hurt regular Ukrainians and
| other Innocent Europeans which is why I also advocate for
| direct subsidies to reduce the cost of energy for these
| affected populations, paid for by western governments.
|
| TL;DR: One strategy we might try to make it harder for
| the elites to wage war would be to stop giving them money
| to wage war while at the same time temporarily
| subsidizing energy costs for populations affected by the
| oil sanctions.
| leshow wrote:
| > Namely the west should cut off Russia's supply of money
| by banning the purchase of Russian oil.
|
| I don't think that's sufficient. You mentioned the
| collapse of the ruble, this is an outcome that heavily
| effects Russians but also directly effects the ability
| for the war to be financed. In the end, you cannot
| separate the two, in order to apply enough pressure to
| one you must invariably harm the other.
| lowkey wrote:
| Estimates vary but it seems the current sanctions include
| a carve-out allowing Russia to sell $0.8-$1 billion USD
| per day in oil and gas. I can assure you that a
| significant portion of these funds is being used by
| Putin's regime to wage this war.
|
| I also think it is silly to argue that cutting Russia off
| from this direct subsidy from the west would be
| insufficient to have chilling effect on Putin's war -
| especially when we haven't even tried. How do you know it
| is insufficient?
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| I support sanctions precisely _because_ I wouldn't want
| to volunteer for any militia, and am therefore not
| prepared to ask others to do the same.
|
| If the options on the table are a) do nothing, b) launch
| a military counter-offensive which could lead to use of
| nuclear weapons and/or a cyber-war with as-yet unknown
| (but certainly devastating) consequences, or c) use
| economic measures to deprive Putin of the tax base he
| needs to fund his war, I choose option C.
|
| I'm willing to consider other options if they are
| presented.
| hagy wrote:
| Yes, it is unfortunate that ordinary Russian citizens are
| being harmed by the sanctions. But that is unavoidable
| and an acceptable side effect of weakening Putin's war
| machine. We need to eliminate his ability to wage an
| inhuman war of aggression and asphyxiating the Russian
| economy that power's his war machine is our best
| available option.
|
| War, including economic war, commonly involves massive
| harm to civilians. That includes civilians who oppose the
| war and are powerless to stop it. If the western powers
| and their allies could surgically snuff out Putin's war
| machine without harm to innocent Russians then they
| would. Unfortunately that option is not available. So we
| accept that innocent Russians will suffer as we drain the
| financial blood from Putin's war machine.
| lowkey wrote:
| I disagree. The suffering of Russian people is very
| avoidable. For example if the US and Germany had the
| political and economic will to stop buying oil from
| Russia and thereby directly funding Putin's war.
|
| Instead they chose broad indiscriminate sanctions that,
| while politically convenient are absolutely devastating
| to everyday Russian plebs. The Ruble has collapsed
| leading to hyperinflation on everyday goods the people
| need to survive.
|
| Many innocent Russians _will_ die directly because of the
| actions of the west. Their blood will be on our hands.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Many innocent Russians will die directly because of
| the actions of the west._
|
| They will die because of the actions of their own
| government.
| lowkey wrote:
| They will die because western governments find it
| politically more convenient to apply broad indiscriminate
| sanctions against all citizens of the country instead of
| cutting off funding from the head of the snake by NOT
| buying Russian oil & gas.
|
| The only crime committed by regular Russians is being
| born inside an authoritarian regime that pretended to be
| a democracy for a time. The genie is out of the bottle
| and Russians know that protesting their government could
| land them in the Gulag or worse.
|
| Stop playing with people's lives! Yo have obviously never
| lived under an authoritarian government. People rising up
| in a new Arab Spring may sound romantic but it is more
| likely to end up in many more deaths than overthrowing
| this givernment.
|
| Elsewhere I advocated for the west banning the purchase
| of oil along with subsidizing energy prices for affected
| populations.
|
| You repeatedly ignore my proposal or even explain what is
| wrong with the idea of de-funding the Russian war machine
| by no longer giving the Russian government millions of
| dollars/Euros.
|
| Why won't you address my core point instead of deflecting
| and blaming an entire nation's citizens?
| bigfudge wrote:
| I don't see how stopping buying oil would be preferable
| from the perspective of a Russian citizen. Both will be
| economically ruinous to the Russian states, eventually.
| One hits innocent European citizens too, so it seems
| obvious which to choose.
| helge9210 wrote:
| > are you ready to enlist in the Ukraine militia or is
| that too much to ask?
|
| Not so fast. Militias are full. You can't even bribe your
| way in.
| akimball wrote:
| Today, Ukraine MoD announced they will take anyone,
| except Russian citizens - no military experience
| required. 16000 Ukraine foreign legion sign-ups last I
| heard.
| usrusr wrote:
| Life isn't good under an incompetent government that
| doesn't care for its citizens, simple as that. It's not
| the responsibility of US, EU or anyone else to lessen
| that pain. Putin could have easily avoided the sanctions,
| he didn't. Avoiding the sanctions would not have required
| any particular skill or qualification. If instead of
| Putin a dog were president, the sanctions would not have
| happened. Bad luck for those who don't have a better
| government.
| Glawen wrote:
| The sad truth is that Putin can only be removed from
| within Russia, by Russians. We cannot attack Russia
| without risking nuclear war, so imposing hardship to
| every russians is the best move we have.
|
| The guy is mad and made a bad strategic move by starting
| an unpopular war. This is the opportunity
| foxfluff wrote:
| The sadder truth may be that Russians might not be
| interested in removing Putin. Decades of propaganda,
| murdering of opposition, and authoritarian response to
| protests has grown a people that largely believes in
| their leader and is also afraid to openly oppose
| authority.
| konart wrote:
| The sadder truth may be that you won't be getting
| anything much better than Putin from Russia in its
| current state.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| This is not true. Even just the opposition party leader
| Navalny is good enough. Good people exist in Russia.
| Putin just needs to be removed from the helm.
| pvaldes wrote:
| So most Russians are innocent and suffer by unfair
| sanctions that should be directed instead towards people
| Pro-Putin, like most Russians claim to be?
|
| This looks like a circular argument.
| politician wrote:
| I don't think you read their post. Try reading it again
| and again until you understand that imposing devastating
| sanctions on Russia that impacts their civilian
| population is a better strategy than risking a world wide
| nuclear exchange.
|
| If you still don't get it, go buy DEFCON on Steam and
| play it a few times.
| Animats wrote:
| > Nobody wants World War 3. ... the alternative, full-blown
| war across Europe and the potential for nuclear bombs being
| used is unfathomably worse for everyone both inside Russia
| and outside.
|
| We may get it by mistake. A wider war in Europe is all too
| likely. The NATO countries and the EU are shipping large
| amounts of military supplies into Ukraine. One story
| mentions 17 US widebody cargo aircraft per day going into
| Poland. This is a real threat to Russia's attacks, because
| the supplies include the good anti-tank and anti-aircraft
| weapons. That leaves the Russian army fighting as infantry
| against a much larger armed population, a long, bloody
| slog. Unless Russia can cut off outside supplies, there's
| no path to victory.
|
| It's all too likely that some attempt to attack Ukranian
| supply lines will reach over the border into a NATO
| country. Just some Russian pilot in Ukraine in a fight
| making a turn too slowly could result in overflying Polish
| territory. Where the air defenses are ready to shoot down
| anything hostile.
|
| Re-read how WWI started. Everybody had mutual-defense
| treaties, and one minor event set it all off.
|
| 2 hours ago: "Putin says sanctions introduced on Russia are
| equal to a "declaration of war"" - CNN.
| leshow wrote:
| > Russian President Vladimir Putin has described
| sanctions imposed by Western nations over his invasion of
| Ukraine as "akin to a declaration of war".
|
| > "But thank God it has not come to that," he added.
|
| The bit he added at the end is important.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't think you'll hear in real time how close we
| probably already came, but maybe after all the dust has
| settled there might be some stories along those lines.
|
| For now, we are on a knife edge, and the number of
| refugees is mounting steadily. I expect we'll be in the
| millions by the end of next week.
| skybrian wrote:
| Although it supports the Ukrainians and that's important, I
| don't see how sanctions _reduce_ the likelihood of wider
| war? It is, in its way, an escalation, though a safer one
| than directly entering the conflict.
|
| It seems Putin sprung this on the rest of Russia as a
| surprise decision. (Of course the signs were there.) Did he
| bother to get the support of the oligarchs or anyone else
| first? It's not at all clear he has anyone's support; he
| just has their obedience.
|
| Morally speaking, this looks rather simple: it's Putin's
| big mistake. To the extent that others failed to stop the
| invasion, it was by failing to influence him. But a
| paranoid and isolated dictator isn't easily influenced.
|
| Punishing other Russians for this, particularly outside
| Russia and Ukraine, often has no purpose and is a form of
| cruelty.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Let's be clear. The Russians being punished outside of
| Russia have blood on their hands. They should never have
| been allowed to buy property and football clubs in the
| uk, because they weee gangster crooks who had stolen from
| their own country. That the uk govt was complicit in this
| at the time doesn't make it wrong to act against them
| now.
|
| I have a lot more sympathy for the people hurt in Russsia
| now. Russians, whether they have been brainwashed into
| supporting Putin or not, are in for a bad time in the
| coming years.
| skybrian wrote:
| This might be true, but they aren't being tried for their
| own crimes. It's just revenge.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Clearly it is not revenge, that is a ridiculous thing to
| say. Sanctions are the kind of things that tend to send
| unmistakable messages: we are serious about this and
| we're willing to hurt our own interests to hurt yours,
| stop what you are doing or it will get worse. Of course
| that requires a modicum of rationality on the other side,
| which we may not have in this case, and obviously the
| rulers will usually be utterly unaffected. But six
| degrees works as well in Russia as it does elsewhere, and
| living under sanctions is a lot more comfortable than
| living under a rain of artillery fire.
|
| If you aim at the Russian industrial complex (which
| produces a lot of the arms), and the government with
| sanctions then _obviously_ you will it the people too.
| But that 's not as bad as a shooting war (or a nuclear
| war) would be. And it doesn't rule either out.
| branko_d wrote:
| Lifting sanctions can becime a powerful motivator in any
| future negotiations.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Although it supports the Ukrainians and that's
| important, I don't see how sanctions reduce the
| likelihood of wider war?
|
| By reducing the capacity for wider war.
|
| I think this summarizes it, without a focus on war
| capacity specifically, but the impact on war capacity
| flows directly from this:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/DmitryOpines/status/1499157917
| 399...
| Mirioron wrote:
| Putin isn't the one pressing the button to shoot a missile
| that hits a kindergarten. He's not the one that's threatening
| you with a rifle. It's an average Russian guy that does it.
|
| It has been an average Russian guy that does it _for
| centuries_.
|
| Virtually every country bordering Russia has suffered from
| this in the past few hundred years. I don't mean to say that
| it's right, but it should be easily understandable why any
| country that had portions of their population deported to
| Siberia and sent to gulag campus would have tensions that
| were reignited with this conflict.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So we are supposed to just let dictators do anything they
| please because we don't want hurt their subjects?
|
| There's not many options beside kinetic war and obliterating
| the economy.
|
| What do you suggest we do that would be more effective? Hand
| over Ukraine's sovereignty?
| bootlooped wrote:
| I support the economic warfare against Russia, not because
| I'm OK with hurting average Russians citizens, but because I
| don't know any better alternative. Would NATO entering
| Ukraine and engaging Russian troops be better? I don't think
| doing nothing would be better. I don't think lighter
| sanctions would save Ukraine or sufficiently punish Putin,
| because it's questionable whether the current harsh sanctions
| will even save Ukraine or sufficiently punish Putin. This is
| a horrible situation all around.
| GoldenMonkey wrote:
| The Russian soldiers can't lay down their arms?
| Tistron wrote:
| Everywhere I've seen anyone motivate restrictions on Russian
| citizens it's been about pushing them to revolt against their
| government, not about punishing. I don't know whether it
| makes sense, but it does seem like one of few avenues to try
| to get rid of putin that has low chance of resulting in
| atomic war.
| akomtu wrote:
| It didn't work with North Korea, it won't work with Russia.
| Populace there is unarmed, disorganised and divided, while
| the Putin's gang is very organised and not shy of using
| violence against dissenters. When NATO says "we're trying
| to push russian joes to fix their government", they really
| mean "we're afraid to confront your bully, he's just too
| strong and cruel for us."
| lolinder wrote:
| In case you haven't noticed, North Korea hasn't exactly
| invaded South Korea recently. The sanctions haven't
| created a revolt, but they've almost certainly eliminated
| the North's ability to wage an offensive war.
|
| Doing the same to Russia should be our target. If we
| cannot end the totalitarian regime without starting World
| War III, we can still neutralize it as a threat to the
| rest of the world.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > Populace there is unarmed
|
| So, we should give them weapons?
|
| > disorganised and divided
|
| You think that overthrowing their government would work?
| Maybe with some "special military operation" perhaps?
|
| > "we're afraid to confront your bully, he's just too
| strong and cruel for us."
|
| Or maybe - we have a rule where we don't try to
| assasinate leaders unless strictly necessary. And before
| you say about Iraq and nin Laden - that was USA
| operation, not NATO. But I still think that would be best
| solution which minimises losses in people. But try to do
| this, even bin Laden was not found in one week, it would
| be much harder to find Putin in some vault. Plus, after
| he is killed, there will be some other former KGB agent
| to replace him.
| philovivero wrote:
| > we have a rule where we don't try to assasinate leaders
| unless strictly necessary
|
| And yet, here we are. Maybe this is the rule that needs
| to change. How many of these wars will we see in the
| coming decades if we simply start assassinating the
| leaders of aggressive countries?
|
| I understand there are often power vacuums and things can
| be worse afterward, but maybe a good, 20-year run of
| assassinating aggressive world leaders would lead us to a
| better place.
|
| Why is it always the average Joe that has to pay his life
| for the leaders?
| lolinder wrote:
| At this point, it doesn't look at all like we can
| practically expect a popular revolt. For me there are two
| outcomes to target with the sanctions:
|
| * Make life unpleasant enough for the oligarchs that they
| replace Putin with someone less intent on ruining the nice
| thing they had going.
|
| * Handicap Russia's ability to wage war. This includes
| eliminating their ability to buy supplies and destroying
| their morale.
|
| It's the second goal that is, in my mind, the motivation
| for the economy-destroying sanctions.
| akrymski wrote:
| Oligarchs don't run the country. They have zero control.
| It's like saying let's sanction Elon Musk for Iraq. The
| country is run by the military. Protesters are jailed for
| 3-5 years.
|
| Cornering a dictator with a nuke is the stupidest foreign
| policy I can think of.
| lolinder wrote:
| The definition of an oligarch is "someone who is part of
| a small group that runs a country." (Wiktionary)
|
| So, you can try to claim that Russia doesn't _have_
| oligarchs, but if they exist you can 't say that they
| don't run the country.
|
| EDIT: For example, if the country is run by the military
| as you say, then the top leaders of the military would
| make up the _oligarchy_ and each of them would be an
| _oligarch_.
|
| I'm unsure how any dictator could run a country in the
| absence of _some form_ of supporting oligarchy.
| akrymski wrote:
| Sure, but the sanctions are aimed at the rich businessmen
| not military leaders (who aren't necessarily all that
| rich). Eg Khadorkovsky was the richest oligarch of
| Russia, has been jailed and became a major opponent of
| Putin.
|
| Wonder who are the oligarchs of USA by that definition?
| lolinder wrote:
| What makes you think you know better than anyone else who
| is actually running Russia?
| samstave wrote:
| It would be great if Oligarchs around the world were
| uncomfortable.
|
| This should be and opportunity to catalogue just exactly
| who the oligarchs are and what are their assets and how
| are they affected.
| akrymski wrote:
| Oligarchs don't run the country. They have zero control.
| It's like saying let's sanction Elon Musk for Iraq. The
| country is run by the military. Protesters are jailed for
| 3-5 years.
| LinusPrime wrote:
| I honestly thought the revelation of the Panama Papers
| would trigger something similar, here's hoping this new
| conflict will help move the needle...
| rjsw wrote:
| Might also be helpful to declare that anything
| confiscated from an oligarch will be given back to the
| Russian people/state after everything has calmed down.
| scoot wrote:
| That's what's happening in part to frozen assets of the
| Afghan Central Bank [1], so it's not entirely beyond the
| realms of possibility - but how that would work in
| practice in Putin controlled Russia I have no idea.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/11/politics/executive-
| order-...
| pelasaco wrote:
| > * Handicap Russia's ability to wage war. This includes
| eliminating their ability to buy supplies and destroying
| their morale.
|
| But if we still fear the atomic war, he can still
| threatens Europe with that.
| Lio wrote:
| That is a legitimate worry but there's no counter to it
| other than reminding Putin that a nuclear attack would
| cause a massive automated, nuclear counter attack that
| would destroy him too.
|
| There's no defence against submarine based warheads;
| enough will get through.
|
| It's the reason that NATO isn't going establish a no fly
| zone over Ukraine. They know it too.
| pelasaco wrote:
| At this point, what do you think that Putin has to loose?
|
| The guy is 70 years old. An old, lonely, bitter man. His
| wife left him in 2013 and his kids are far away from him.
| All his Wealth is blocked, he will never be able to enjoy
| his life outside of his little empire. He has nothing to
| loose.
|
| He could choose the bunker, but maybe he decides to bring
| the whole world with him. And if he decided already,
| nothing that we do, will make him happy. We are just
| deciding to die without even a fight.
|
| The song that describes Putin right now:
|
| "I am alone, this bitter man that I've become Hold my
| breath, laid to rest Drown in my tears, there's nothing
| left of me I am alone, the angry man upon his throne I
| can't pretend, the great descent Take my hand until the
| end You see me on the horizon I am the air you breathe I
| sold my soul to the seven seas Condemned and lost, pulled
| off course I will never leave, I'm always yours"
|
| Any given day - Bitter Man
| Lio wrote:
| Can't say I disagree with the sentiment.
|
| I can't see what he has to gain from this war. There's no
| upside for him.
|
| All I can think is that he's got something like
| Parkinson's, knows he's on the way out and just wants
| throw his weight around one last time.
|
| Honestly though your guess is as good as mine.
| lodovic wrote:
| Nuclear weapons are very delicate and expensive to
| maintain, especially if you have thousands of them. After
| having seen the awful state of their tanks and army
| trucks, I'm less worried about their nuclear abilities.
| pelasaco wrote:
| me too. Said that, they definitely can reach Germany.
| altdataseller wrote:
| Their weapons can reach any country in the world,
| including the US. I don't think anyone in any
| intelligence community would refute that.
| rectang wrote:
| The purpose of sanctions is to persuade Russia to stop the
| war, not to get rid of Putin.
|
| Even if some might want it to go further, it won't, because
| the coalition will not hold. If Putin stops the war and
| pulls back to pre-invasion boundaries, the group of
| countries imposing sanctions will not continue to hold out
| for Putin's ouster in addition.
|
| An outright revolution by the Russian people is not
| necessary, though we might hope for unrest which degrades
| Russia's ability to wage war. The suffering of Russia's
| common citizens isn't desirable. But it can be justified,
| since Ukrainian citizens have it far worse.
| lenkite wrote:
| Didn't see any revolting Americans when the Iraq War was
| initiated.
| forty wrote:
| What sanctions against the American economy following
| Iraq war, would have pushed Americans to revolt?
| [deleted]
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Americans revolting no, but I'm sure the Iraqis would
| have something to say about revolting Americans. ;-)
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Didn't see any revolting Americans when the Iraq War
| was initiated.
|
| Evidently you didn't want to see.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| If Iraq happened today I think more people would be upset
| and protest.
|
| In 2001 I don't even think I had a cellphone, we didnt
| have social media like we do now, the only source of news
| was the News Paper and TV.
|
| If it happened now we would be blastered on twitter with
| videos / photos of it happening in real time like we are
| know. Much more aware of war crimes happening.
|
| We can't change what happened in the past but I would
| like to think we can change the future, and Iraq doesn't
| happen again.
|
| (I was living in NZ at the time still at school when 9 11
| happened)
| ithkuil wrote:
| Then we shouldn't accuse the average Russian citizen of
| not overthrowing their own government because while they
| do have cellphones today they live in a country with an
| extremely tight grip of media. If your argument holds for
| 2001 america, it's the same now for Russians.
|
| How can we let more average Russian citizens have access
| to real facts? It's now a crime in Russia to publish
| 'lies" about the Russian army. It's hard. And it's even
| harder because any information you manage to smuggle
| through is always tainted by coming from the corrupt
| west.
|
| Just thinking aloud: what if the information reaching
| Russians does not come from the west but from other
| countries, all other countries, the global south, the far
| east? They can't be all corrupted by the west, can they?
| lenkite wrote:
| I remember getting completely shut down by my American
| friends when I told them about atrocities committed by US
| soldiers and that Saddam had no nuclear weapons. It was
| like talking to a wall at the time. You don't understand
| - we are fighting this war for the world's safety, blah-
| blah.
|
| Maybe the next US war will be different ? I doubt it. US
| propaganda makes Russian propaganda look like amateur
| hour. Stuff that doesn't fit the mainstream narrative
| will be shutdown hard, while stuff that fits it will be
| amplified continuously.
| rectang wrote:
| > _Maybe the next US war will be different?_
|
| Depends on if there's another incident akin to 9/11.
| Right now, if you tried to run the Iraq playbook again it
| would fail. But if something major happens which makes
| the US populace feel insecure, that could change.
|
| I do think that there's a lesson in how difficult it
| would be to actually change the minds of Putin supporters
| in how slow the US reassessment of Iraq has been.
|
| > _US propaganda makes Russian propaganda look like
| amateur hour._
|
| That's because US government narratives get continually
| sharpened and refined against the grindstone of
| challenges from the free press. This is different from
| countries where the government shuts down the press, such
| as Russia where the ridiculous canard that Ukraine needs
| to be "denazified" actually flies.
| atlantas wrote:
| This. Dissidents would be cast as pro-Evil and purged
| from social media for misinformation.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, and EU is no better... they even banned RT...
| imagine banning CNN when USA attacked afghanistan.
|
| But this is the start of the war, and there is A LOT of
| propaganda everywhere... everyone in the west is trying
| to show russia as losing everywhere, while they're
| conquering basically everything, on the other hand, they
| say that russians have destroyed whole cities, and only
| two short clips of the same building are showed, and now
| fearmongering like this reuters article.
|
| I live in the balkans, and (obviously) I'm against any
| kind of war... but what putin is doing is no different
| than americans choosing a random middle eastern country
| (or even yugoslavia in 1999), and destroying the fuck out
| of it... but somehow it's different when americans do it.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Eg.Yugoslavia's issues were internal.
|
| Ps. A lot of people left RT because of it's propaganda
| and it's idiocracies even before the ban.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yugoslavias issues were internal, until nato/usa started
| the bombings in 1999.
|
| It doesn't matter that they left, the problem is the lack
| of free speech, because RT was the only medium that
| reported some things that most european newshouses
| avioided.
|
| Obviously RT is displaying propaganda now, but so is
| everyone else, sadly.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Sanctions against the US for the Iraq war would have been
| totally legitimate. What exactly is your point?
| lowkey wrote:
| That the US is arguably the most powerful nation in the
| world and that sanctions by smaller economies vs empires
| like the US are like Palistinian children throwing rocks
| at Israeli tanks.
|
| It is easy to claim that sanctions against the US would
| have been legitimate when it is clear to most that they
| would have had little to no meaningful impact.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This was true during the first iraq war... and even then
| barely.
|
| Now, just china imposing sanctions, would seriously fuck
| with US economy. Add on EU to that, and the situation
| would be pretty bad for americans.
| filomeno wrote:
| The point is that there were no sanctions, and there
| won't be the next time the US decides to invade another
| country. So punishing Russia this time gives the US an
| unfair advantage, and that's not good for anyone outside
| the US.
| jjcc wrote:
| It's more than that. There are other impact:
|
| * There are a lot of Indians openly support Putin. I
| guess there is an excuse to justify the invasion because
| Russia is not the first one doing that.
|
| * Inside China there are a lot of debate. Russians
| invasion obviously breaks the international law. But if
| US did the same thing in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria
| ...(Let's not debate if US conducted good invasion to
| avoid to going to rabbit hole), also indirectly caused
| humanity disaster and refugees, why put Russia in a
| different standard?
|
| Not making judgement of which is correct or wrong, just
| saying it's difficult to convince certain population if
| different standards were applied.
| bigfudge wrote:
| India has a similarly authoritarian nationalist govt and
| looks a lot like Russia 20 years ago. I am very nervous
| about the direction India is heading.
| formvoltron wrote:
| We had big protests. They were not big enough
| unfortunately.
| nostrademons wrote:
| There were plenty of protests - I remember seeing one
| walk by (including most of the faculty) in my university
| cafeteria at the time.
| tartoran wrote:
| The US is the country of protests, there were plenty of
| protests against that war. I've been to a few myself.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Me to. I protested 2 times against the war in Irak. I was
| still in high school then and almost everyone was
| protesting.
| filomeno wrote:
| Oh, it's good to know that. Maybe Russia could get away
| with the invasion without sanctions just letting his
| people protest against the war. No matter if the outcome
| of the war is the same, or if Putin is elected again (as
| happened with George W. Bush in the US).
| ModernMech wrote:
| Putin tried to run the GWB playbook with his invasion but
| he got impatient. He didn't have a 9/11 handed to him
| like GWB did. Putin's excuse is too flimsy about a Nazi
| genocide against Russians. There wouldn't be any
| sanctions whatsoever against Putin if he had planes
| flying into a building in Moscow.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Putin is playing the kosovo card.
|
| An area with a minority, self declared independence,
| minority and majority fighting every now and then, and
| then the "outside player" deciding to attack the whole
| country to "protect the minority".
|
| For us in the balkans, america has always been a bigger
| threat to peace (and still is), especially after having
| plane fly above our roofs to bomb a country 200miles
| away, and not that long ago, we were still a same
| country.
| bigfudge wrote:
| His mistake is to mix up these plays. If he had stuck to
| that balkans play it would all be a lot harder to argue
| with from a western perspective. We just don't know
| enough t about Eastern European politics/beefs. But he's
| also talked about Russian security and nato expansion and
| denazification which is so stupid as to make a mockery of
| any sensible rationale.
| pelasaco wrote:
| was Iraq a pacifist country? BTW Ukraine is invaded since
| 2014, so the War is happening since 2014. Putin just
| brought it to a larger scale after to believe that EU and
| USA were weaker after pandemics and Afghanistan.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Then you didn't look very hard.
| mbreese wrote:
| It's not only about revolting, but without a free press,
| economic sanctions are one way to get people to know that
| _something_ is going on. Russian citizens may not even
| _know_ what is happening, but when they suddenly can't buy
| thing, when Apple Pay stops working, when costs
| skyrocket... that gets people to pay attention.
| lowkey wrote:
| But at what cost? I am pretty sure that everyday Russians
| _do_ know that something is going on but I have trouble
| justifying broad sanctions against the poor and middle-
| class citizens of Russia, Iran or Venezuela - especially
| since many of them oppose their authoritarian leaders.
| After all their real crime is simply losing the birth
| lottery by being born in an authoritarian regime.
| mantas wrote:
| According to polls, even run by West outlets, Russians do
| support Putin in big numbers.
| lowkey wrote:
| If you don't trust the official election polls in Russia,
| why would you trust their opinion polls to be honest. If
| I were Putin, I would certainly be tempted to manipulate
| opinion polls to make it look like I am more popular than
| I really am.
|
| As for western media, while no doubt less manipulated
| than Russian media, I don't think it is safe to assume
| that western media is above manipulating public opinion
| to suit their agenda.
|
| For example, I find it curious how little coverage the
| Ukraine-Russian conflict has received by western media
| until last week when this conflict has been a hot war
| since 2014.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Because covid and other things. A lot more was reported
| since last September where I am from.
| mantas wrote:
| And it was really boring for years. Another shelling,
| another handful of men dead, another Russian exercise
| mantas wrote:
| There are lots of polls done by non-gov-aligned news
| agencies or even paid by foreign outlets. All of them
| paint the same picture.
|
| Even here in Lithuania we got quite a few people eating
| up Russian propaganda and supporting Putin. I've no
| doubts it works even better in Russia.
|
| Any media is biased. That's how humans operate. The key
| is to watch different sources. And don't get into ,,both
| sides have some truth" BS. No, sometimes one side is flat
| out lying. But IMO it's important to understand the other
| side narrative to understand their logic.
|
| Here in Lithuania we got non-stop coverage of Ukraine
| since 2014. But I'm sure we get no coverage on stuff that
| is far away and public doesn't care much.
| th-2022-03 wrote:
| I'm being totally serious about this: as a first
| generation American, 9/11 caused me to rethink what this
| country was doing abroad.
|
| Obviously the loss of life was terrible. People in my
| town died in the Twin Towers.
|
| But I grew up mostly with American propoganda. I didn't
| know that the US had a long history of overthrowing
| governments in the Middle East and South America, and
| generally meddling in their affairs.
|
| Not to mention trading Oil with corrupt Arab leaders who
| hold their countries hostage.
|
| There is not an equivalence between the bad behvaior of
| the American and Russian state. I'd say Russians are
| worse in some ways, and Americans are worse in other ways
| -- largely because Americans are more powerful and
| influential.
|
| So I'm basically agreeing with your argument, although I
| don't think it's "fair" for the people to suffer (e.g.
| all the people who died in 9/11). However Americans also
| have to realize that we largely haven't faced any
| consequences as people, except a few outliers of
| terrorist attacks.
|
| (throwaway since I usually don't comment about politics)
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > But I grew up mostly with American propoganda. I didn't
| know that the US had a long history of overthrowing
| governments in the Middle East and South America, and
| generally meddling in their affairs.
|
| I'm sorry, but this is whataboutism in its full glory.
|
| The US has a free press, and its unfortunate history of
| overthrowing or supporting governments was and is well
| documented by the press and by historians in the United
| States. This documentation and publication resulted in
| many public scandals, lawsuits, and public intrigue,
| particularly through the 1960s to 1980s when the US's
| activities in this regard were perhaps that their peak.
| The resulting history is taught in universities and in
| elementary schools across the USA.
|
| Now, there are well-known political parties or other
| people with a vested interest in spinning things in their
| own way, as is the case in any country, but if you think
| the United States press is _anything_ like the press in
| Russia, or that its public is _anywhere_ as ignorant of
| the facts as the public in Russia and similar countries,
| or if you felt you were unaware of the US history in this
| regard while it was going on, then you perhaps led a
| sheltered life. But it wasn 't for lack of trying on part
| of the US press.
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| [Deleted]
| rini17 wrote:
| Putin talks about 15000 civilian victims in Donbas.. yet
| there are no names whatsoever? Nobody tried to submit the
| case to international institutions? Such questions did
| not arise in your research?
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| I can't speak to exact numbers but it isn't just Putin
| making those claims. Many Russian-speaking Ukrainians
| have made similar claims.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Look at my shit, even if as smelly, it is better
| documented than yours.
|
| > _I 'm sorry, but this is whataboutism in its full
| glory._
|
| Dismissing every argument with _whataboutism_ seems to be
| flavour of the day, even when it is _not_ whataboutism.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| You're welcome to your own opinions, and your own blithe
| dismissals, but you are not welcome to your own facts.
|
| I lived during most of the period discussed by the GP.
| Everything from the Bay of Pigs to supporting the Shah to
| Iran Contra to the invasion of Grenada was well covered
| and well criticized in the US press. And the US invasion
| of Iraq was highly criticized in the US press even as the
| US government was facing an uphill battle to convince the
| world that it was proper by brandishing fake bottles of
| poison at the UN.
|
| The US has done a lot of bad stuff. But claiming that the
| press just went along with it is historical revisionism,
| full stop.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Having "free" Press does not absolve US of its crimes.
|
| That's even ignoring the fact that the Press itself is a
| propaganda tool for the US military-industrial complex,
| while steeping in biases of its own.
|
| You're welcome to live in your own bubble of facts.
| bigfudge wrote:
| There's merit on both sides here. I think the key is that
| OP was making a personal Point about their own
| reflection. However well documented in academic texts or
| small newspapers thinking about how the US has meddled
| and more is not mainstream in the US, especially on the
| centre right. 911 did something similar for a number of
| my friends too - they started looking at some of that
| history in more detail, and it became important in their
| decision making.
| [deleted]
| OrlandoHakim wrote:
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| In psychology, there's a mechanism that tells us to look
| for extraordinary causes for extraordinary events. And I
| don't mean here something seemingly supernatural - just
| something that affects you in a big way. For this reason
| some people, when they lose their loved ones, can't
| simply agree it was an accident and look for some kind of
| conspiracy, a bad actor, a murder.
|
| My point is, even those russians who know the situation
| well on the level of knowledge, could be emotionally
| detached and think that's just how the world works - but
| now that they see unprecedented response, it can sink in
| emotionally that their government has really done
| something terrible.
| ushakov wrote:
| everyone in Russia knows what's going on
|
| but when Apple Pay stops working, when costs skyrocket
| the blame will be on companies and on the west
|
| take it from ex-Russian
| vkou wrote:
| Half of them will blame the west, because, as in every
| country, roughly half the population believes whatever
| stupid authoritarian bullshit they are fed. Not much
| different from the West, just travel to a sundown town
| and ask who won the last election, or whether it's a good
| idea to get the 'rona vaccine.
|
| The other half knows better, but also knows better than
| to talk about what they know publicly. Which is how
| Russia differs from the West.
| pelasaco wrote:
| exactly. They were all fine with Putin, being Putin...
| since 97. Now, remote workers cannot get their salary
| because of the SWIFT sanction, Apple Pay stops to work
| and NOW suddenly it is serious?
|
| The struggle is real (TM).
| eps wrote:
| They were all OK with Putin because he was up there, next
| to the god, doing his tsar things that didn't appear to
| affect people down here _much_. He also did populist
| things and stoked Russian self-pride, which was a welcome
| development because the pride was all but destroyed
| during the Perestroika and what 's left of it was
| exchanged for frozen chicken legs generously provided by
| the Bush administration.
|
| In other words, he was tolerated with some approval. Not
| much thought was given to the trade-offs and some
| goodwill was assumed when these were made.
|
| This approval is still there, but now it hinges on
| keeping masses fed with propaganda bullshit, to keep them
| believing that their fight (and suffering) is for the
| right cause. But when your life comforts take a nosedive,
| it will work only for so long.
|
| So pulling a rug from under the unwashed gray masses is
| the _exactly_ right thing to do in this situation. It 's
| literally the only thing that could shake them off their
| consumerist nirvana, force to look around and realize how
| much they willingly exchanged in past 20 years for
| something that not only wasn't guaranteed, but could also
| be completely taken away on a very short notice.
| risyachka wrote:
| >> everyone in Russia knows what's going on
|
| Maybe in your circle.
|
| You should open Odnoklassniki for a change. Or any
| propaganda website that gets tens of millions of readers
| per day. And those who know the truth would never open
| that because there is zero pieces of truth in them.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| I just can't believe any thinking person believes that
| punishing the Russian people has any chance of getting rid
| of Putin.
|
| He has had all the time in the world to insulate himself
| and plan exactly for that situation. I bet he doesn't even
| come in contact in person with anyone he doesn't know from
| the Soviet days at this point and the people he does are
| probably guilty of all kinds of things themselves if Putin
| was done away with.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| If russians didn't support Putin, it wouldn't matter if
| he lives or not and if he's isolated (which is called an
| imprisonment btw) or not.
|
| Russians have to decide: do you want to continue living
| in peace with the rest of the world, or not. In the
| former case, retake control of your country and stop
| invading, raping and murdering Ukrainian civilians.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Americans about US wars: 'we cannot do anything about our
| government - they engage in wars and we couldn't stop them
| if we tried'
|
| Americans about Russian wars: 'the average Joes need to go
| out to the streets and bring Putin down'
| nerkicacy wrote:
| Americans can change government during election every few
| years if they don't like it. Russians can't. That's why
| the only way is 'the average Joes need to go out to the
| streets and bring Putin down'.
| akrymski wrote:
| Except you get 3-15 years in jail for protesting in
| Russia.
| nerkicacy wrote:
| You could get shot in the head during Euromaidan[1]
| demonstrations in Ukraine (2013-2014). And they were able
| to remove Viktor Yanukovych from office.
|
| Many other countries escaped from Russian influance
| thanks to mass demonstration (Poland, East Germany, ex
| USSR nations).
|
| It is not easy, but there is not other way. Only Russian
| can dethrone Putin, no one else.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
| akrymski wrote:
| Yanukovich had far less support and had opposition.
| Ukraine's military presence was a fraction of Russia's.
| Already more Russians have been arrested in protests so
| far this week than in Maidan, but unless millions rise up
| it's impossible to remove Putin. When you shoot at a king
| and you miss you only solidify his position.
|
| Furthermore Maidan had assistance from the US. No such
| thing exists in Russia.
| lostmsu wrote:
| There are only so many jails, temporary detention
| facilities, and judges to give the verdicts.
| akrymski wrote:
| Tell that to Stalin
| risyachka wrote:
| Go watch how people go with bare hands to protest russian
| forces literally this minute.
|
| And yes, they don't risk 3-15 years of jail. They have
| hundreds of times higher chance to die.
|
| But they don't use it as an excuse.
| akrymski wrote:
| There is a very small number of protesters. We'd need a
| million people to rise up in Moscow alone to make a
| difference. Putin has too much support among his voters
| atm. And the iron curtain only solidifies his propaganda
| machine.
| risyachka wrote:
| >> There is a very small number of protesters.
|
| You sure? Or just speculate to support your point?
| bbarnett wrote:
| When was the last time the US invaded, with an intent to
| never, ever leave? When was the last time the US invaded,
| and slaughtered civilians, on purpose, just to spread
| terror.
|
| Not by accident, or a rogue element, but purposefully.
|
| When was the last time the US jailed, not by a mistake in
| justice but on purpose, all who dared speak out about her
| actions? And killed them when possible?
|
| Many reading the above will say "But this one time...",
| yet that is the point. It is an aberration for such
| things in the US, not the norm. Not the standard.
|
| Russia is not even remotely the same. It is a
| dictatorship, lead by a single, non-elected, blood
| thirsty, malicious murderer.
|
| The whataboutisms are so weak, and paper thin here, it is
| absurd.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > When was the last time the US invaded, with an intent
| to never, ever leave? When was the last time the US
| invaded, and slaughtered civilians, on purpose, just to
| spread terror.
|
| I'm against war in Ukraine and against Russian dictators,
| but Putin doesn't want to never leave, he wants to
| install pro-russian government, like USA does in attacked
| countries. But yes, we didn't hear about slaughtering
| civilians in our west-centric media, only from those
| russian propagandists like Assange and Snowden.
|
| > When was the last time the US jailed, not by a mistake
| in justice but on purpose, all who dared speak out about
| her actions? And killed them when possible?
|
| Like with Snowden, Assange and journalists involved in
| panama papers or Epstein case (who hanged himself in
| constantly observed cell)?
|
| What is different from my perspective about Russia: USA
| is still one of the best economies in the world, still
| have democratic rulers where you can change them and
| wants other countries to become like it (which means
| better than their current state). Russia just wants other
| countries to work for Russian might. We had anecdote in
| Poland, that USSR is not that bad, because it takes coal
| from us for free, but in exchange we build ships for them
| for free. So, while many Poles would not really fight
| that much if USA wanted to take over the country, we
| would (and do alredy in Ukraine) oppose Russia with all
| we have.
| samstave wrote:
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The u.s. is the most warlike country on the planet.
|
| I say this as a US citizen hasn't improved of any of the
| US invasions and wars in my lifetime.
|
| The idea that bombing and invading Syria Iraq and
| Afghanistan were somehow defensive wars is a joke
| akrymski wrote:
| I'm 100% against the war, but the American hypocrisy here
| is next level.
|
| This isn't an ethnic genocide. Had Putin wanted to kill
| civilians you wouldn't have 100s of deaths but millions
| like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
|
| Just like the US he is looking to overturn the
| government.
|
| The reality is that some people in Ukraine (Donbas and
| large portion of the East) do support Russia. Truth is
| never black and white.
| drran wrote:
| This is ethnic genocide. Just look at Ukrainians in
| Crimea, Donbas, or RF: they are extinct. Ukrainian
| language and literature are forbidden in RF. Crimes
| against ethnic minorities are not prosecuted. IMHO,
| Ukraine should just nuke few millions of Russians to
| protect millions of Ukrainians. Pooking is crazy.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| > Had Putin wanted to kill civilians you wouldn't have
| 100s of deaths but millions like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
|
| Is this some grim joke? Had putin wanted to kill
| civilians, he could use nuclear weaponry in various forms
| to kill billions.
|
| But putin, like everyone in this world, is limited by
| various factors, like army morale, or the patience of its
| neighbors. The economical situation of russia is
| terrible, but it can always get worse, and making a full
| scale attack against civilians, would end up with even
| more dramatic response like even China sanctioning them,
| or EU sanctioning them completely with complete disregard
| to own economy (no gas) or some kind of alliance actually
| attacking a nuclear empire for the first time in history
| (not counting the Japanese who didn't expect USA to
| develop the technology so fast), or... Simply putin would
| be killed by some highly ranked officer.
|
| > Just like the US
|
| What is it with all this symmetrism on HN? putin invaded
| Ukraine without casus belli.
| akrymski wrote:
| Or maybe he actually doesn't want to kill the civilians
| but wants to overthrow the government that he believes is
| targeting Russians in Eastern Ukraine and wishes to
| deploy US missiles on Russian borders?
|
| I don't think we can find a diplomatic solution unless we
| truly try to understand the enemy. Saying he did this
| with no reason doesn't help this.
|
| There's always a reason for any war. Bush had a reason to
| invade Iraq after all, didn't he? What was the real
| reason?
|
| Putin views this as a proxy war between US and Russia.
| Cuban missile crisis was similar: US placed nukes in
| Turkey, too close for Russia's liking. Russia said they'd
| place nukes in Cuba. After US threatened WW3 a deal was
| reached and both sides pulled their nukes.
|
| We could have achieved a similar deal and saved countless
| lived. But for whatever reason nobody wanted to negotiate
| with Putin. That would be fine if NATO would actually
| protect Ukraine instead of leaving them to fight on their
| own.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I can agree on many issues regarding the Iraq war, I
| think we all heard about the "weapons of mass
| destruction" that turned out to be false (well, never
| proven at least). It wasn't the only reason, though [1].
| A very important quote from there:
|
| > UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as
| illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was
| "not in conformity with the Security Council"
|
| However, I find comparing Ukraine to Iraq simply
| unconvincing. The latter had a recent history of
| aggression [2], which largely fueled the suspicion about
| the "weapons of mass destruction".
|
| Comparing saddam husein [3] to Volodymyr Zelenskyy also
| fails spectacularly.
|
| The comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis is a miss too:
| in Ukraine the opposite happened, the nuclear weaponry
| was removed which was the Ukraine's part of the Budapest
| Memorandum on Security Assurances [4]. However russia
| doesn't respect its part:
|
| > 1. The Russian Federation [...] respect the
| independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of
| Ukraine.
|
| That's why I call it symmetrism: on one side there's an
| aggressive country, run by a tyrant with proven crimes
| against humanity, on the other a democratic country that
| wants to be free and independent and choose its allies.
| But putin considers it aggression.
|
| It's one thing if it's a valid casus belli - people
| thinking so I consider to be unreasonable.
|
| Another thing is, that putin calls a lot of things an
| aggression against russia. Recently he called sanctions
| such aggression. So now pretty much the entire world, in
| this madman's mind, has attacked russia and *IF* we
| accept the casus belli used against Ukraine, we have to
| accept a cassus belli against any other country putin
| attacks next. In other words, the idea behind cassus
| belli corrupted to the point where it's useless. It's
| like defining "cold" as colder that a quadrillion degC -
| now everything is cold, even the center of the Sun. The
| word became useless.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationale_for_the_Iraq_War
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Saddam_Hussein [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Secu
| rit...
| drran wrote:
| You are saying that Pooking kills civilians because he
| don't want to kill civilians. It's looks like you are as
| crazy or rational as Pooking, so you can reason like him.
| However, normal people cannot think like crazy people, so
| they just declare a crazy person as <<crazy>> and try to
| isolate them instead of understanding them.
|
| Actually, I tried to understand Pooking by inducing
| paranoia in myself. When I did that, all his actions
| become quite logical. He sees RF as victim of evil NATO.
| Any action of NATO is a step in evil plan to destroy RF.
| RF is so smart, so they see the evil plan of NATO, while
| others are blind, or pretend that they doesn't
| understand, or are playing their roles in the evil plan.
| Your text is quite logical when I'm switching to
| <<paranoia>> mode.
| adrian_b wrote:
| You are right that there are many people in Ukraine who
| support Russia.
|
| However, we should not forget why this is so.
|
| During WWII and after WWII, the Russians have forcibly
| moved a very large number of people from the territory
| that is now in Ukraine, to various unpleasant locations
| in the Soviet Union, mostly in Siberia.
|
| Then they have brought Russian colonists, who were
| settled usually in the houses from which the natives had
| been evicted.
|
| The descendants of those Russians brought in Ukraine,
| mostly by Stalin, have obviously not been happy with the
| independence of Ukraine, when they have become a 2nd rate
| nationality from a previously privileged one, like also
| the Russian colonists from other former parts of the
| Soviet Union, e.g. the Baltic countries or Georgia.
|
| I agree that the Russians, now in minority, have their
| rights like anyone else, and they should not be
| persecuted by the new majority, but at the same time I do
| not believe that people who have so recently occupied by
| force the land on which they live now have the moral
| right to request "democratically" that their present
| country should become again a part of the empire which
| gave them houses and jobs, but those houses and jobs were
| provided by what was stolen from the former inhabitants.
| akrymski wrote:
| Most definitely. And I believe that was the option Putin
| proposed to Zelensky, as long as he agrees to not join
| NATO.
| torbTurret wrote:
| Americans weren't the first to do sanctions though? Not
| even close. In fact, EU countries were asking America to,
| and are still asking for more.
| ledauphin wrote:
| this is a silly caricature.
|
| historically, a majority of Americans supported both the
| wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when they started, and
| public opinion did not turn against them for several
| years, and even then it was not an overwhelming majority.
|
| Obama campaigned on the folly of those wars but chose to
| stay involved because it was believed by many that some
| level of success could yet be achieved for the people in
| those countries, who were in many cases partnering with
| the US.
|
| Nevertheless, the eventual unpopularity of those wars did
| in fact lead to "regime change" in the US, because the US
| is a (somewhat) functioning democracy.
|
| Americans are in fact at this very moment preventing the
| US from engaging in this war in Ukraine.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| While Obama was talking out of one side of his mouth
| regarding tire Iraq, he was starting a bombing campaign
| in Syria and Libya with the other
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > Americans are in fact at this very moment preventing
| the US from engaging in this war in Ukraine.
|
| The US getting more directly involved in Ukraine was
| never a likely outcome, for reasons that have nothing to
| do with American public opinion. Throughout the Cold War,
| both the USA and the USSR made a policy of never directly
| engaging in conflict on the same soil, because the risk
| of it escalating into a nuclear war was just too great.
| Instead, they would fight proxy wars where at most one
| country was a direct combatant, and the other country
| merely provided material support to an ally.
|
| We can expect the war in Ukraine to continue following
| the same playbook, and for the same reason. And other
| NATO countries will also avoid sending their own troops
| into Ukraine for fear of creating a slippery slope that
| pulls NATO's nuclear powers into the war.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| And a majority of russians support the war now... some
| because they support putin, some because they want putin
| to protect the russian minorities in ukraine, and a lot
| of them because of the propaganda in russia. Yes, some
| people don't want that, and articles like this one now is
| a part of anti-russian propaganda.
|
| America had its own share of propaganda, that brought
| popular support for those wars... some even very fake
| one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
| America also had hippies and other anti-war groups, so
| the situation is not that much different.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Go to the streets. Worse than in Ukraine won't be. That's the
| only way to stop Putin. Russian people on the streets.
| Russian spring!
| kova12 wrote:
| Complacency is not a crime, true; nobody is obligated to take
| arms against his government, but at certain point the
| argument that you are but a bystander no longer works. For
| example if someone is dying on your watch and you won't help,
| you are at a minimum morally guilty. It's your government
| after all, you have to bear some sort of responsibility for
| its actions.
|
| Same by the way applies to everybody else, USA folks included
| risyachka wrote:
| Have you seen any major rebellions in Russia in the last
| decade? No.
|
| Here is a kicker - there were few coups even in North Korea.
|
| So russians are fine with regime. And even though actions
| speak louder than words, most people even didn't SPEAK
| against it until few days ago.
|
| So unless you openly spoke against putin and regime for
| years, you were part of the problem.
|
| Also, in Ukraine people go against armed forces with bare
| hands on protests and risk being KILLED. In russia they are
| afraid to protest to get 15 day jail time? Sorry, no excuse
| here either.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| All easy to say as you post this from the comfort of your
| home.
| risyachka wrote:
| I've been on Maidan in 2014 mate, when all the crazy shit
| happened. So when I say people are not afraid to get hurt
| for freedom here - I know what I am saying.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Don't be so sure about that. There's a lot of posters
| from eastern Europe in this thread. Many may remember
| their own fights with USSR. Not to mention maidan.
| helge9210 wrote:
| In 2014 I flew from Israel back to Ukraine to participate
| in Euromaidan.
|
| So instead of fleeing all the Russians of the world
| should flock back instead.
| jpindar wrote:
| >15 day jail time
|
| 15 YEARS. I'd rather die, especially if I was giving my
| life for my country.
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm all for annihilating Russia's economy (even if it means
| civilians are caught in the crossfire) but the treatment GP
| received _after_ leaving is extremely disheartening. The goal
| should be to welcome fleeing Russians with open arms and make
| it as easy as possible for them to permanently put down
| roots.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| It's also a wasted opportunity just from a competitive
| standpoint. Brain draining the shit out of Russia is a
| totally valid strategy that boosts the host nation while
| hindering Russia.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Some of these Russians would go on to make millions, and
| then the foreign governments would threaten them with
| sanctions and seizures just the same? Such a ridiculous
| double standard.
| bigfudge wrote:
| This is absurd. The Russians being sanctioned in Europe
| are gangster crooks who robbed from their own.
| muldoc wrote:
| riedel wrote:
| I think discriminating peoplejust due to their nationality
| has to stop. I am seeing this even at my university even if
| official sanctions are more targeted. One big problem is
| the "deemed export" rules that the US imposes effectively
| on the whole world ( e.g. if we do research for a US listed
| company)
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| > I think discriminating peoplejust due to their
| nationality has to stop.
|
| Agree. Passport discrimination is a harsh reality that
| hasn't gathered enough media attention.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I agree, people don't chose their nationality (for the
| most part) just like they don't choose the color of their
| skin. That said being a straight white male it has been a
| reprieve.
| mantas wrote:
| The problem is how to separate Russians fleeing Putin from
| Russians who just look for financial comfort and still
| support Putin.
|
| One of stark examples is Turks in Germany still voting for
| Erdogan.
| blub wrote:
| You're for annihilating the economy of a nuclear power
| with thousands of warheads? How do you imagine that a
| nuclear failed state looks and acts like?
|
| I swear, reading comments like these on social media
| makes me realize that a disturbingly large number of
| people are irrational about war.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| My own country still exists because in the past 500 years
| it never surrendered when a big army showed up making
| outrageous demands. I see no reason to change that now.
|
| Nuclear weapons are not a problem if we all hold to the
| MAD doctrine.
| mantas wrote:
| Yes. Hopefully their nuclear warheads will be in a
| similar shape as Chinese tires on military vehicles.
|
| I remember how Russia looked like 2 decades ago when it
| was piss poor. It was relatively peaceful and handful of
| its neighbors made it into NATO without any issues.
|
| Wonder how that NATO expansion would have looked like if
| Russia was in a good shape? My bet is similar to what we
| see in Ukraine.
|
| My rationale is very simple. If Putin is not stopped in
| Ukraine, next is my country and my city. I wish it was
| stopped in Georgia in 2008. But maybe it's about time to
| end appeasement policy that clearly doesn't work.
| tsol wrote:
| Maybe this is very American of me to say-- but what about
| them? They have freedom of speech even if it's not
| something I agree with. We don't throw everyone who calls
| themselves nazis into jail.. why try to punish everyone
| who might agree with Putin? Are we in the business of
| policing political attitudes now?
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Well nobody is throwing Russians into jail either (except
| maybe for Putin). But I would argue that refusing to do
| business with Putin supporters is also part of personal
| freedom.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ismaildonmez wrote:
| Turks in Germany will vote for SPD in German elections is
| a bigger paradox.
| el-salvador wrote:
| It seems similar to what happens with Salvadorans in the
| U.S., especially newer arrivals.
|
| This is anecdotal, buy from my friends living in the U.S,
| even those who do not have papers, prefer
| Trump/Republican than Democrat party.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| It's because Democrats are losing working class votes
| because of pandering to their leftist fringe in an
| unrelatable ivory tower bubble.
|
| Less culture war, twitter wokism, identity partitions.
| [deleted]
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _...a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian
| individuals for the actions of the government._
|
| Xenophobes are well and truly out of their closets. This is
| why I hate wars. It incentivizes the absolute worst
| everywhere.
| veganhouseDJ wrote:
| Not to mention it literally feeds directly into Putin's
| delusions.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| You supported Putin and his regime by paying taxes, buying
| russian products, which means even more taxes. You supported it
| silently by not going to the streets and protesting.
|
| (I was born in Russia, but never worked there. We left the year
| Putin came to power.)
| grujicd wrote:
| AFAIK Air Serbia is still flying to Russia, and even doubled
| number of flights few days ago because of demand. I don't know
| what's the situation with visas, how long you can stay, how it
| is to open bank account, etc but historically Serbia is
| friendly towards Russia. Government does condemn Russia for
| this war, but I don't think we'll be implementing any kind of
| sanctions. Elections are in a month, and noone wants to loose
| votes of pro-russian part of population.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And they're vaccinated against BUK.
| dennis_moore wrote:
| With the EU having banned Russia from its airspace, I wonder
| what route these flights take.
| labster wrote:
| Direct, right? Air Serbia is presumably based in Serbia,
| not Russia.
| belter wrote:
| "Air Serbia Doubles Moscow Frequencies To Meet Demand"
|
| https://simpleflying.com/air-serbia-doubles-moscow-
| frequenci...
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| My friend is leaving Moscow for Serbia soon. They use
| Serbian airplanes which don't have any restrictions put on
| them.
| pulse7 wrote:
| Serbia does not have any flight restrictions - neither in
| EU and neither in Russia and Belarus. So they can fly
| between Moscow and Belgrade...
| tw20212021 wrote:
| Just check flightradar24. I see one from Moscow to Belgrade
| flying now over Poland.
| vertis wrote:
| In a lot of ways, it's about stepping stones as well. Once
| out of the country and in a safe place there are more
| options.
|
| I had heard that Russians were having trouble opening bank
| accounts in Georgia, but I can't verify that rumor. It's
| definitely a hard thing.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I would like to discern between personal and collective
| responsibility.
|
| Yes, it is disheartening that so many people will personally
| pay for this regardless of the fact that they might even be
| vocally opposing this and other actions.
|
| No, I don't think Russian people are absolved as a nation. I
| believe that nations are collectively responsible for their
| actions. Explanations that "I have only followed orders" have
| long been proven to be false defence.
|
| Every person that continues to work, pay their taxes, follow
| their roles, close their eyes and ears to the atrocities
| without opposing the tyrant is cooperating and enabling him to
| do what he wants.
|
| In the end you must recognise that Putin is only a human being
| and he is personally unable to do anything substantial. It is
| only other people that are enabling him that make this tragedy
| possible.
|
| Some nations decide to pay the blood price and revolt, and some
| decided to not do that. Ukrainians bled for their right to be a
| democratic country. So many other nations paid so heavy price
| because they did not want go with what was easy and comfortable
| but rather decided to do what is right.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Nobody is forcing Russia to be part of the global economy and
| global society. They are abusing the system as much as they
| can get away with and now complain when the most of the world
| agrees that it worth stop supporting an abusive country. If
| you don't want to follow the rules, don't complain when
| you're kicked out.
| martinko wrote:
| Have you considered being paid in, for example, USDC? You could
| then get a visa card that you could top up with it for
| spending.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| This is a good idea. The only issue will be if any of the
| offramps start banning Russian citizens as well.
| awb wrote:
| Luckily I haven't heard of a country seriously considering
| that and I'm not sure what goal that would achieve. It
| sounds like a win/win to help people leave who want to.
| therusskiy wrote:
| I've been a big crypto sceptic for a long time, but with the
| current situation I had to deposit a lot of money to Binance,
| because Russian banks/government has stopped allowing people
| to withdraw USD from ATMs, forbidden transfers to other
| countries (only $5k/m to relatives), forbidden to cross
| borders with more than $10k (not they are possible to cross
| at all now).
| stiltzkin wrote:
| I would not put all eggs in one basket, keep safe part of
| your assets to a safe private digital asset as XMR
| (Monero).
| martinko wrote:
| Don't want to come of as a crypto shill, but check out the
| crypto.com card. It could be pretty useful for you (if they
| give you one, not sure about the whole sanctions
| situation). I have been using it for daily payments for
| over a year and I'm pretty happy with my experience.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| If you don't own the private key, you are not really ahead.
| Money of Russian people on crypto exchanges will be frozen.
|
| Buy a Trezor, it can save your financial life.
| eb0la wrote:
| Even better: switch addresses every 2-5 transactions
| (max). This is might be costly buy this way you are
| harder to track.
| vmception wrote:
| Sounds like you need to get more educated on how to best
| use these assets. You're not safe yet.
|
| If you do get closer to what the person you responded to
| said:
|
| A) USDC can freeze individual addresses. So can USDT.
| Alternative stablecoins like DAI and MIM cannot.
|
| B) Opening the visa card will have the same consternation
| as any bank. You'll need to start transacting more in the
| stablecoin, until banking partners are found.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| A) USDC can freeze individual addresses. So can USDT.
| Alternative stablecoins like DAI and MIM cannot.
|
| B) Opening the visa card will have the same consternation as
| any bank. You'll need to start transacting more in the
| stablecoin, until banking partners are found.
| darkarmani wrote:
| I'm so sorry you are going through this. Good luck. I hope you
| are able to get settled safely.
| tguvot wrote:
| >The recent news is that starting March 6 all international
| flights are suspended, the trap has closed.
|
| This is international flights of russian airlines that has
| leased airplanes. Currently like 60% of planes are leased and
| companies started to demand their planes back. Some planes
| already get arrested. This is move essentially to prevent
| returning airplanes because otherwise civil aviation (and not
| only) in russia will be dead.
|
| It's still interesting to see, what they will do with spare
| parts. Also I think some airplanes must get some updates from
| "cloud" daily, which will probably be blocked as well
| stickfigure wrote:
| Honest advice: Get a tshirt with "FUCK PUTIN" printed on it.
| Wear it everywhere, even if it's covered up by a jacket. If you
| find yourself in a risky situation, make sure it's showing.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Then they risk getting shot or stabbed by a pro Putin thug or
| agent. Your advice is patently bad.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| Are russians really such cowards? I always thought to the
| opposite, but this constant look for excuses why not rebel
| against putin, why not protest, and now even why not wear a
| t-shirt really changes my mind. If you're russian, and you
| call yourself a russian, and you speak russian, and you
| don't change that for years, and feel no responsibility for
| what your government is doing whatsoever, honestly, you
| deserve the sanctions.
| goldenkey wrote:
| It's not cowardly to avoid wearing controversial shirts.
| There are nuts everywhere just look for reasons to be set
| off.
| stickfigure wrote:
| The OP seems genuinely concerned about hostile treatment
| just for being Russian. Trying to look inconspicuous
| won't help if you're cornered in an alley by an angry
| mob.
|
| Choose your risk.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| Maybe I'm just brave, because I find that cowardly. But
| then what kind of word do we use to describe Ukrainians -
| heroic, I guess.
| gspetr wrote:
| Depending on where you do it, it might go down about as
| well as this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDnvXAkMnx8
|
| (Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) - Bad Day in Harlem
| Scene)
| jorgesborges wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear about your situation and I'm wishing you,
| your friends, and your family the best of luck. I don't
| consider you or anyone in your situation an enemy. Take care.
| andrey123 wrote:
| [Disclaimer: Russian] According to my estimations, probably at
| least 95% of people who are "against the war" do not go out to
| participate in protests. My estimations are based on talking to
| my colleagues (large IT company).
|
| Yes, starting from now, protesting becomes more risky (you may
| go to jail for years if you get caught second time). But just a
| week ago, it was mostly harmless (yes, some people get arrested
| for few days, but will anyone say it's comparable to what's
| going on in Ukraine?).
|
| And from these 5% who go out now many (including myself) were
| not protesting in 2014.
|
| So to be honest I cannot see how we are not responsible.
|
| [Edit] 95% is a VERY conservative estimation.
|
| [Edit2] And of course people from other countries are also
| responsible for crimes which their governments are or were
| doing (many of these crimes resulted in many more deaths than
| this conflict yet - hopefully it will remain so). So don't feel
| good about yourself guys.
| kikimora wrote:
| There is going to be big protest rally tomorrow and I'll be
| there. My friends in police told me they are on full alert,
| even Putin's guards (FSO) will be on streets tomorrow. I
| don't care. Many Russians are evil and full of Putin's
| propaganda shit. I'll go to streets tomorrow to meet other
| Russians who are better than that. I hope to see many of
| them.
| enaaem wrote:
| You can read the book:
|
| Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men,
| and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities,
| Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World
|
| It proposes many interesting strategies and ideas on how to
| protest in dictatorships. Be subtle, use humor and focus your
| message on the most common people. Don't call for democracy,
| free speech or anything like that. You will be branded as
| foreign forces. Find something every Russian believes in like
| peace or the brotherly bonds between Russiand and Ukrainians.
| Pick small battles to win first.
| snek_case wrote:
| I like the peaceful approach, but the scary thing here is
| that the dictator in power can be a straight up psychopath
| with no empathy. Putin doesn't seem to have any qualms with
| getting his perceived enemies murdered... So even to lead a
| peaceful movement like that, the identity of the leaders
| has to somehow remain a secret?
| throwoutway wrote:
| Perhaps rather than protesting, silently walking around
| holding signs that use of sarcasm? (To circumvent the anti-
| speech laws)
|
| "Putin is king! Glory to USSR!"
|
| "Synonyms for conflict may contain the words: war, special
| operation"
|
| "Is the special operation over yet? My mother wants to see
| my brother"
|
| "What's next Vladimir?"
|
| Subtle civil disobedience that the cops will overlook until
| it's too late (I'm making a lot of assumptions here)
|
| Make it so subtle that it feels like it's a waste of time
| to arrest. Until everyone is doing it
| kikimora wrote:
| You'll be taken to a police dept by the first cop. Any
| form of protest is effectively banned. Sometimes with
| severe consequences.
| tryauuum wrote:
| people were arrested even for protesting with empty
| sheets of paper
| whatshisface wrote:
| None of those quotes are very subtle.
| enaaem wrote:
| Turning "special operations" into a meme is a great idea.
| Use it jokingly in every day life. If everyone start
| using it you have won your first battle.
| [deleted]
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| So, Putin won?
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > Subtle civil disobedience that the cops will overlook
|
| Oh, you sweet summer child.
| danielodievich wrote:
| I've been in touch with my family in and around Moscow. Older
| generation is militantly pro-Putin, as a direct result of
| listening to the what the TV spews. My generation is ignoring
| it all and is keeping their heads down because it is too
| dangerous to express anything. My uncle who had a green card
| and had an opportunity to settle here in USA couple of
| decades ago but chose not to is being very philosophical, and
| says he's at least happy to have pre-paid for Egypt resort in
| the fall before the money became completely inflated away. I
| am unconvinced that he's going to be able to enjoy it and
| wish he has made a different choice on the green card.
| ironcurtain wrote:
| Odievich. Poliak?
| danielodievich wrote:
| Polish Belarusian Russian Armenian mix. Lots of family in
| Byalistok, Gdansk, Krakow and other places like that, but
| same goes for Armenia and Ukraine
| tartoran wrote:
| That polarising effect on older generations versus younger
| ones is something that has affected a large part of the
| world and I'd be curios to know whether it originated by
| one source or it simply emerged as a trend. First time I
| heard about troll farms was something brewed in Russia but
| it certainly spread around by then
| rectang wrote:
| I would expect there to be a divide between Russians who
| were old enough to experience the full effect of the
| chaos and privation following the dissolution of the
| Soviet Union in the 1990s, and those who came of age
| later.
|
| In the US, where I live, we also have tension between the
| generations, but it has more to do with changing
| demographics. There's nothing comparable to what Russians
| experienced when the Soviet Union fell.
|
| Tensions between generations are probably the rule rather
| than the exception, at least over the last few hundred
| years of rapid change.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Yeah, that's exactly what Putin built his whole career
| out of. It's mostly a myth (because the country was
| helped out of its troubles by high oil prices), and it's
| especially ironic now that the same person is pushing the
| country back into the 90s at full speed.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| It originated as a consequence of a burgeoning free media
| environment due to the proliferation of smart phones and
| the internet. The younger generations, with their higher
| level of fluid intelligence, are able to approach things
| with better critical thinking and navigating the
| complexities of the internet world. The older generations
| aren't able to adapt and are sitting ducks for being
| easily manipulated by technology they don't understand.
| djenendik wrote:
| This seems like wishful thinking. Young people are in no
| way manipulated by advertising and influencers et al.
| right?
| Daishiman wrote:
| Young people have dealt with trolls and a have a better
| grasp at getting what internet misinformation is and
| isn't. It's not great, but it's much better.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The older generations in the US are demonstrating fluid
| intelligence by being manipulated to support actions and
| ideology they would never have condoned in the past and
| coming up with stunningly complicated rationalizations.
| And the manipulation is through newer avenues like social
| media. They keep moving further and further into
| alternative avenues like youtube and Facebook
| alternatives that maintain their preferred echo chambers.
| These people are now able to find millions that agree
| with them and it it is self reinforcing even without FB's
| algorithms so that they become increasingly extreme.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Young people can absolutely be manipulated, it's probably
| even easier than with older people due to lack of
| experience.
|
| However, the thing that works in younger peoples favour
| is they are less isolated.
|
| Generally people are very social when young and then as
| life and routine sets in they stop socialising as much
| and when they do it's usually with the same people.
|
| Isolated people don't have the personal experience to be
| aware that the ads on Facebook are just ads and not the
| actual conversation going on around them.
|
| And therefore we have this perception that old people are
| so dumb and easily fooled, while IMO it's purely the
| social aspect that's at work.
|
| (There is also some contribution from lack of technical
| literacy but honestly even some of my 30s IT coworkers
| lack that).
| mech422 wrote:
| >>There is also some contribution from lack of technical
| literacy but honestly even some of my 30s IT coworkers
| lack that
|
| My favorite explanation of this was an analogy to cars.
| Early drivers had to be mechanics, able not only to
| drive, but maintain and service their cars. Modern
| drivers just need to know how to drive, and often have no
| idea how a car works...
|
| I think that maps well to computers. Early geeks had to
| know how to build, upgrade, program, network, etc.
| Current users just have to know how to _use_ an
| application and often have little idea of the 'behind the
| scenes' stuff..
| mech422 wrote:
| I don't know about 'fluid intelligence', but due to 40
| years+ of neglecting education, I wouldn't want to bet on
| 'better critical thinking'. Just looking at any social
| media site, will show you how many people (of all
| generations) will believe things without any confirmation
| or critical thinking applied.
|
| edit: that goes for myself as well. I'm lazy enough not
| to verify stuff unless I think its 'important'...
| ThalesX wrote:
| I used to be of this opinion until I asked myself whether
| I'm really that fluidly intelligent and able to approach
| things with better critical thinking, and am not a
| sitting duck for being easily manipulated by technology.
| Turns out, I was wrong and I am human after all and there
| are ways to manipulate me, especially by using the
| technology I love so much.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| Other comments here seem to be indicating this is a
| binary "young people unaffected, older people affected"
| dichotomy. No. It's about the generality. Bell curve
| clearly exists for many dimensions.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Agreed. And, look, you wrote:
|
| > The younger generations, with their higher level of
| fluid intelligence, _are able to_ approach things with
| better critical thinking
|
| Personally I try to write "are more often able to", or
| "tend to ...", so it sounds more bell-curvish
| kikimora wrote:
| The divide is clearly between people who watch Tv and
| people who don't. It happens that younger people watch
| less TV, and this is the only reason.
|
| You may be surprised how strong propaganda is. I spoke
| with quite a few people recently and it is mind boggling.
| Propaganda victims cannot answer some basic questions
| such as - "If Ukrainians are nazis why we don't see
| millions of refugees?" The problem is they are not ready
| to get the answer. Instead they became emotional and
| stressed and start yelling at you for no good reason. I
| guess this is uncontrolled reaction to prevent their
| imaginary world from collapsing.
| ipv6ipv4 wrote:
| Can you be more precise with which generations you are
| referring to? Maybe age ranges?
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| I am not from Russia, but have a lot of friends and
| relatives there.
|
| In my circles everyone below 40 years of age is strongly
| anti-regime. Especially below 30. Many of them have left
| the country (everyone who could basically, and one has
| bought the ticket and is waiting to leave soon).
|
| Above that age group it's hit or miss, and depends
| whether or not the person in question watches television
| and bothers to read one of the few remaining independent
| news outlets.
|
| Pretty much everybody above 60 strongly believes in
| whatever bullshit Putin is saying this week. Although
| there is one exception that I know of.
| pps wrote:
| At the same time... https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comm
| ents/t6b827/russian_inf...
| rectang wrote:
| > _According to my estimations, probably at least 95% of
| people who are "against the war" do not go out to participate
| in protests._
|
| "Courage" really understates the sacrifice that Russian
| protestors are making. I've participated in a fair number of
| demonstrations for various causes over the years (in the US),
| but none of them involved any personal risk or enduring
| consequences. Attending a single anti-war demonstration in
| Russia is a much more momentous act.
|
| It's uncomfortable sitting in judgment of even pro-Putin
| Russians, because as you say we in other countries have also
| been responsible for grievous harms. But like today's
| Germans, we can't let ourselves be paralyzed by past history
| when deciding whether we can legitimately do something about
| the horror unfolding before us.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| American here, and I am involved with the US anti-war
| movement. I really wish we could get 5% involved with the
| movement, but people don't get interested unless it starts
| affecting them or their family. To this day, the most active
| members of the US anti-war movement are baby boomers because
| they were being drafted to fight in Vietnam. The US ended the
| draft after Vietnam.
|
| The sanctions in Russia could build resistance to the war in
| Russia, but they could also backfire if the Western
| governments do not set reasonable criteria for removing the
| sanctions. So far they have not indicated how to end
| sanctions.
|
| If Western governments will only remove sanctions if Putin is
| thrown out, than I fear that there is little chance the war
| will end soon. The Syrian sanctions will never end without
| regime change so the sanctions are purely punitive.
| freedomben wrote:
| Agree completely. May I ask, how big is your anti-war tent?
| For example, in my experience the most anti-war people are
| anarchists (sometimes disambiguated to anarcho-socialists)
| and anarcho-capitalists. However only a small percentage of
| each group is willing to join with the other for an issue.
| Are you? Are you part of an organization like this?
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| > May I ask, how big is your anti-war tent? For example,
| in my experience the most anti-war people are anarchists
| (sometimes disambiguated to anarcho-socialists) and
| anarcho-capitalists.
|
| I came in through left-wing organizing and I've worked
| with a few groups. Some are officially non-ideological
| except for being anti-war (but if I had to place them I'd
| say liberal-left) like Peace Action
| https://www.peaceaction.org/. They have a lot of members
| form the Vietnam era Peace movement.
|
| Other visible contributors to the anti-war movement are
| socialist orgs like DSA and ANSWER Coalition. DSA has a
| bigger base, but ANSWER really tends to be ahead on
| organizing street events. Then there are various
| solidarity groups for countries like El Salvador or
| Palestine. The Latin American solidarity groups from the
| Dirty Wars of the 1980s still exist.
|
| These left leaning groups would never work with right-
| wing groups, and for what it's worth you almost never see
| right-wing groups try to seriously organize anti-war, or
| at least they way they organize/lobby is very different.
| cmurf wrote:
| There's always this catch-22 with participation. People in
| America don't think it affects them, so they don't
| participate. Same thing happened in Russia though. And then
| suddenly it did. Americans statistically don't vote issues,
| they vote tribe - straight ticket Democrat or Republican or
| whatever. The tribal aspect in the U.S. routinely bites us
| in the butt, even aside from the problem of a democracy
| where a minority is winning more national elections than
| the majority due to the Senate and Electoral College.
|
| I suggest folks re-read about the Cold War. A good short
| one with the basics is _The Cold War: A Very Short
| Introduction_ (there 's many, many other topics in that
| series). Why? Because the Cold War is a direct result of
| diverging histories, needs, ideologies between the U.S. and
| USSR's methods of imposing their view on the vulnerable
| world. That's probably going to start happening again with
| Russia as a lesser influence than it was in the first Cold
| War, and China as a bigger influence in the next one.
|
| I really wish the U.S. would do more to give the rest of
| the world more power and responsibility for solving these
| problems in the U.N. The super powers need to be held
| accountable too if we are to avoid proxy wars. The super
| powers won't engage in direct conflict because the risk of
| nuclear escalation is too high. The problem remains with
| proxy wars.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| > Yes, starting from now, protesting becomes more risky (you
| may go to jail for years if you get caught second time). But
| just a week ago, it was mostly harmless (yes, some people get
| arrested for few days...
|
| Even one arrest record is enough to be disqualified for or
| complicate any visa or moving abroad plan :(
| cutemonster wrote:
| Is it the other countries who don't like arrest records, or
| can Putin's regime prevent people with these records, from
| getting a visa elsewhere?
| artyomxyz wrote:
| In some way you're right. But it's important to note that we
| haven't chosen this government, we haven't chosen this
| country we live in.
|
| I personally lost any hope to change it one year earlier
| after participating in pro-Navalny protests. Now, I just
| don't want to have anything in common with this government.
| I'm choosing another one. And I'm not going to pay taxes to
| Russian government anymore
| freedomben wrote:
| For what it's worth, if anything, I think you're a hero and
| I deeply appreciate your efforts. You're doing more than
| the vast majority of people (in any country) would do. It's
| just far more easy to change your principles than to live
| them and most people choose the path of least resistance.
| kikimora wrote:
| This is exactly what Russian government wants. It does not
| need this much Russians. It will be happy to have maybe 500
| 000 of them, just enough to pump oil and gas.
| antattack wrote:
| Don't beat yourself over it. Now that you're out of the
| country, you can donate time and/or money to help fight for
| tolerance and against Putin regime.
| vixen99 wrote:
| That would be a tough fight according to this poll
| reported on the 23rd February. Probably a disturbing
| result for those who think the Russians are not broadly
| in line with the government. However at that time only
| 13% thought it likely for the Kremlin to initiate
| military action towards Ukraine.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia
| -uk...
| ativzzz wrote:
| For the vast majority of normal people, just leaving the
| country without plans of coming back is the best they can
| do.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >But it's important to note that we haven't chosen this
| government, we haven't chosen this country we live in.
|
| From my perspective this is the only meaningful change you
| can make. If my government ever starts getting in my way
| too much I'll find another one. Voting with my feet
| literally. We have this luxury as in-demand professionals.
| Kind of hard for me to empathize with Russian developers
| when they had decades to make this move, it's not like
| everything changed a few weeks ago.
| dash2 wrote:
| Even among developers not everyone is footloose. People
| have parents to take care of, they get married, they have
| dogs. Or they just care about their country even if they
| hate its government. Remember Leipzig in 1989? The first
| slogan was _Wir wollen raus_. But then it changed to _Wir
| bleiben hier_.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > they had decades to make this move
|
| But friends, family and loved ones where they live
| novosel wrote:
| And, where will You find it? (The new government I mean)
|
| Things are, The Reality is, much more complicated.
| baq wrote:
| Corrupt west, of course. At least you can say what you
| think. Most of the time.
| freedomben wrote:
| Just not in "private" spaces, like 99% of the internet,
| if you're open minded to ideas like the Lab Leak Theory
| (TM) back when that was verboten.
| tw20212021 wrote:
| Really? Just go to the east then
| freedomben wrote:
| Seconded. I'm in the US but I've looked into emigrating
| to quite a few different countries (including some with
| reputations for being more friendly to immigration such
| as Australia), and it's a lot harder than it sounds. I
| had a work visa in Canada for several months but then
| covid hit and they closed the border. Israel seemed like
| the easiest process I found, but only if you are Jewish
| (although temporary work permits are liberal there). The
| US also complicates things by being the only (?) nation
| on earth that still taxes it's citizens even if they
| didn't step foot in the country the whole year. This
| forces you to either renounce your citizenship entirely
| (which is extremely risky to do until you have permanent
| citizenship elsewhere, which can take many years), or be
| exploited by the US gov.
|
| What countries are the best/easiest for immigration?
| filoleg wrote:
| > _This forces you to either renounce your citizenship
| entirely (which is extremely risky to do until you have
| permanent citizenship elsewhere, which can take many
| years)_
|
| Pretty much no country will let you renounce your
| citizenship until you already have a citizenship (not
| permanent residency, actual citizenship) of another
| country. This is done to prevent people from becoming
| "stateless". And the process for renouncing the US one is
| much simpler and easier compared to a lot of countries
| out there.
|
| Not trying to be condescending or snarky here, but if
| that quote accurately represents the level of knowledge
| you have about immigration processes in general, I
| suggest you do way more research before you actually
| attempt to immigrate or even temporarily move to another
| country.
|
| Source: me being a naturalized American citizen who has
| been (unsuccessfully) trying to get rid of his Russian
| citizenship for many years.
| lowkey wrote:
| Actually, it is currently impossible for US citizens to
| renounce their citizenship for all practical purposes.
|
| Technically it should be possible but in reality
| renouncing requires an exit interview and the US State
| Department has refused to schedule exit interviews for
| more than a year.
| moonchrome wrote:
| As a skilled developer ? Shouldn't be that hard - plenty
| of options to pick from. If you aren't fond of the US or
| EU there are other countries that have much better
| standard of living/ personal freedoms compared to Russia.
|
| It's not easy in the sense that you'll just get a
| citizenship - but I have many former co-workers that went
| to Canada, US, Australia, etc., some got the permanent
| visa/citizenship, some are in the process.
| swat535 wrote:
| As someone who lived under the Islamic Republic of Iran
| for half his life, what ends up happening with the
| "voting with your feet" strategy is that the country ends
| up with a "brain drain". This worsens the situation
| because the only people remaining are the ones who either
| had no means of escaping or have been indoctrinated by
| the government; thus making the change from "within" even
| more difficult.
|
| That being said, it's hard to blame anyone. Staying and
| fighting leads to bloodshed, for example when the "green
| movement" started in Iran in 2009 [0] after the election,
| the government immediately started firing live rounds at
| people, arresting protestors and blacking out all
| communication from the outside world. Both my cousins
| were beaten in the Evin prison[1] for months and we were
| without any news from them for months.
|
| Meanwhile, as a Middle Eastern living in the west, the
| hostility I experienced were enormous during those years
| and I expect the same to happen to Russian people now.
| Just look at the comments in the thread, much civility is
| already lost (and HN is one of the better communities).
|
| Living under a dictatorship is suffocating. My heart goes
| out to all those suffering.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Green_Movement
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison
| SXX wrote:
| Yeah we (IT crowd of Russia) had time to leave and wanted
| to leave and planned to leave. But even as programmer
| it's can be just hard to immigrate without losing 3-5
| years of your life in the middle. Also losing all you
| friends and social circle isn't fun. I already lived
| abroad for 3-months / 6-months / 3-years and I know what
| how it feels to move countries.
|
| I personally had amazing personal projects going on and
| finally started to work in game development industry. My
| dream was to play games and make games. I wanted to get
| current projects to completion and then look for
| relocation options.
|
| All these terrible events just taken us by surprise. A
| lot of my friends are anti-regime, but no one including
| me expected Putin to go batshit crazy and start full
| scale war. Of course all we could do is to run.
| moonchrome wrote:
| What do you mean losing years ? It might be a bit tough
| depending on visa issues and so on but none of my friends
| that emigrated describe it as losing years. They are all
| working in their field, some are progressing insanely in
| their careers (especially compared to how they were doing
| back home). I mean I know it's anecdotal, and I've read
| some horror stories about employer visa abuse but
| assuming that's the default is kind of cynical IMO.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Depending on the country you immigrate in, there might be
| a language barrier, general mistrust and many other
| issues like finding a place to live (flat, house, etc.).
| Some qualifications differ, but of course in IT the
| definitions of roles is a bit vague, so it is less of an
| impact. Generally Russian IT people have the a stereotype
| going for them, to be very capable, at least where I am
| from. Losing friends and contacts is also something that
| will take time to build up again.
| SXX wrote:
| What I mean by losing years: when you forcefully
| immigrate your primary goal becomes to keep your work
| visa or getting residence permit. You cant afford to work
| on exact same projects you wish, change jobs as you wish.
| Until you get permenent residence or citizenship - this
| takes 3-9 years depend on country.
|
| Also lets be honest here - not all of us are top-notch
| programmers and finding job and passing interviews is
| completely different skill that need to be trained. I for
| instance simply don't have any official degree and while
| this make no difference for freelancer it's handicap me
| greatly when it's come to getting work visa.
|
| Also even if I am programmer my girlfriend is not
| automatically become one too. Finding a good job for her
| as English teacher (who is not a native speaker) would be
| much harder in EU / US. So this will put extra strain on
| my an her life.
|
| Rebuilding social circle and finding new friends also
| takes a long time. Especially if you dont want to stick
| to communities of other immigrants.
|
| PS: now this all doesn't matter because we turned into
| refugees. Yeah we're in much better situation compared to
| my friends in Ukraine who wake up to bomb shells, but our
| past life is still destroyed by Mr Putin and his regime.
| vertis wrote:
| This is wisdom. There are so many great countries out there
| (seen through the eyes of a digital nomad). Countries that
| you can build in, and succeed in.
|
| I can recommend Estonia, though it might feel too close
| with the current war. Also I love all the Nordic countries
| (haven't had the opportunity to visit Finland yet).
|
| If you speak English and you're in IT then Australia is
| also a very good option -- you'll need to be sponsored, but
| IT doesn't have too many troubles. Great weather and AU
| political problems are tiny in comparison (though every
| country has it's challenges).
| nathanlied wrote:
| I've been finding it very easy to empathise with Russians
| in this. After what we've seen happening in so-called
| "enlightened" Western democracies, with all our press
| freedoms, and yet we still have homeopathy advocates, far-
| right (and left!) conspiracies, and all kinds of gnashing
| of teeth over "fake news".
|
| How can I not look at Russian society, with a far more
| controlled environment, and think "how can Russians not
| know about it? How are they so easily deceived?", well, how
| are -we-, in the West, so easily deceived? It cuts both
| ways - but at least Russians have more of an excuse.
|
| I am hoping you and your people find kindness wherever you
| decide to flee to. It is already difficult enough to uproot
| yourself (and your family), with an uncertain future,
| leaving friends and memories of better days behind. We need
| to advocate for Ukrainian refugees - those who are fleeing
| Putin's war of aggression - but we cannot forget that,
| while Ukrainians are the worse off in this conflict, many
| Russians will also be victims. Many Russians will not be
| able to return home. And many Russians may see friends and
| family prosecuted for opposing Putin's war.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| I've yet to see any homeopathy advocates and conspiracy
| theorists attacking other countries. Stop pretending it's
| the same thing.
| freedomben wrote:
| This black & white view of good and evil is starting to
| get really tiresome. Is it the effect of modern movies/tv
| shows that causes this belief? In movies there's usually
| a clear/perfect/innocent "good" guy and a bad guy, but
| real life is rarely so cut and dry.
|
| It is perfectly possible for there to be two different
| parties, each of which (to different degrees of course)
| make bad decisions that hurt innocent people. Being
| honest about this and calling it out is not the same
| thing as equating what the "bad guy" and the "good guy"
| do.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Well most people here are binary. Killing people and
| believing in astrology or homeopathy or whatever are not
| comparable. It's not about good or bad. It's about basic
| human morals and rights.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| dang wrote:
| You can't break the HN guidelines like this, regardless
| of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. We ban
| accounts that post like this, so please don't do it
| again. Even in the hellscape of flamewar we're dealing
| with right now, your comment stands out as painfully bad.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| freedomben wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Please do not post in the flamewar style or attack
| another user, no matter how bad their comment was or you
| feel it was. That only makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| cutemonster wrote:
| I think he meant that in all countries, there are some
| people who believe in crazy things -- but that he didn't
| mean to make the comparison you reacted to
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| " I've been finding it very easy to empathise with
| Russians in this."
| cmurf wrote:
| I think Russians are responsible, but I do not think they are
| 100% responsible. But whatever the responsibility is, the
| punishment will be collective and disproportionate. Some of
| that will be fair, a lot of it will not be. The young kids
| today, and not yet born, who had no ability to become part of
| a rebellion, will be punished. The old folks today, the ones
| who have died since Putin was in power, they're not going to
| get any extra punishment. They can be asked no questions,
| they can provide no answers.
|
| If it is true that a Russian should have protested and gone
| to prison, in order to avoid Putin starting this war or the
| next war - isn't it also true every human is somehow
| fractionally responsible for not having tried to assassinate
| him? Like, how could that even work? To what degree are
| nationals responsible for the actions of their leaders? And
| when they fail to act, how should they be punished for it?
|
| I'm proposing we still have a significant flaw with our
| international agreements and institutions intending to
| preserve international peace. Because there's a lot of
| mistakes that have been made since WW2. The recent events in
| Ukraine tell me that despite being flawed, we need these
| institutions more than ever or we're absolutely going to blow
| up the world again.
|
| And one of those flaws, in my opinion, is the permanent
| security council veto power. It is not much security or a
| counseling, when permanent members can violate the charter
| and veto resolutions trying to hold them accountable. The
| U.S. has done this, and so has Russia. Two wrongs don't make
| a right and all that, and the various violations aren't even
| comparable. We should hold Russia accountable, but we cannot
| forget the Treaty of Versailles when figuring out how
| culpable the Russian people are. What are the proper
| incentives for any other country in the same situation? Is
| there something that would be more useful to preserving
| international peace than punishing Russia?
|
| Hell, maybe a suitable punishment would be making Russia into
| a democracy, it could be worse. (This is supposed to be
| funny, but I know in advance it's kindof a bad joke.)
| foogazi wrote:
| > So to be honest I cannot see how we are not responsible.
|
| I cannot se how you are responsible
| belter wrote:
| Are the Russians of the older generation, that get their news
| from most of the official news, buying into the government
| story? Or do you think everybody already realized what is
| really happening in Ukraine?
| djhn wrote:
| The boomers are unfortunately lost to propaganda.
| goldenkey wrote:
| That's crazy considering that the FSB bombed its own
| citizens to get Putin into power..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
| filoleg wrote:
| It is only crazy if you assume that those people are both
| aware of those bombings and believe that it was the FSB
| doing the bombings (and not "it was actually western-
| backed terrorists, any claims stating otherwise are just
| anti-Russian propaganda from the west"). Which, in this
| case, is far from given.
| jotm wrote:
| Well, from the comments on Youtube, they're insanely
| indoctrinated. Zero chance it's all bots.
| formvoltron wrote:
| We are afraid Putin will use nuclear weapons. We don't like
| that he came from a KGB background and that he seems to be
| friends with mafia. And that he likes to assassinate his
| rivals.
|
| If the Russian people are so much against Putin and on the side
| of the West, then why not arrange them to all leave their
| apartments at the same time, to walk into their central
| squares, and to start shaking their keys -- as the Czechs did.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fair chance it would turn into a bloodbath. Better would a
| national strike. Equally difficult to organize but much
| harder to attack.
| drakonka wrote:
| It did turn into a bloodbath at Euromaidan, but the people
| still came out, for months, and fought to change a corrupt
| regime that lied to them, as they have in many other
| countries in the past. Russians are not helpless. The main
| argument when this gets brought up seems to be that it's
| going to be hard and people will get hurt. Of course Putin
| isn't going to just throw up his hands and say "Ok guys,
| you win, I'm out". Nobody is expecting that. But we've seen
| that change is possible, and if the Russians are as against
| Putin's regime as some like to claim they are (with some
| even saying it's _most_ Russians), maybe it's time to
| actually do something about it. In the end, they're likely
| the only ones who can.
| therusskiy wrote:
| Putin was shaken up by Euromaidan and been preparing so
| it doesn't happen to him ever since. Ukraine 2014 !=
| Russia 2022. Back then Ukraine even had free speech.
| drakonka wrote:
| I apologize in advance for some emotion that'll come out
| in the rest of this comment, but I feel the need to say
| it.
|
| I wish Russian people would then stop telling me all
| about how most Russians are against Putin and hate him,
| and then act completely helpless at the thought of doing
| anything about it. They are just empty words, then,
| because they're followed by plenty of excuses for
| inaction. My grandfather is spending another war hiding
| from bombs in a basement, but Russian people get to catch
| trains to Finland while telling us platitudes about how
| "most" of them are _so_ against Putin.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And that's the problem right there: most Russians _don
| 't_ hate him. They've been subjected to a decades long
| barrage of obligatory Putin worship and even today his
| support is higher than that of the American president.
| They don't speak any other language than Russian and
| don't have access to other news sources. This is a real
| problem, because (1) it all but ensures that this war
| will last much longer than it should (it shouldn't have
| started to begin with) and (2) that Russia needs some
| kind of victory to be able to back out in order to
| sustain the myth. No such victory can be defined. This
| makes for a very bleak future.
|
| Meanwhile the West stands by wringing their hands and
| crying because 'there isn't anything they can do', when
| in reality they are just scared.
|
| The best bet right now would be for some Russian faction
| near the seat of power to get rid of Putin once and for
| all. Of course the instability that would generate would
| be _at least_ as dangerous as this war, if not more
| dangerous but it would also have the potential to improve
| things.
|
| I won't say anything about your grandfather because
| anything I could say would sound meaningless.
| jquery wrote:
| I'd love to know what you think the West can do, except
| that we are scared? I think the West is doing absolutely
| the right thing. This is a disaster for Putin but you
| know what could turn it around for him? If we give him an
| excuse to escalate the war and unite the Russian people
| against the West.
|
| EDIT: those are some good ideas. I definitely think we
| need to turn up the sanctions, so far Putin seems on the
| backfoot but he has increased the shelling of civilians,
| even agreed-upon evacuation points which is just straight
| up evil.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Cut off Russian gas and oil completely for starters, go
| after all Russian investments in the West, refuse to do
| business with any company in Russia, no more boats in and
| out of Russia, no more cargo, refuse to do business with
| companies from other countries that continue to do
| business in Russia, gift major arms and training to
| Ukraine on the assumption that this war isn't going to be
| over in a week.
|
| Putin will see his reasons for escalation wherever he
| wants, whatever will suit him, if that becomes the
| touchstone then we are already way across the line
| regardless of our fears. After all, we exist.
| jquery wrote:
| I am with you. If anything I want to turn up the
| sanctions even more, as I see Putin ramping up the war
| crimes he's committing in Ukraine out of frustration at
| the resistance there.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I fully expect him to destroy it completely if he can't
| seize it and I am scared shitless of what could very well
| be the first deployment of nuclear weapons on the
| European continent, the nuking of Kyiv. I would
| definitely not put it past Putin and I hope that before
| we get to that that there will be a palace revolt in
| Russia because if they just keep following orders there
| all bets are quite literally off.
| therusskiy wrote:
| it may be selfish, but I don't want to sit in prison and
| be beaten by police. If you are against Putin, why
| haven't you supported Russians in 2019 when they took to
| streets against him? Came to our country with Molotovs?
| Or was it too far away from you? Everybody was just
| "concerned" by it and now you and me are paying the pric,
| because since then it's even harder for us to organize
| and do anything about this crazy shithead.
|
| > Catching trains to Finland
|
| When rumors about borders closing started to appear me
| and my GF had to grab clothes and medicine, enough to fit
| into baggage, book ANYTHING that flies from Russia within
| the next day. I had to leave all my savings that I've
| been saving up for years (banks stopped giving money), I
| had to leave a newly bought apartment, I had to leave my
| parents and grandparents that I may never see again.
| drakonka wrote:
| That's an interesting sentiment, to ask people who aren't
| Russian and do not live in Russia to come protest on your
| behalf to overthrow your dictatorship. Do you think
| foreigners coming into Russia to protest (or violently
| riot, as you seem to be suggesting) would do the trick?
| That's a legitimate question - would Russians take kindly
| do that kind of initiative? Many Russian people, even the
| ones claiming that most of them hate Putin so much, seem
| to be packing up and leaving - are they genuinely hoping
| Ukrainians and other foreign civilians will come do this
| for them?
|
| Sorry you had to leave your new apartment and have to
| figure out how to open a new bank account for your US
| salary. And I hope both of us get to see our families
| again.
| therusskiy wrote:
| "Black lives matter" and "Moscow election protests"
| happened around the same time. I have nothing against
| BLM, but I can say that many Russians got plenty upset,
| that all countries had huge protests around the world
| (even New Zealand) to support BLM, while Russian protests
| were completely ignored by the international community.
| Nobody is asking to come to Russia, but we've been alone
| in our fight with Putin all along, the "West" haven't
| tried to help us fight his propaganda. I guess he is our
| problem now, but it's a little too late.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Black Lives Matter protests were about an internal affair
| in countries not yours, and just like it would be pretty
| weird to expect Russians to turn up there to help out I
| think it is a bit strange to expect Westerners to come to
| Russia to effect change.
|
| The Russian protests were not 'completely ignored', it's
| just that all we can really do here is report on them.
|
| > I guess he is our problem now
|
| He always was. Now he is also Ukraine's problem (more so
| than in the recent past).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Compared to dying because of a high explosive bomb
| landing in the middle of your apartment building I think
| you got the better deal.
|
| Keep in mind that just having choices is a luxury.
|
| Oh, and your dictator, your primary responsibility. Or do
| you blame the West for Putin?
| therusskiy wrote:
| It's definitely a better deal than those 300+ civilians
| and many more military whose lifes were lost, I am not
| gonna bloody argue about that.
|
| And yet I don't like when people discount broken lifes of
| Russians who had to flee their country leaving everything
| behind. Both Ukranians and Russians are refugees in this
| case. One difference they may not experience is being
| afraid of passing strangers in a country they fled to.
|
| So much suffering... Everything because of one crazy guy.
| As far as I've heard even most of Putin's generals were
| shocked by his decision to invade. I hope one of them can
| muster courage and get close enough...
| jacquesm wrote:
| The only people that can do something about it right this
| moment are all in Russia and as long as they don't the
| carnage will continue (in your name, no less).
|
| Putin's generals have over the years been carefully
| winnowed down to a bunch of spineless bastards, it's
| clear that near a dictator of such power you will not
| find any credible competition, those are either in jail
| or six feet under. Interesting side effect, that also
| means that the really competent people have left or have
| been pensioned off.
|
| And yet, those that are left are the only people with a
| credible shot at this. And the world - and their country
| - would likely love them for it, assuming they would
| live. Let's see which Russian fat cat grows a pair first.
| I think the touchstone will be when Putin gives the
| orders to deploy a nuke.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't think we've reached the point where the balance
| would tip. Yet. When you strike at the king you best not
| miss.
| formvoltron wrote:
| Euromaidan was not simply shaking keys and they were not
| enough of a %. They were just a couple thousand. Easy to
| beat into submission.
|
| I'm saying there needs to be 1 or 2 million Muskovites
| that simply wake up on Sunday and collectively decide to
| walk down to the Red Square and shake their keys. This
| will send a message to Putin that there are a large
| number of Russians who are not happy with his actions.
| formvoltron wrote:
| I'm talking about ALL the people that are against Putin.
| Which if this guy is to be believed is most of the people.
| They are not going to kill most of their own people. A
| million people marching in Moscow would change minds.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| > A million people marching in Moscow would change minds.
|
| How? What would they do? They would march and riot and
| protest and then after a day or two they would go home.
| Meanwhile the politicians will just wait it out and the
| show will go on (see Belarus).
| drakonka wrote:
| Why would you assume that? (See Euromaidan)
| utrack wrote:
| Compare the total area of Ukraine and Russia - and max
| distance between the border and the capital city.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| One possibility is that Yanukovich is more humane than
| putin or lukashenko. I don't know enough about him to
| compare but the last two are merciless dictators.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not a real possibility though, the only way
| Ukraine will be kept down will be with continuous
| threats. I personally don't think he will live an hour
| after he sets foot into Kyiv.
| roveo wrote:
| There's another thing that was different at Euromaidan vs
| current Russia: Yanukovich and his people had somewhere
| to run (Russia). Putin doesn't.
| jacquesm wrote:
| He doesn't have to run to someplace, he can just run into
| some stuff. Preferably a bullet.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A million people marching in Moscow would change minds
|
| Especially if, say, a quarter of them were military
| and/or internal security personnel that came out with
| their gear.
|
| Even the least democratic government relies on support of
| the people to function, but not even the most democratic
| (and certainly not Russia) depends on each person's
| support _equally_.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| A million people marching won't change Putin's mind, only
| a bullet to the head could (tho I don't expect protesters
| have a chance to reach him in his bunker), but it could
| convince even more citizens to walk into fire. However
| the army will certainly be given the order to kill their
| own people if they rise up, Putin's learned how to quell
| a revolt with blood while helping al-Assad with his own.
| I don't believe for a second he wouldn't turn another one
| or two of his cities into Grozny or Aleppo if he deems it
| necessary to deter revolt and make a point. The question
| is, if people actually revolt en masse, just how far will
| the military go in obeying orders. I don't believe in god
| but may it help them all, and us afterwards, if the they
| can't be convinced to mutiny even under those orders.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's pretty much how I see it, which is why I think the
| responsible choice would be to just refuse to show up for
| work. Eventually that will cripple the country to the
| point where everything stops working and it will be
| _much_ harder to get past that compared to a concentrated
| protest.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I agree it would change minds. And at the same time I'm
| pretty sure it would end in a bloodbath. Passive
| resistance against a dictatorship is a lot safer than
| active resistance. Of course the latter sends a more
| powerful message but it makes it obvious who to target,
| when and where and the reflexive response will be to lash
| out. Still, there is safety in numbers so _maybe_ it
| would work. But I would not immediately bet on it, otoh
| simply crippling the Russian economy further could be
| achieved by inaction.
| formvoltron wrote:
| There are already young people brave enough to protest
| with just 2000 people protesting.
|
| I'm talking about a million people standing outside and
| walking towards the Red Square, shaking their keys. If
| Russians cannot manage this, then I do not have sympathy
| whatsoever.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Those people are especially brave because the numbers are
| so low. But they are being made an example out of and
| that will have a chilling effect on whoever might have
| followed them.
|
| > If Russians cannot manage this, then I do not have
| sympathy whatsoever.
|
| If you haven't seen this firsthand, then I understand.
|
| But I have seen it firsthand. Here is how it went: in the
| 80's, when solidarity was rising up in Poland a
| relatively small minority drove the revolution, and found
| support in a large chunk of the younger generation and
| some in older people as well.
|
| But the bulk of the Poles had seen it all before. Small
| uprisings that were brutally smacked down, with the local
| secret police making lists of people to raise from their
| beds in the inevitable crackdown. So they were advising
| their kids not to go to the Solidarity rallies, not to
| protest and so on. In some families this led to harsh
| words, and some families never really recovered.
|
| Because _that one time_ those kids and the people behind
| Solidarity were right, they prevailed. They managed to
| achieve critical mass. They showed that you too could be
| brave and on the right side of history, and live to tell
| the tale. And eventually, after the wall fell of course
| all those other people suffered from memory loss and they
| too had been present at probably every demonstration,
| instead of sitting quaking in their house about the kind
| of terrible thing those idiot youngsters were bringing
| down on their houses. But make no mistake: for all the
| same money the army would have opened fire on the
| protests. It wasn 't a 'done deal' until it was and it
| could have very easily gone the other way, as it had so
| many times before.
|
| And note that it was tried:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek
|
| (I really don't like the title of that article) and even
| if you may see the death toll as 'acceptable' the fact is
| that those people died and if the same thing had happened
| in for instance Gdansk the death toll would have been a
| very large multiple of that. It may not have been enough
| to break the back of Solidarity, but that's not something
| we will ever know for sure.
|
| If you've seen the kind of bravery in Russia in the last
| couple of years, regarding the murders of journalists,
| the jailing of opposition politicians and so on then you
| really have to keep a little bit of room for the cowards
| that were right every time so far, and who can not with
| all their fantasy see a million people march on the
| Kremlin. And by not being able to see it they indeed make
| it less likely. If it happens it should be massive. 2000
| people will get arrested, a substantial multiple of that
| might get shot, and we're nowhere near the point where a
| million people would mobilize. But if and when they do,
| there will be a lot of blood flowing and at the end of it
| Putin will be gone. But they'd better bring something
| more potent than just their housekeys.
| jquery wrote:
| I saw a picture of a Russian mall from yesterday, lots of
| people out and about shopping like nothing is amiss. So
| far the Russian protests are pretty anemic (I mean in
| numbers, not in passion, and I greatly respect those
| currently protesting), it seems most Russians are a lot
| more concerned with the status quo, and that life is
| still pretty comfortable for them while bombs rain down
| on Ukrainian civilians. There's so much they could be
| doing to show their disagreement with the government.
| foxfluff wrote:
| > So far the Russian protests are pretty anemic (I mean
| in numbers, not in passion, and I greatly respect those
| currently protesting)
|
| Well I don't know about passion. I've seen videos where
| there are a lot of people protesting but when the police
| come grab a girl, everyone just stands around watching
| and filming. When the police come running at a crowd, the
| crowd runs away and it fizzles out. There's none of the
| Maidan passion.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is compounded by the fact that the troops Russia has
| sent are predominantly from the very far East of Russia
| and are not directly related to the Russian cosmopolitans
| from the West. SOP for the Russians in the last wars.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| In this hypothetical scenario I'm pretty sure if united all
| the Russians would manage to hang putin by his ball from
| the Kremlin pretty easily.
| therusskiy wrote:
| Unfortunately, not all Russians are against this war, many
| people don't even know that there's war, because as of now
| even saying "Stop War" is punishable by 3 years in Prison,
| distributing non official information about the war is
| punishable by 15 years in prison. All free media is banned as
| of now, newspapers closed down so their journalists don't go
| to prison.
|
| As for protest, if you think there's a lot of military in
| Ukraine, wait and see how much military is in Russia. There's
| 400k "internal" army alone that is dedicated to fighting its
| own people. Putin has created this army after the Ukranian
| revolution so the same thing doesn't happen here.
|
| In Belarus 95% of people were against Lukashenko and took to
| streets like wildfire after the rigged election a year ago,
| did it help? As long as he controls the military protests can
| only do so much.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "As long as he controls the military protests can only do
| so much. "
|
| Most succesful revolutions happened, when the military
| joined the protests. The military is made up of common
| people after all.
|
| And it is hard to see through the fog of war from the
| distance - but my impression is, that the russian army
| fights very hesistant and with low morale and badly
| organized. And they are not welcomed as liberators. No
| matter the propaganda, they will come home one day and
| share their stories.
|
| I wish you all the best, that you can return one day and
| manage till then.
| baq wrote:
| That is solved by making this branch of military the most
| privileged and the best paid - basically make them
| addicts of the regime. This makes uprooting the status
| quo their existential threat.
| therusskiy wrote:
| that's what's happening in Russia, there are all kinds of
| benefits to being in police. You kids have priority over
| others when going to college. Despite not having
| education you are being paid better than the most. You
| have early retirement and etc.. Many are hired from low
| income rural areas.
|
| If an average Russian is being brainwashed, for police
| it's much worse. They really think that people coming to
| protest are being paid by the "West" and show no mercy.
|
| Anyone who supports opposition, like following someone in
| Instagram, is immediately fired.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I am empathetic to your situation, but if you lived in Russia
| and paid taxes in Russia, you did support Putin. You also
| supported him just by living there, which was a statement that
| Russia is a place worth living in. Also if you didn't protest,
| you did support him passively.
|
| The same can be said, probably to a lesser extent, about most
| of us living outside of Russia - if we bought things coming
| from Russia or didn't criticize Russia, we supported Putin in a
| similar way. Though it could be argued we, non-russian citizens
| don't have the responsibility for russian government's
| actions...
|
| I'm wondering if resigning from a russian citizenship can help
| with the sanctions against russians. Surely openly criticizing
| the war and/or Putin with some kind of stickers or t-shirts or
| maybe Ukrainian colors can alleviate contact with actual
| people.
|
| I think no one pretends sanctions are fair. But what's a better
| alternative?
| evv555 wrote:
| >The same can be said, probably to a lesser extent, about
| most of us living outside of Russia - if we bought things
| coming from Russia or didn't criticize Russia, we supported
| Putin in a similar way. Though it could be argued we, non-
| russian citizens don't have the responsibility for russian
| government's actions...
|
| If that's the threshold for responsibility then that's barely
| scratching the surface. Western banks have profited from the
| enabling and corruption of oligarchs by laundering their
| assets with impunity for decades. Corporations like Cisco had
| no problem doing technology transfers for surveillance
| technology that now makes opposing so dangerous. German
| politicians gutted their nuclear energy/energy security in
| the name of going green. European politicians have pushed an
| agenda of appeasement in the name of moral relativism and
| "stakeholder capitalism". This is a crescendo that has been
| building for decades at the benefit of Westerners and the
| expense of normal Eastern Bloc people.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| So do you mean Europeans or Americans are responsible to a
| larger extent than Russians? I only compared "our"
| responsibility as lower, but still recognize it and don't
| intend to downplay it - actually I think I'm being
| downvoted because I dare to put some responsibility on OP,
| as if it was a popular idea that an individual means
| nothing and has no effect on the world... We need to grow
| up, we do have an effect and what happens in Ukraine just
| now should prove that avoiding it is worth the effort.
| cpsns wrote:
| > I am empathetic to your situation, but if you lived in
| Russia and paid taxes in Russia, you did support Putin. You
| also supported him just by living there, which was a
| statement that Russia is a place worth living in. Also if you
| didn't protest, you did support him passively.
|
| If you're an American you don't get to criticize Russian
| citizens for this. It would be the very definition of glass
| houses and throwing stones.
|
| How many of your government's injustices and war crimes have
| you protested? And don't try to brush off my comment as
| "whataboutism", you're talking tough so back it up.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I'm not an American, but I don't see how an argument is
| valid or invalid based on who makes it.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > You also supported him just by living there, which was a
| statement that Russia is a place worth living in.
|
| Not that people necessarily have a choice. They need visa,
| working permits (qualification!), money to create a new live
| elsewhere and also probably have family or health related
| things keeping one in a place.
|
| > Also if you didn't protest, you did support him passively.
|
| In a totalitarian state demonstrating isn't as easy as in
| other places. You easily end up in jail.
|
| Of course it is true that a state can only exist while
| supported by the inhabitants, but it's not as easy as saying
| "leave or be loud in protest"
| helixfelix wrote:
| Your comment made me do a double take. Surely an individual
| is not to blame for a countries injustices, imperialism, and
| war crimes? Otherwise large parts of the developed world
| would have to be abandoned immediately.
|
| We need to consider borders, immigration, work authorization,
| regulations, wealth, health, friends, family
| responsibilities, kids, partners and their own constraints -
| before being able to pass judgement.
|
| It's takes incredible privelege to propose that one can just
| pickup their bags and go wherever they want in the world.
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| Go fight against Russian zombies in Ukraine to win your right
| to have a bank account.
| foxfluff wrote:
| Ukraine is not accepting volunteers from Russia. https://twit
| ter.com/KyivIndependent/status/15001175130399825...
|
| I think it's the right call, given that they have a problem
| with Russian saboteurs who snuck into the country before the
| war started. They're currently discouraging the use of the
| Russian language (many Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and
| Russian) to avoid suspicion. Tension is extremely high right
| now, checkpoints everywhere around Kyiv, guards on the edge,
| and there's a huge risk of escalation if you're suspected of
| being on the wrong side.
|
| There's been many videos of alleged saboteurs getting
| arrested, and the rumor is that your ability to pronounce a
| Ukrainian word correctly is used as a test to find out where
| you're from.
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| Nobody said it would be easy.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Regarding a bank account, try wise.com they will give you US
| bank details (among others) which you can use to get paid, and
| a debit card.
| chinathrow wrote:
| For Russians at this time? I am not so sure.
| baskethead wrote:
| I think only lesser people would think all Russians support
| Putin. Every Russian I know in Silicon Valley that are sickened
| by Putin.
|
| Eric Stalwall, the House Representative in East Bay (of the SF
| Bay Area) proposed to kick all Russian students out of the US.
| That sickened me and I won't forget this going forward (he ran
| for Democratic nominee for President in 2020). How can you
| blame citizens of the country for the country's actions? That's
| like Japanese internment camps all over again. I can't believe
| in 2021 someone would propose such a stupid and horrifying
| thing, especially in the Bay Area.
|
| I'm glad you were able to escape safely.
| jquery wrote:
| I know lots of Russians that support Putin, unfortunately. I
| wish it were as simple as Putin was acting alone but he is a
| popular Russian figure.
| gip wrote:
| I have family / friends in Russia and outside Russia and
| I'm seeing the same thing: Putin is popular. I suspect it
| had to do with how the Russian identity is build.
|
| I keep telling these people that a country is defined by
| what it does in the world, not by what it is or was. But at
| the end of the day I think a lot of them consider Russia as
| a << powerful >> country that should have an empire.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| I think if you multiply the number of Russians who
| protested against the Ukraine invasion by 100, it's 1% of
| Russians, max.
| atlantas wrote:
| > The disheartening thing is that even if you never supported
| Putin, other countries treat you as enemy.
|
| This is precisely what leads to atrocities like Japanese
| internment camps. We are repeating dark history in real time
| and it's being actively cheered on by a bloodthirsty mob who
| have no regard for innocent civilians and kids.
| ip26 wrote:
| There is actually a difference here; the parent comment is a
| Russian refugee. The Japanese internment camps housed mostly
| Japanese Americans who already lived in the United States
| before the war and were predominantly US citizens.
|
| Refugees are human & need help, but it isn't quite the same.
| vertis wrote:
| It's the same in some ways. Already there has been an
| uptick in hate towards Russians outside Russia. Also
| Belarusians[0].
|
| Even if they're anti-Putin and anti-war, if they've been
| trying for years to change things they can't escape being
| Russian/Belorusian.
|
| [0]: https://twitter.com/AlinaLeonovaSF/status/149945792856
| 210227...
| justinpowers wrote:
| > it's being actively cheered on by a bloodthirsty mob who
| have no regard for innocent civilians and kids.
|
| What are you referring to here specifically? Genuinely
| curious. I haven't encountered much anti-Russian sentiment
| (yet), I've only noticed anger towards Putin, his cronies,
| and their soldiers. As far as I can tell, most understand
| that the Russian people didn't choose this despite how little
| they did (or could do) to stop it.
| artificial wrote:
| It's very similar to the Iraq war, the rhetoric "if you're
| not with us you're against us." "if you're not against
| Putin you're pro Putin". World wide negative sentiment
| against Russian people is amplified. Similar to 1914 with
| Germans with many anglicizing their names. It's not like
| Putin respects votes.
|
| [0] https://www.newsweek.com/russian-conductor-fired-two-
| orchest... [1]
| https://www.npr.org/2022/03/03/1084205316/russian-cats-
| banne... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022
| /03/01/10-stat...
| justinpowers wrote:
| Banning cats? Banning vodka? Firing Putin supporters?
|
| This is bloodthirst? This is disregard for innocent
| children?
|
| I must have the wrong dictionary.
|
| [edit:as far as being simply "anti-Russian", perhaps this
| qualifies. I can see how it might be concerning and even
| foreboding. And we should keep an eye on it. But i think
| it's a stretch to call it anti-Russian. At this point,
| it's really just anti-war and equivalent to communal
| shaming and shunning. I doubt many poor Russians will be
| hurt by the cat/vodka ban. And they certainly wont care
| that a likely-wealthy Putin supporter must now look for
| another job.]
| doix wrote:
| I think it will be very interesting to see what happens
| when the war ends. If there are significant reparations
| to be paid and if the sanctions remain, I think this
| easily opens it up for a repeat of WWII. Similar to post
| WWI Germany, Russia will be fucked. Putin will eventually
| die (natural causes/bullet to the head) and the next guy
| will be a bigger nutjob that rallies the people behind
| him by blaming the West/Jews.
|
| I don't know what the best course of action is right now,
| maybe the sanactions are the optimal choice. But
| afterwards, I hope people remember history and what
| happens when you kick a country that's already fucked.
| awb wrote:
| It's certainly an important lesson.
|
| There were a lot of other ones too though like would WWII
| have happened if the Allies enforced German disarmament?
|
| The world is different now today though and far more
| global. Post WWII, West Germany and Japan became Western
| success stories by integrating them into the global
| economy.
|
| I suspect future post-war reconciliation will like more
| like WWII than WWI.
| justinpowers wrote:
| Desperation is certainly a dangerous beast.
|
| Fortunately we aren't quite at WW1 equivalence yet. And,
| my history isn't even close to perfect, but i believe the
| Germans pre-ww1 were, per capita, much wealthier and much
| more aggressively nationalistic than your average
| Russian. They were also much more industrious and
| threatening (disregarding Russians current world-
| destroying arsenal and unpredictable leadership).
|
| But you're right, it'll be an interesting, precarious
| situation regardless.
| evv555 wrote:
| In US there are several articles about public figure
| Russians being cancelled for refusing to speak out against
| Putin and anecdotes of "Russian" restaurants being
| boycotted vandalized. Publicly speaking out like is being
| demanded is dangerous and many US "Russian" businesses
| aren't actually Russian owned but catering to Russian
| speakers(including Ukrainians).
| justinpowers wrote:
| > Public figures Russians being cancelled for not
| speaking out
|
| Ehh, this is nothing compared to Japanese internment
| camps. And not suggestive of bloodthirst or disregard for
| children.
|
| > anecdotes of "Russian" restaurants being boycotted
| vandalized
|
| This is sad. And even sadder, completely unsurprising.
| But again, a few anecdotes of stupids doing stupid and
| hatefuls doing hateful, doesn't qualify as a
| "bloodthirsty mob with no regard for innocent civilians
| and children". Not to minimize the experience of those
| victims -- I'd be furious and concerned about escalation
| if I were them -- but the original comment suggested
| something much more broad-based and sinister.
|
| (Interestingly, my first reply was downvoted prior to
| this reply. And this isn't the first time I've been
| downvoted for an innocuous question related to this war.
| And no explanation or rebuttal is ever provided. I
| wonder...)
| evv555 wrote:
| >But again, a few anecdotes of stupids doing stupid and
| hatefuls doing hateful, doesn't qualify as a
| "bloodthirsty mob with no regard for innocent civilians
| and children".
|
| I just don't feel like catologing every red flag instance
| on here. It's a more widespread social trend.
|
| >I'd be furious and concerned about escalation if I were
| them -- but the original comment suggested something much
| more broad-based and sinister.
|
| The comparison was in regards to polarizing
| dehumanization that's often a precursor to many bad
| situations. I think you're drawing conclusions from OPs
| statement that aren't there.
|
| The populist trend to try and deport/target innocent
| exchange students is definitely a trend in that direction
| however.
| justinpowers wrote:
| > I just don't feel like catologing every red flag
| instance on here. It's a more widespread social trend
|
| Fair enough, but since this then becomes fully anecdotal
| and about personal perspective I should share my own: I
| am seeing far far less ignorance than i'd normally
| expect. And certainly far less than i've seen the past
| few years within the US. But, that said, I no longer use
| Facebook. And I rarely use Twitter. So...maybe that's
| why.
|
| > I think you're drawing conclusions from OPs statement
| that aren't there.
|
| Maybe you're right. I've been seeing a lot of Russian-
| invasion-related hyperbole on HN; I'm trying to cut
| through the BS.
|
| > The populist trend to try and deport/target innocent
| exchange students is definitely a trend in that direction
| however.
|
| I'm even having trouble finding reference to this online.
| I see that Swallwell [1] suggested this, but the same
| article claims it was the first time the suggestion was
| mentioned by anyone. And I don't see any other relevant
| articles at all [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/swalwell-
| floats-ex...
|
| [2]: https://news.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%9CExchange%2
| 0student...
| pelasaco wrote:
| go back home and fight for freedom. You are the only one that
| can stop Putin.
| cpsns wrote:
| I can pretty much guarantee most of the people commenting
| things like this wouldn't risk their lives to do the same.
|
| It's very easy to type it out and pretend in your
| imagination, but reality is quite a different matter.
| ironcurtain wrote:
| Your people, whether you feel like they are yours is a
| different question, a fighting and dying. Many believing they
| do it for their country. You just want easy life for yourself.
| Nothing is wrong with it, but for the rest of the world you are
| not just Russian, but coward as well. You'll be begging for
| forgiveness and always explaining that you were always against
| the tyrant to the good white people who think good correct
| thoughts. Just like those hapless whites cornered by BLM
| activists. Proper fate.
| ramoz wrote:
| Why is the internet situation like?
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > _The disheartening thing is that even if you never supported
| Putin, other countries treat you as enemy._
|
| I'm so sorry ordinary Russians have to go through this stigma
| that Putins war carries. This isn't a war of "Russians" against
| Ukraine, it is Putins war. And while it's hard not to cheer for
| the underdog I hope that everyone can stop giving ordinary
| Russians a hard time.
|
| This isn't me "preaching", but verbalizing to myself (first and
| foremost) of how _I_ want to act in every moment, and how I
| respond to violence from the comfort of a (currently) safe
| country when my lizard brain is under perpetual bombardment
| with visuals of horror and injustice.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Ideas for options here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091
| quadcore wrote:
| Maybe there is something you can work out with TerraUSD
| (algorithmic stablecoin) and localbitcoins.com
| vmception wrote:
| DAI and MIM are a more battle tested model than TerraUSD
|
| But yes a basket of stablecoins is good right now
| quadcore wrote:
| DAI and MIM are KYC-ed at their root so I wouldnt go for
| them,
|
| _Edit: you have to be compliant to a subset of KYC to run
| their api - sorry i dont have the detail on top of my head,
| I do know its the case for USDC and last I checked DAI was
| KYC-rooted too. Everything thats stablecoin usd is KYC-
| rooted but TerraUSD which you cant purchase with usd on
| some major fiat ramp.
|
| Also KYC is recursive right, if youre KYCed you got to KYC
| your users too_
| vmception wrote:
| What do you mean by that, you can buy and earn DAI and
| MIM without KYC, and they continue to function
| autonomously whether the founders have a regulatory
| issue, have survived and maintained their peg during
| volatile stress tests with the collateral, and they can
| be sold without KYC, they also cannot freeze an
| individual address
|
| Edit: to your edit, thats not accurate, all data is
| available onchain and can be read, new dai and mim can be
| created by adding collateral, programmatic interaction is
| done via ABIs, there is no need for a third party API
| even if they are offering one
| quadcore wrote:
| _thats not accurate, all data is available onchain and
| can be read, new dai and mim can be created by adding
| collateral, programmatic interaction is done via ABIs,
| there is no need for a third party API even if they are
| offering one_
|
| Youre saying, _atm_ , all solutions are KYC-rooted but
| you can create a grey area yourself without being KYCed
| yourself (if youre lucky). Youre certainly right.
|
| FYI I was giving a practical advice to someone in need of
| a sure grey-enough area thats available now.
| vmception wrote:
| > FYI I was giving a practical advice to someone in need
| of a sure grey-enough area thats available now.
|
| Yeaaahhh I'm honestly going to need a source, not some
| conjecture from the Luna/TerraUSD discord. Is that really
| what they say over there to attract so much interest in
| their algorithmic stablecoin?
|
| > you have to be compliant to a subset of KYC to run
| their api - sorry i dont have the detail on top of my
| head
|
| Tell us all what exactly KYC rooted means, what can
| happen in the future to the existing smart contracts that
| could possibly limit anyone. You clearly don't know so go
| figure it out for the rest of us. Its your claim which
| doesn't make any sense and goes against what the code
| does. So get up to speed on your own claim, because it
| would be interesting to a lot of people.
|
| Its not practical advice, you made it up and are
| currently incapable of backing it up.
|
| Here is the contract code of DAI
|
| https://etherscan.io/address/0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954e
| ede...
|
| Here is the contract code of MIM
|
| https://etherscan.io/address/0x99d8a9c45b2eca8864373a26d1
| 459...
|
| What should we be looking at?
|
| In contrast, here is the USDC contract, which is behind a
| proxy meaning the entire contract can be updated to be
| more restrictive or completely different (the others dont
| have a proxy so nothing can be _atm_ or "currently")
|
| https://etherscan.io/address/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e
| 9eb...
|
| The current USDC contract has a "blacklist" function that
| blacklists addresses and freezes their USDC funds if
| those addresses already have USDC in them
|
| MIM and DAI dont have that but if you see something
| analogous let us know!
| quadcore wrote:
| I think I understand what's confusing you in what I say.
| Let me clarify: the relation between DAI and KYC is a
| soft relation and by that I mean that KYC is not
| hardcoded in the technology. But by proxy, since the USD
| is KYCed, anything that's backed by USD is KYCed and
| thats enough to make say DAI not as permisionless as
| TerraUSD in practice. Now it may make no difference to
| you for such and such situations. Its just that when my
| life is at stake I wouldnt take any risk and choose the
| best available tech.
| vmception wrote:
| Got it, DAI uses a basket of collateral, some of which is
| the USDC stablecoin, and USDC itself is backed by USD. I
| dont think that means what you think it means, even if
| all the USDC in DAI deposits was frozen I think there are
| other contingencies to keep it at $1
|
| MIM uses the same model except the collateral choices are
| better, so far, as they are all interest bearing or
| revenue producing assets such as xSushi and liquidity
| pool shares.
|
| I dont think TerraUSD is inherently better. The space is
| littered with algorithmic stablecoins. TerraUSD has done
| phenomonally well, I dont think it offers anything except
| being on par with MIM. I would say MIM and TerraUSD as
| equals for different reasons, and then DAI due to having
| greater liquidity than MIM and simply being around
| longer.
|
| I think there is still a gap in the market for the
| perfect stablecoin. I would like a MIM with a better team
| and more predictable outcomes.
| T-A wrote:
| _In 2014, after I'd just emigrated from Russia because of my
| opposition to the Crimea annexation, I bristled when Ukrainians
| told me the move didn't erase my responsibility. I was sure I
| couldn't have done anything to change the nature of the Russian
| regime. "You go fight Putin," I snarled back at my Ukrainian
| accusers. "See where you get with that." It fills me with shame
| to remember that now, because of course they are fighting him
| as I write this -- and we didn't really do so even when it
| wasn't as dangerous as in the current climate of cruel
| suppression._
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-05/ukrain...
| formvoltron wrote:
| rossdavidh wrote:
| As an American who has had plenty of disagreement with acts
| of violence by my government in the past, I have to say I
| have more sympathy for a Russian who is in this position now.
| Even in democracies, marching in anti-war protests and voting
| for anti-war candidates at the next election doesn't always
| seem to have much impact on the government's behavior, at
| least in the short term.
| formvoltron wrote:
| Russia is an interesting case because.
|
| * their capitol is also their largest city. 10% of all
| russians live in Moscow. * If just 1 or 2 million of the 11
| million people of moscow went downtown to shake keys in
| protest, something would change. * The protest does not
| need to immediately change things. Simply it sends a
| message. And by shaking keys it sends a message of peace
| but also of dissatisfaction.
| formvoltron wrote:
| And the fact that Moscow people would rather complain than
| do a simple act of walking downtown together..
|
| * shows that Russian people think that Putin would not use
| his nukes.
|
| Because if Putin would use his nukes.. isn't walking
| downtown and shaking your keys a much better outcome!?
| formvoltron wrote:
| asats wrote:
| So will you send all the north korean refugees back to fight
| their dictator?
| elboru wrote:
| " Another reason we don't like Russians is"
|
| And that's how wars are maintained. They vs us. Who is we??
| How can you dislike millions of people just because they were
| born inside a border different than yours?
| adventured wrote:
| Being born inside a different border doesn't make you a bad
| person. The beliefs you hold can however.
|
| Russia's culture is directly responsible for what's
| happening.
|
| How can I possibly dislike a culture of xenophobia, racism,
| ethnic superiority, conquest lust, power & might as right,
| advocation of government as a vehicle for conquering, and
| the use of force as the highest ideal?
|
| I'm speaking of the German region ~1890-1930, which very
| aggressively espoused and supported such ideas, many
| millions of people believed similarly to what the Nazi
| regime ended up codifying as its core ideas. Which had
| predictable end results. Yes, I can dislike very large
| numbers of people that hold such ideas, properly so in
| fact.
|
| How can you dislike hundreds of thousands of racists in
| southern states circa 1950? Oh quite easily and entirely
| rationally.
|
| You can dislike evil aspects of a culture. And you can
| properly dislike people that hold evil ideas, particularly
| to the extent they're important ideas that shape a big part
| of who a person is and or help to enable large movements of
| evil. That goes for the US, just as it does Russia, just as
| it does for anywhere else. And you can hold people morally
| responsible for the ideas they choose to believe in and the
| consequences that those beliefs have when they touch the
| real world in action.
| formvoltron wrote:
| I actually don't have a problem with Russians.
|
| Just that as they right now should be walking into Moscow
| to show their discontent, then I am performing my
| discontent by not liking Russians, right now.
| AnonHP wrote:
| I'm going to throw in a rhetorical question. If you
| expect Russians to be walking into Moscow to show their
| discontent, shouldn't you be shouting slogans and holding
| a placard at the nearest Russian embassy to show you're
| equally serious?
| smcl wrote:
| When you organise against Putin the state swiftly organises
| against you. There are plenty of examples of those who try to
| resist being jailed or murdered. I do not blame your average
| Russian for keeping their head down and deciding its safer to
| just try to get by.
|
| I am quite demotivated at the idea any meaningful change can
| be effected in my home country, which is technically a well-
| functioning democracy that doesn't actively persecute the
| population at large[0]. If there was also the threat of
| violence against me or my family for being politically
| involved, my motivation would drop off altogether.
|
| [0] = the UK does have bizarre fixation on its Muslim
| population, one example being the story covered by the recent
| Trojan Horse Affair podcast
| tasha0663 wrote:
| This attitude doesn't square with the dense bureaucracy,
| unavoidable surveillance, and complete monopoly on violence
| that modern nations hold. Especially in a place like Russia,
| where "organizing" is nearly impossible because opposition
| leaders have a bad habit of _accidentally_ eating plutonium
| and nerve agents.
| adventured wrote:
| It has been far easier to protest against Putin than most
| of the prior Soviet regime (except for the very end of the
| USSR).
|
| So far as we know Putin does not yet operate massive
| extermination camps and labor gulags as in the prior USSR.
| He is not yet rounding up and exterminating large groups of
| the population.
|
| Putin is meek compared to Stalin.
|
| The apologist complaints I'm seeing in regards to Russia
| and protesting, is that there is a cost to going against
| Putin. Yes, there certainly is. Of course there is. And
| there's a cost in Ukrainian blood in not, a cost the
| Russian people are responsible for.
|
| The Russian people don't get to have their cake and eat it
| too. They don't get to enjoy the prior good times
| (relatively speaking) under Putin, cheering him and his
| ways on when it was convenient, and then not get credit for
| the blood Putin is spilling in their name now. This machine
| Putin has built is also partially their responsibility.
|
| A lot of Russians may have to die to stop Putin. That's
| their responsibility to shoulder for tolerating Putin's
| regime from the early days when he promptly began
| committing war crimes and robbing the Russian people of
| human rights. Or the majority can keep doing nothing and it
| might keep getting worse, keep getting harder to remove
| him, and he might move into Stalin mode and start
| genociding groups he dislikes.
| formvoltron wrote:
| If people want to be corralled like sheep, then those
| corralling them will only be encouraged to do more.
|
| Doing nothing as a Russian means. 1. Being OK with Russians
| randomly sending missiles into apartment buildings in
| Ukraine 2. Being OK with wheat prices jumping 50 or 100%
| causing food shortages and starvation around the world 3.
| Possible nuclear war.
|
| Whereas if 1 or 2 million Muskovites simply walk downtown
| and shake their keys, then almost certainly almost none of
| them would have any problem at all.
|
| Maybe just the football fans of Moscow could do this?
| Otherwise, your team will only be playing Kyrgyzstan and
| Uzbekistan for a while.
| fireflymetavrse wrote:
| >they are afraid to stand up to their own government
|
| I think you are not aware on how authoritarian regimes work
| and relates to those trying to oppose.
| formvoltron wrote:
| History has shown time and time again that they don't deal
| well with a million or more of their own citizens having a
| peaceful protest.
| darksaints wrote:
| I believe this as well, but it's not always cut and dry. To
| take down a government requires organization and cooperation
| amongst entities. Some regimes, like North Korea, effectively
| make cooperation and organization impossible. They snuff out
| the revolution before it ever starts. If there is ever going
| to be a Russian opposition to Putin that is actually strong
| enough to take him down, it will likely start in a different
| country.
| kgeist wrote:
| >You are Russian and therefore you are responsible for your
| government's actions.
|
| Imho that works in democracies, not dictatorships. Putin is
| holding Russians hostage.
| ecf wrote:
| Can't have an autocracy without the willing participation of
| apathetic citizens.
| jdrc wrote:
| That's easy to say for people on the outside. Russians who
| want change can influence one another, build up awareness,
| but standing in front of tanks will just most likely lead to
| pulverization
|
| and it's not like russians are strangers to popular uprising,
| but the trauma of the fall of the soviet empire has a
| poisonous influence not just on the old generations
| formvoltron wrote:
| Yes I realize it would be hard for them. But who else on
| the planet has a better chance?
|
| The reality is that everyone is paying these sanction
| costs. Europe and US companies too. Even poor people in
| Morocco will pay the costs in the form of increased food
| costs or food scarcity.
|
| Russians seem to want a get out of jail for free card, but
| that would not be fair at all.
| Procedural wrote:
| > Another reason we don't like Russians is that they are
| afraid to stand up to their own government.
|
| What about billions of Chinese that are afraid to stand up to
| the communist party?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Billions of Chinese? The PRC only has 1.4 billion people or
| so.
| therusskiy wrote:
| try blaming people born in North Korea, maybe if they are
| sanctioned and hated more they stop "voting" for kim jong un?
| formvoltron wrote:
| See what I mean. Now you are comparing your situation to
| North Korea. I doubt you have it as hard as that. Just
| gather people together, go the central square, and shake
| keys.
|
| They don't have enough jails to hold everyone.
| therusskiy wrote:
| it's not North Korea YET, but it's pretty damn close
| right now. Remember Belarus protests a year ago,
| Lukashenko lost the vote by something like 95%. Almost
| everyone went to protest against Lukashenko, but because
| he holds on military the protests couldn't do anything.
| When it comes to how much military Putin has, Lukashenko
| is not even close.
| formvoltron wrote:
| Lukashenko & Belarus is different than Russia because in
| Belarus, it is all the people vs the Lukashenko regime
| PLUS Putin's regime.
|
| In Moscow there is no foreign influencer. It is 11
| million Muskovites vs the Kremlin. Who would win that
| battle?
|
| Even just 2 million people shaking their keys would send
| a message that Putin needs to change course.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| You can make that argument for any repressive country and
| regime. Why do North Koreans not rise up? There is not
| much difference between Russia, Belarus and North Korea
| with regards to brainwashing of population and
| repression.
| m4x wrote:
| Why would two million people shaking keys be more
| impactful than the sanctions that have already devastated
| Russia's economy?
|
| I don't particularly disagree with your stance, but I'm
| not convinced Russian protests will change anything more
| than external protests via sanctions have.
|
| I still agree that Russians should be protesting anyway.
| Ukrainians are literally bleeding to death in their
| streets for Russian aggression, and anybody in Russia
| today should be protesting unless they support that.
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| Why didn't you stay in Egypt till the dust settles?
|
| You can obtain a visa up to 90 days and the country is home to
| a thriving Russian-speaking community not to mention it enjoys
| a relatively modest cost of living, so you wouldn't be burning
| through your savings till you work out a good arrangement for
| your job and life for the time being.
| 9214 wrote:
| FYI, I heard that Georgia plans to introduce visas for
| Russians, because local population begins to worry of all the
| immigrants taking jobs.
|
| Meanwhile, in Russia's remote places (small town in Ural
| region) some grocerry shops have imposed food rationing for
| essentials (sugar, bread, wheat, flour, etc) because of panic-
| bying. And it's snowing as if during Ragnarok, nordic end of
| times.
|
| Among my friends and relatives we half-jokingly discuss that,
| while potato harvesting and mushroom picking were a sort of
| recreational leisure activity in the past, now they are
| destined to become an essential part of this summer season.
| jotm wrote:
| Afaik, if there's one thing Russia is actually self-sustained
| at, it's food and energy. Would there really be shortages of
| food because of the sanctions?
| helge9210 wrote:
| Of course.
|
| Famine is the natural stable state for Russia.
|
| Russia was on the brink of famine in 1990-1991. Putin's
| political career started from stealing and reselling
| humanitarian aid from USA in St Petersburg. He was saved
| from prosecution by mayor Sobchak. That's why his daughter
| Ksenia Sobchak always got preferential treatment.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Georgia and Moldova asked to joined the EU 2 days ago, the
| Russo-Ukrainian war basically started when they turned to the
| EU rather then the EAEU (Euromaiden). I'm afraid it won't be
| exactly be a safe place for long, I'd try to move farther
| away if I was exiling from Russia.
| trhway wrote:
| >FYI, I heard that Georgia plans to introduce visas for
| Russians, because local population begins to worry of all the
| immigrants taking jobs.
|
| i think the Ukrainians fleeing Russian bombs should take
| priority over Russians fleeing discomfort.
| nuccy wrote:
| [disclaimer: Ukrainian here]
|
| > Older generation (who are pro-Russian) suggested being
| careful around young people as they may be hostile to Russians,
| even those who are running away from Putin
|
| Of course, instead of even attempting to change your country,
| where there is no war on its territory, you flee. Why should
| they be kind to you?
|
| > The disheartening thing is that even if you never supported
| Putin, other countries treat you as enemy.
|
| Silence equals support. Molchanie - znak soglasiia. (A popular
| russian saying).
| gspetr wrote:
| "Silence equals support."
|
| This 'translation' is either ignorance or deliberate malice
| to mislead people.
|
| "Silence is a sign of consent" would be an accurate
| translation, and even then a saying is just a saying, it does
| not mean it always applies or that it is always true.
| therusskiy wrote:
| it doesn't sound like you enjoy fighting Russian military,
| why should I? As for silence, I've been helping Russian
| opposition financially for years (even when it became
| illegal, through different channels), talking to relatives
| and friends to make sure they know what's going on. At some
| point risks become too great. Imagine Maidan, but if
| Yanukovich won and had 8 years to surround himself with 100
| times more military and propaganda. Call me a coward for
| wanting to have a normal life.
| nuccy wrote:
| Sure, nothing personal, one leaves, a thousand of others
| will do the same with the same reasoning, then a million,
| ten millions... Who will stay? No idea, but Putin
| definitely will, putting in danger the whole world.
| stickfigure wrote:
| If ten millions of Russia's most educated and brightest
| leave the country, it _will_ have an effect. Those tanks
| and airplanes are expensive and require lots of skill to
| build and maintain.
| mping wrote:
| I'm sure I cannot possibly understand how you feel right now,
| but there is no right answer between staying and fleeing.
|
| Personally, if I had a family to support I would get the hell
| out asap for sure. What I empathize with are the people, not
| the territory that they call home.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Leaving is an effective way of changing it.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| On the contrary. Leaving results in cementing the status
| quo because the population that remains are blind Putin
| followers.
| awb wrote:
| There's always infighting though. A dictator always has
| to have some kind of internal enemy to blame.
|
| If the anti-war population leaves, they'll go after
| anyone who's not actively supporting war. Until you reach
| full, North Korea-style indoctrination, at which point
| the brain drain is massive.
| gspetr wrote:
| A ton of celebrities pledged to leave if Trump got
| elected.
|
| Well he did.
|
| Yet, almost nobody kept their oath.
|
| And it's not like they stayed on and took up arms either.
|
| And if you don't want people to leave, then that
| automatically means you are very pro-border, because if
| these economic migrants are to be denied, then all
| undocumented migrants everywhere should be denied, by
| virtue of being people who did not fight hard enough to
| improve their lot in their country of origin.
| vlaaad wrote:
| Maybe because I would rather live a normal life instead of
| sitting in jail for 15 years for mentioning that war is a
| war?
| lostmsu wrote:
| Normal life?
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Rude and unnecessary. I'm not going to die fighting FOR my
| country so I'm sure as hell not going to die fighting against
| it.
| nuccy wrote:
| Words are not as rude as bullets.
| forty wrote:
| Fighting against Putin would probably be fighting FOR your
| country at that point :)
|
| I'm not pretending I would be better than you and honestly
| I would certainly have fled too in similar situation. But
| at some point someone is going to have to do something
| about the Putin situation, and unfortunately at this point,
| only Russians can do something that have not a significant
| chance to end in nuclear apocalypse. Hopefully some brave
| people over there that remember how tyrans should be
| treated (but once again, I would never blame anyone for not
| endangering their families)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The disheartening thing is that even if you never supported
| Putin, other countries treat you as enemy.
|
| > I am at Georgia now
|
| While I sympathize with your plight, Russian infiltration
| tactics used in Ukraine and elsewhere make it somewhat
| understandable that Georgia (parts of which are currently under
| Russian occupation) might be somewhat suspicious of Russians,
| even those not obviously connected to the Russian government,
| especially after the recent escalation from the similar partial
| occupation of Ukraine.
| tim333 wrote:
| I did a kind of escape from London to Egypt over the early 2021
| covid lockdown, for a few months. You might have been better
| hanging out there a bit! They are probably kinda neutral on the
| Russia stuff.
|
| You can get a residents card in a few days by paying like $90
| and I think can open a bank account.
| askura wrote:
| Is this true? I had a friend who was meant to come over from
| Russia to the UK to visit in a few weeks. That's fucked.
|
| Best of luck to you mate. I know it can't be easy right now :/
| BbzzbB wrote:
| I'm glad you left in time, hope you find somewhere to stay and
| that your loved ones are safe too.
|
| First sinister thought that crossed my mind when two days ago I
| heard he'll likely prevent people fleeing on the 5th was that
| there must be some 40 million "fighting aged" men not doing
| essential work (for a military economy) under a despot out of
| medieval times. How significant do you consider the probability
| he's blocked people from leaving and declared martial law in
| order to conscript hordes of non-reserved men into military
| training or straight into the meat grinder? Especially if
| Ukraine drags on for weeks and months, let along if there's
| contagion to other countries.. Do you think that's the path
| Russia could be on or it's more about avoiding an exodus and
| increased inner panic?
| belter wrote:
| "Putin denies rumours Russia was going to declare martial
| law"
|
| https://www.business-
| standard.com/article/international/puti...
|
| This mean will be done next week....
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Yeah right, just like he's denazifying Ukraine. He "won't
| have a choice" (horrific words in this context) but to use
| military force to compel the populace into complacency if
| there's merely a hint of civil revolution.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Do you have a source for the flights thing? I hadn't heard that
| yet.
|
| Was your phone inspected when you left the country? Were you
| interviewed?
| therusskiy wrote:
| Sorry the news are in Russian: https://yandex.ru/news/story/R
| osaviaciya_rekomendovala_perev...
|
| As for the "interview", thankfully no, but FSB does stop a
| lot of people to inspect their phones and question them,
| which can take 40 minutes.
|
| I had to clean my social networks and direct messages of any
| posts against the war and the government.
| dunkelheit wrote:
| AFAIU this applies only to Russian airlines because their
| leased planes can be confiscated abroad. But e.g. Turkish
| airlines can still fly.
| therusskiy wrote:
| you are right, there are still a handful of companies
| that fly to Russia. For now. But it's going to be close
| to impossible to buy tickets for them soon due to 90+% of
| other flights being cancelled and the high demand.
|
| Also, the situation changes literally every hour, these
| companies may be next. Putin realises that people with
| money and education are trying to run away and actively
| fights it.
| [deleted]
| skeletal88 wrote:
| I have a colleague from Russia who moved here a few years ago.
| But.. still he is using talking-points that come from Kremlin's
| propaganda, like "The US will fight Russia to the last
| ukrainian" and "I would feel safer here if we weren't in NATO,
| this makes us a target for Russia" and "You know that it was
| promised that NATO wouldn't expand?" and "Your country joined
| the Soviet Union voluntarily".
|
| So.. even when some people move abroad and say they don't
| support Putin, they still have this.. imperialist mindset that
| everyone is out to get Russia and it's actions are justified to
| protect itself and so on.
|
| As an explanation about what people think, not as an accusation
| against you.
| therusskiy wrote:
| he came to Georgia under difference circumstances though, not
| running away from the government like the people fleeing
| right now
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >>>still he is using talking-points that come from Kremlin's
| propaganda, like "The US will fight Russia to the last
| ukrainian"
|
| That's considered "Russian propaganda"? We've managed to goad
| Putin into grinding up his conventional military in a large-
| scale war. We've set the Russian economy back decades. And
| we've so far pulled off both of these, without any NATO
| member paying a massive price in blood for it. Russian
| propaganda? More like "Greatest US foreign policy success of
| the 21st century". I've been really critical of the moves
| we've made in Europe for the past 10-15 years, but I have to
| say, if this doesn't escalate into WW3....kudos to the CIA
| and the State Department for playing the long game and having
| it work out. But it definitely sucks for the Ukrainians.
|
| I still would have preferred the relationship we had with
| Russia in the early 2000s. It would have been nice to
| leverage Russia's geographic position in the inevitable
| confrontation with China: a bunch of Russian tank divisions
| under a nuclear umbrella in Siberia would keep China nervous
| about a vulnerable 2nd front, and perhaps unable to mass
| combat power against Taiwan/Japan/etc.
| jquery wrote:
| Don't let Putin off the hook for his own bad decision to
| invade. The USA did nothing but tell the world what Putin
| was planning, we did not goad him into it. Nobody put a gun
| to Putin's head and said invade or else.
| skeletal88 wrote:
| He explained that the crisis in Russia is the fault of /
| was somehow started by the US.
|
| He said that a few months ago, not this week. Now he
| doesn't say anything anymore.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yup Russian propaganda. Try finding that from any normal /
| neutral information source.
| koonsolo wrote:
| > I've been really critical of the moves we've made in
| Europe for the past 10-15 years
|
| So Germany buying gas from Russia, then trying to buy even
| more gas and then for a large part depending on it. Do you
| consider that a good or a bad move?
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| Right, on March 8th two largest Russian airlines suspend all
| international flights. People get the hell out of Russia while
| they can.
| viktorcode wrote:
| They were sanctioned, so they had to.
| blueyes wrote:
| I've been told by people inside that Russian citizens are trying
| desperately to leave the country for three main reasons:
|
| 1) They do not want to be conscripted to fight in Putin's war.
|
| 2) The Western sanctions are impacting Russia's economy at every
| level. Western companies are cutting them off from goods and
| services they rely on. Those who experienced life behind the Iron
| Curtain do not want to live behind it again. The iPhone
| curtain...
|
| 3) Russia is transitioning from an authoritarian state to a
| totalitarian state. In Moscow now, there are reports that FSB
| officers checking Russian travelers' phones in airports, to make
| sure they are not breaking the new censorship laws regarding
| information about the war.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| > The iPhone curtain
|
| If one could invest in slogans that will soon be in every
| history book, I would go all in on this one :-)
| egao1980 wrote:
| There are some people who would see this as an opportunity to
| abuse EU migration laws. Some people fear to lose their
| outsourcing jobs. But the numbers are low.
|
| Also West is definitely attacking Russians and not Russian
| government now. How on Earth cancelling Dostoevski, Chekvhov and
| Tchaikovski is going to stop the war and change Russian
| government policies? It resembles more to me some early XX
| century antisemitism that was rampant in Europe.
| tartoran wrote:
| The fight against Ukraine is also to set an example to the states
| that want to separate from Russia.
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