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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Having spent considerable time in both Georgia and Ukraine, I can tell you that the news that gets to western media misses out all the nuances of reality. In both countries there are substantial groups of people who want to ally with Russia. The "Russia is invading our country" narrative is only held by some.

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I don't think it's missed at all. I think it's pretty well known by most people that the Russians that were moved into Ukraine and Georgia while under the USSR blanket are still loyal to Russia. That's exactly why they were moved there in the first place. The tartars were moved out (of Ukraine) in order to ensure loyalty to the USSR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Sov...

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/why-did-russia-give...

He also cites Romania as having a particularly great relationship with Russia, which is neither true (they're in NATO and the EU and mostly West focused) nor relevant (the Romanian keyboard layout wasn't even listed, only the Moldovan variety).

We can choose to assume that he omitted the nuance you're adding (eg for brevity), or that he has no clue. I'd say most evidence points to the latter. Which is sad because I often enjoy his blog a lot.

> (the Romanian keyboard layout wasn't even listed, only the Moldovan variety).

This makes sense. Moldova, like the Ukraine, has a significant portion of the population that identifies as Russian. Romania does not.

Yes it does, but it looks to me like Krebs read "Romanian" in the list of keyboard layouts, skimmed over the "(Moldova)" part and assumed that that means Romania and Russia are BFFs.

Which is a shame, but can we really expect everyone to be up on all the various nuances of geopolitics? It's an unfortunate error, but I think an understandable one, and it doesn't undercut the point of the article.

> The "Russia is invading our country" narrative is only held by some.

Polls say about 2/3 think that the war in the east of Ukraine is with Russia (and not with independent separatists).

"We must ally with Russia" believe is only held by some.

In any case, even what you described would be far from "favorable relations". This quote only shows the author's ignorance.

>The "Russia is invading our country" narrative is only held by some

Yh. Non-ethnic Russians.

> The "Russia is invading our country" narrative is only held by some.

Mainly those that believe in concepts such as 'borders' and 'sovereignty'

You might personally feel that those residents welcomed foreign troops with open arms, but it's not a narrative that Russian forces crossed Ukraine's border to annex territory that didn't belong to it.

One nuance of reality in the Western world is that the 3 latter agencies have a tendancy to perpetrate crimes & blame the Russians or Sadaam or Ghadafi or the Syrians or White Supremacy or the fall guy du jour.

The "weird trick" or "see something say something" or "kiss the Barney Stone" or "rub Buddha's Belly" or some other simple token action is an effective way to create engagement with a narrative.

Part of the art of "hacking" is social engineering after all.

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