Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends | Hacker News Reader

Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

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428 pointsawb889 comments

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Negotiate a truce with Putin that involved decoupling NATO from Ukraine and devolve centralized power to Ukrainian states.

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.

>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...

> 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.

>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.

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.

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?

> 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.

Many reasons. One can simply be good salespeople. Another could be an effective role as world police. Another could be to constrain violent dictatorships from invading neighboring countries. But sure it’s just so very aggressive toward little ole’ Russia.

> 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.

What argument?

> Also, if the Cold war was over -

I guess you can debate this with someone but everyone alive who anybody cares to listen to recognizes that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.

> why did NATO even expand?

Because Russia is a mafia state run by old KGB morons who are pillaging the country and, as you can see, starting wars against neighboring countries. Georgia. Moldova. Ukraine. Why wouldn’t you want to be protected from that?

> 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?

Don’t care.

>could be an effective role as world police.

There's war in Yemen right now, with one of the sides heavily backed by Saudi Arabia, where's the world police? Or does it only respond to calls when land changes hands?

>starting wars against neighboring countries.

1/3 countries admitted in 1999 have a border with Russia.

3/7 countries admitted in 1999 have a border with Russia.

0/4 of those admitted after that.

>Because Russia is a mafia state run by old KGB morons who are pillaging the country and, as you can see, starting wars against neighboring countries.

There's no denying it being a mafia state, but that may not necessarily be the only or even the dominant explanation.

Even Wikipedia (which Russia had repeatedly considered banning on its territory) cites quite different reasons: "By mid-1992, a consensus emerged within the administration that NATO enlargement was a wise realpolitik measure to strengthen American hegemony.[20][21] In the absence of NATO enlargement, Bush administration officials worried that the European Union might fill the security vacuum in Central Europe, and thus challenge American post-Cold War influence."

>Georgia

The situation with Georgia reads very similar to the current conflict, except Georgia had taken the Russian role in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian%E2%80%93Abkhaz_confli...

Because your neighbors may not act in good will.

It's a valid reason for sure.

But why not just say that and stop saying stuff like "no-no, those anti-ballistic missiles we deployed in Poland are against potential Iranian aggression."

> 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.)

Yep.

> On December 13, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush, who argued that Washington and Moscow no longer needed to base their relationship on their ability to destroy each other, announced that the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty, claiming that it prevented U.S. development of defenses against possible terrorist or "rogue-state" ballistic missile attacks. [1]

[1] https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/abmtreaty

Without getting into the entire history of tit-for-tat let’s not pretend that withdrawing from this treaty was the result of some wonton aggression toward little ole’ Russia.

>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.

> 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.

Why do you think NATO is an offensive alliance against Russia?

> 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.

Odd isn’t it? It’s almost like if you are like Libya, and you murder your citizens, deny them basic rights, and enrich yourself at their expense you end up on the receiving end of some measure of justice. I can’t imagine what could possibly prevent that. No country has ever figured that out. Nope. No way.

>Why do you think NATO is an offensive alliance against Russia?

It was set up specifically to oppose Moscow.

It destroyed Libya.

It is an offensive alliance without question.

That doesnt excuse Russia, but Russia invading Ukraine doesnt excuse NATO either.

> It was set up specifically to oppose Moscow.

Wrong. It was set up to oppose the Soviet Union. Not Russia. Putin himself was talking about joining NATO. Regardless of how serious he was, no country consider joining an organization if it’s hostile to them.

> It is an offensive alliance without question.

Good thing you mentioned Libya, because that’s the only campaign that NATO involved in an offensive role. Even putting aside the circumstances of that campaign, an offensive organization that exists for 73 years but has only waged a single war, does that make any sense?

>Wrong. It was set up to oppose the Soviet Union. Not Russia.

I said Moscow. Did Moscow stop being Moscow?

>Good thing you mentioned Libya, because that’s the only campaign that NATO involved in an offensive role.

One rape makes you a rapist.

>an offensive organization that exists for 73 years but has only waged a single war

They've waged many. I gave Libya as an example because there are no shades of gray in that war and because it was the war that shaped Putin's view of what NATO's endgame was for Russia (quite fairly, IMHO).

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.

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?

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.

> 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 :(

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.

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.

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.

>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"...

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.

The Soviet Union was ended from within... Thanks for proving my point.

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.

The only reason it didn't fall sooner is because you didn't shoot enough fleeing refugees. Got it.

^ 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

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.

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.

> 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.

How does persecuting Russians who flee Putin's regime help end the war sooner?

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.

I think many would, if they can find a state who gives them papers instead. Being stateless is no fun.

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.

> 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.

Yea you’re right.

North Korea imprisons friends and family of their defectors, btw.

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.

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...

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.

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?

> 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.

Their government prevents them leaving too if they are male.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/02/25/russia-i...

And that people on the outside are helpful was proven in World War II were many germans fled.

> 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.

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.

> Russia has already broken the cease-fire meant to evacuate civilians.

Russians are claiming the contrary.

https://tass.com/society/1417395

Of course they are. It's the Ukrainian Nazi-Jews killing civilians, not the people who invaded their country and are currently levelling it...

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.

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.

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...

>I don't know what nazi propaganda was.

without knowing of a minimum of related history, you're still feeling like you cam meaningfully comment.

>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.

You feel necessary to repeat Russian propaganda again. According to that Russia propaganda the Soviet defenders of Stalingrad are guilty of Stalingrad destruction not German Nazi.

Anyway, if Ukrainians are hiding heavy units in residential areas when why all this tremendous amount of videos of the widespread residential destruction by Russian bombings contain no Ukrainian weaponry? Showing destroyed Ukrainian tank which was hidden in the children sandbox would be a great propaganda scoop for Russians, yet somehow they still haven't managed to show anything like this.

On the other side there is huge number of Russian tanks, armor carriers burnt on the city streets. Why those Russians were in the city? It is very reasonable to suspect that in those cases the Russians have been using the cities as human shield. Tons of videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-pBMdUWhws , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge07_whd1v0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khPbavvcP38

>Cluster likely, vacuum unlikely.

again, you either repeat propaganda or more likely talking what you don't know about.

Cluster - the "spines" of the Uragan and "Smerch" cluster missile in the attacked areas is a clear evidence, like here for example https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1497205591814684678?s=...

Vacuum - in the linked video the explosion is pretty characteristic of vacuum munition https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H6Hj5VoZN_k . And there is a number or reports of Russian TOS-1 "Buratino" - vacuum munition missile launcher, and that weapon "shines", ie. extremely damaging in cities, not open field.

The guy you are responding to posts nothing but pro-russian propaganda.

"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?

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.

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.

> 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

The Nazis were stopped from outside and the USSR by people from it's government because of it's economic downfall.

> 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.

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”.

Ah well, we do have quite some Reichsbürger (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 ..

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.

> 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.

Hold on. US industrialists (so called fascists) enabled Hitler. Without them he would have never won any election and started all those wars and purges.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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-...

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.

> 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.

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.

> That's how it works, but can he incarcerate millions of people?

Don't underestimate Russian capabilities when it comes to punishing regular people - 18millions went through gulag system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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'

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'.

Except you get 3-15 years in jail for protesting in Russia.

There are only so many jails, temporary detention facilities, and judges to give the verdicts.

Tell that to Stalin

In his times there were no easy ways to organize masses of people due to lack of efficient decentralized means of communication.

Social media is mostly banned. Posting anything online against the war is a 15 year jail sentence.

You have a solution to this problem 2 posts up in the chain.

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

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.

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.

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.

>> There is a very small number of protesters.

You sure? Or just speculate to support your point?

I follow russian anti-war channels where people share videos of protestors. Numbers are very small I'm afraid (more cops than protestors).

You should join some groups in viber/telegram of people that actually live there, and see for yourself.

The only small numbers are russian army that wants to take a 44 mil country with weapons, cities, etc by their demotivated 150k troops that don't have the slightest clue how to fight.

I'm Russian and yes I am a member of the telegram groups you mention.

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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.

Most definitely. And I believe that was the option Putin proposed to Zelensky, as long as he agrees to not join NATO.

> 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.

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.

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.

If you add the variable of the gas supplies found in Crimea, it makes even more sense.

He wants to keep control over Europe and that would have been an instant loss as soon as production went live.

I believe the takeover over Crimea was primarily for this. The rest was a result of what he thought "preparation" to cement commodities/gas within his influence.

He's a bit jealous of China too. Russia has all this territory and doesn't even remotely gets the respect he screams for, at least he isn't getting it from the west.

It's a tiny man with a big ego.

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 °C - 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_Securit...

Copy-paste of a comment from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfArW6zppYw

Here’s the situation and the order of events that led to this invasion:

Pro-Russian government was in power pre-2014.

Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.

This caused the mostly ethnic Russian region of Donbass to declare independence and break away from Ukraine, resulting in war.

Russia tacitly supported them, but did not recognise them.

The Minsk Accords was supposed to end the fighting in 2015, but Ukraine has not lived up to the agreement.

Ukraine has been shelling and bombing the region on and off for 8 years now.

Putin finally decided enough is enough and recognised the region as independent.

He sent troops into the area to protect it and his invasion of Ukraine is meant to destroy the Ukrainian military to prevent them from attacking Donbass.

Now its up to you whether you think Putin is sincere or he's just using it as an excuse to grab Ukrainian territory. Geopolitics is complicated and believing anyone is innocent in geopolitics is ludicrous at best.

> Pro-Russian government was in power pre-2014.

Sounds about right.

> Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.

That's already where the chain breaks. Ukrainian people, not military, overthrew the government. Of course that can be argued, how do we know that - did the majority agree with the protesters? You could make a poll, but to be sure the results aren't manipulated, you have to make a referendum... Or just an election, in which who was elected? Did Putin send observers to control the elections, did he point out the problems with the system? No? Well, that's where this narration breaks. The world is full of such subtle solutions like election monitoring; it's ridiculous to claim benevolence but skip those solutions and go straight to violence.

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.

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.

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.

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

> 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.

this is all very true, but does not negate what i said. the American public does not want to risk nuclear war.

Perhaps you wanted to use a different choice of words? "Prevent" implies a much more direct cause and effect relationship than we can reasonably infer in this case.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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-...

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.

Putin has a direct tie to all ologarch money - they need to give him his cut for "protection" (from him) so as to not get poloniumed.

So any hit to a Russian Oligarch can eventually lead to a personal hit to Putin.

However, with all the resources of an entire nation under his singular pudgy fist, im sure he has plenty of shell-assets all across the west.

Also, ne thing we are not talking about is how the Russian mafia is profitting.

There is a huge Russo-Israeli mafia (speocifically in NYC (Kutchner fam)) and they apparently own a ton of real estate in NYC. This is who co-opted 1980s Dnald Trump...

If you arent familiar with this part of history, its been well hidden - but the Russo-Israeli Mafia in NYC is powerful. Follow the money and all that...

The human cost of all of this is going to result in a shitstorm of suffering on the part of young russian women as human trafficking is going to spike in the next ~18 months.

I honestly thought the revelation of the Panama Papers would trigger something similar, here's hoping this new conflict will help move the needle...

> * 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.

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.

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

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.

There are various commentators who came to the conclusion he wants his legacy to be the restoration of the Russian empire. If that's truly the case, the move of attacking Ukraine while not caring about economic consequences makes sense. Or at least it made sense until the sanctions became so heavy.

if that is the case, he won't stop in the ukraine...

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.

me too. Said that, they definitely can reach Germany.

Their weapons can reach any country in the world, including the US. I don’t think anyone in any intelligence community would refute that.

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.

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.

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?

What makes you think you know better than anyone else who is actually running Russia?

I am Russian, and I know some billionaires ("oligarchs"). They don't spend much time in Russia and don't support Putin in any way. More than anyone they realise how fucked up the regime is, which is why they stash money abroad. Putin does what he wants.

An American billionaire is a successful businessman. A Russian billionaire is an oligarch.

Didn't see any revolting Americans when the Iraq War was initiated.

What sanctions against the American economy following Iraq war, would have pushed Americans to revolt?

Sanctions against the US for the Iraq war would have been totally legitimate. What exactly is your point?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We had big protests. They were not big enough unfortunately.

The US is the country of protests, there were plenty of protests against that war. I’ve been to a few myself.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Me to. I protested 2 times against the war in Irak. I was still in high school then and almost everyone was protesting.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mail.ru is still an accessible propaganda site fyi.

At the time of the Iraq War I thought US mainstream media were nothing more than bloodthirsty warmongers, liars, and dogs of the state [1]. I still hold a grudge against them TWO DECADES later for the lies and war propaganda they spread during this time.

I mean I'm ultimately against banning media, I linked to RT a few days ago to make a point about the propaganda they spread, back at the time of the Iraq War I was a huge Jon Stewart fan and watched him every night just crap on that bad ol' media using clips from the media and you can't really do that effectively while banning that same media. However, I've got to say, I don't think banning American Media in the early Bush era would have been a preposterous idea. I mean at the end of the day the US media succeeded in selling that war to the "coalition of the willing". US war propaganda is probably more dangerous than Russian war propaganda because it's more sophisticated in the way it manufactures consent and has this veneer of journalistic freedom.

[1] A wiki article that summarizes popular criticisms of US media from this time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War

> 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.

This. Dissidents would be cast as pro-Evil and purged from social media for misinformation.

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?

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.

Americans revolting no, but I'm sure the Iraqis would have something to say about revolting Americans. ;-)

Then you didn't look very hard.

There were plenty of protests - I remember seeing one walk by (including most of the faculty) in my university cafeteria at the time.

> Didn't see any revolting Americans when the Iraq War was initiated.

Evidently you didn't want to see.

While the protests to a large extent took place outside of America, the Feb 15, 2003 protest against the Iraq War was the largest protest ever at the time. The protests were certainly more enthusiastic and open than what we see in Russia, you can speculate on the reasons why.

I remember massive protests in Europe at least. --Largest ever-- anti-war rally that go straight to the Guinness book of records.

Apart of breaking a new world record in number of people participating, they were a total lose of time.

All the opposition to a regime gathering together in a street, so can be conveniently netted and arrested like a school of fishes, is just making the life much easier for dictatorships

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.

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)

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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?

I can’t speak to exact numbers but it isn’t just Putin making those claims. Many Russian-speaking Ukrainians have made similar claims.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

>> 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.

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.

According to polls, even run by West outlets, Russians do support Putin in big numbers.

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.

Because covid and other things. A lot more was reported since last September where I am from.

And it was really boring for years. Another shelling, another handful of men dead, another Russian exercise

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.

Fox news openly supports Putin... Recently they blamed Greta Thunberg for the Ukrainian war...

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."

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.

> 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.

> 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is absurd. The Russians being sanctioned in Europe are gangster crooks who robbed from their own.

Expatriate Russians all over the Western world are being cancelled by Xenophobes with Ukrainian invasion as a convenient excuse.

It isn't also far fetched that the millions one might make may also get called into question just because of their nationality. The West's politics is further fueling this hate-filled divide; ceding air-time, socio-economic pedastal, and political will to the intolerant amongst us.

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)

> 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.

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.

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.

Turks in Germany will vote for SPD in German elections is a bigger paradox.

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.

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.

it's a common thing across Europe that people of Muslim descent/culture vote for socialism very heavily, I believe it's because of a strong common ground between their culture and the view of the State in socialism (this happens with Jewish people too, and to a lesser extent rural Catholics)

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?

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.

Sure they can have their opinions. But they should stay in their home countries if they want to support those authoritarian politics.

Those people who agree with Putin may eventually start interfering with our politics. Either by enabling pro-Putin politics or pushing Putin-shaped local flavor. Why let in people who may turn society to worse?

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.

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.

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.

We've seen what a nuclear failed state looks like, multiple times, in Russia, already.

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.

By peeing do you mean sanctions or just hostility towards russians?

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.

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/2021/0...

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!

>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That sounds humanitarian...

I'd rather have Russians starved to death than other countries invaded by them.

On balance, considering the broader picture, I would also agree it's humanitarian.

I suppose you were being sarcastic, but put away your snide and come up with actual better suggestions!

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.

I wouldn't discard part bad management, part deliberate passive-aggressive boycott against the war by military people.

You don't want to shoot your relatives in another country and you are afraid to meet the same fate as your general killed from a long distance because crazy politician in power had a tantrum?.

The solution is simple: Some pieces in your tank broke, you turn in the wrong direction and get stuck in a marsh, or gasoline vanish mysteriously overnight and you are stuck out of the war until a replacement arrives with the spare parts.

This can lasts for several weeks or months if you must buy it in another countries and nobody is selling you. Or can need to fill a lot of bureaucracy to just take if from another tank and send it to the front (and then you have 2 tanks out of service instead one). When you finally arrive to the fight there is a lot less of enemies to deal with.

With the advantage that you didn't deserted and don't fear retaliation. You can blame the tank maker or any other that is lower in the food chain. It was not your fault.

Agreed. It would be ideal if the Russian military refused to escalate further.

>Do you support a global nuclear exchange? Sometimes bad things are necessary to forestall worse things.

Who said sanctions would "forestall" that?

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?

>The strategic apparatus of NATO, the folks that have been studying this issue since the Cold War, have said it by doing it

So, let's trust the "brains" of a Cold War apparatus for western dominance, involved in tons of wars, destabilization of governments, and so on, when it comes to how to get world peace...

For 70 years, MAD has deterred the use of nuclear weapons. NATO both deters and is deterred under this framework, and they have been serious enough to keep things peaceful for 70 years.

I don’t think that you understand that the world that you live in is founded on this one fact, and that these “wars, destabilizations, and so on” are but the limited moves available to a board that it otherwise locked down.

You don’t understand the world state, so you’re mad when wars happen, but you cannot compare even large conflicts like Ukraine to a NATO/Russia or NATO/China conflict. It is in a completely different class.

In the context of a NATO/Russia conflict, nuclear weapons are the weapon of choice, while conventional armies are effectively clean up and a way to annoy at your opponent.

So, yes, let’s trust NATO and we could trust the USSR’s Politburo, and the CCP. We thought we could trust Putin, but now we’re not so sure.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ín a world without nukes they would be bombed too right now, because wars have a tendency of doing that regardless of who fights.

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.

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.

> : 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.

>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?

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.

What makes you think Russia would invade Finland? I seriously doubt that would happen.

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.

*invade finland again

i think it’s unlikely, too, but if the past few weeks have taught us anything, it’s that russia likes to repeat its past conquests

It’s clear those conditions are necessary but not that they are sufficient. There must be a path where it is obvious to the Russian people and leadership that if certain things are done then the sanctions will be immediately lifted. Currently it seems plausible that sanctions could remain after meeting those conditions as a kind of punishment, or just because they can be sticky (that is, easier to impose than to retract). If one is to believe that the reason for the war is entirely Putin, and if the people and others in power understood that removing Putin/ending the war would lead to a lifting of the sanctions and potentially significant improvements to the status quo before the war, there would be much stronger incentives to do that. Without knowing that sanctions would be lifted, someone who replaced Putin would be left in the unenviable position of t dealing with the economic consequences of the earlier sanctions/foreign business exits. For similar reasons there should be a way for Russia to pull out while saving face so that the cost of doing it is less. It seems unlikely to me that Putin will be replaced because of the war so, if one is to believe that he particularly cares about his image and perception, having a face-saving route out is particularly important. But I don’t know what that would look like.

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?

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.

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.

> 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.

I’ve read elsewhere that the economic costs would be significant and elected leaders in the west find it politically untenable and would be fearful of being voted out of office if gas priced explode.

I would like to believe our elected leaders are not so self-serving as to put their political interests above the needs of the Ukrainian people but I’ve seen enough geo—politics in my life that I simply can’t be so naiive.

>[...] 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.

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.

>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).

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.

If anything, that's robbing their own people, not the Russian citizens. That's what OP is saying, it's not the West, but the Russian oligarchs robbing Russian citizens of the wealth they could otherwise have.

How are the Russian oligarchs robbing Russian citizens of the wealth they otherwise could have?

I didn’t read that from OP’s post and I don’t understand what exactly you are claiming here.

Do Russian oligarchs steal from the bank accounts of ordinary Russians or is there another mechanism of theft?

taxes that Russians pay are largely stolen by the government and given to oligarchs, who are friends of Putin. For example Rotenbergs want to build a new road, they say it's going to cost them 10x times the market cost, but they are going to win this government contract anyway because they had the same judo coach as Putin.

Any time West puts sanctions on oligarchs Putin makes a law so they can pay less taxes, meaning ordinary people keep paying taxes for them

That is shocking until you realize that the same thing happens in the west all the time - institutional corruption that benefits the elite.

For example the city of Montreal is notorious for similar corruption in their road construction industry. Other cities are known to operate with similar collusion, though it isn’t as widely reported.

If Nancy Pelosi was Russian we would certainly call her an Oligarch as it is widely known she has a net worth of $200 million+ on a salary of a few hundred thousand per year.

She gained her enormous wealth by feeding insider information, which she gained from her privileged position, to her husband, so he could insider trade and front-run the American people stealing from their 401ks and other investment accounts.

Insider trading is only a crime for regular Americans, not congress or senators. It is perfectly legal for them to insider trade all day long. Guess who wrote those laws?

Also, Pelosi isn’t the only American politician who abuses their power by insider trading - only the most successful.

How is it any different from taxes paid by Americans either directly or indirectly through money-printing driven inflation, being used to bail out bankers in the great financial crisis?

If I recall correctly the government took trillions from ordinary citizens to pay out the banking elite as a thank you for the bankers and rating agencies committing rampant fraud in MBS and CDOs - all while none of them were ever charged with crimes and none went to jail. Many bankers even received massive bonuses from taxpayer-funded bailout funds as well.

> 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.

>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

The destruction, death, and misery of the war in Ukraine will seem tiny and insignificant in comparison to a Russian civil war you seem to be asking for.

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.

Sure we do. Currently we are giving Putin up to a Billion USD per day to buy his oil and gas.

If we cut off this market it would cripple Putin’s war in Ukraine much more effectively than arming Ukrainians on the ground.

Add in energy subsidies to affected customers in need of economic support to offset the inevitable increase in oil/gas prices in the short-term and we can blunt the worst of the pain on regular Europeans.

Why is this proposal not even worth considering? Broad economic sanctions are most definitely not the only option to pressure Putin.

> Currently we are giving Putin up to a Billion USD per day to buy his oil and gas.

Except, even without sanctions on oil & gas, no one is buying the oil.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/investing/russia-oil-sanction...

Thank you for making my point about dis-information in a time of war. This is fake news by CNN. It is easy to disprove and it isn’t the only example from western media.

For example 6 days ago The NY Times reported that Shell had stopped buying oil from Russia [0] but that was also fake news.

Shell is now defending their decision to buy 100 metric tons of aural crude from Russia according to multiple reports in the past 24 hours. [1]

Nothing changed, It was all just PR spin to manipulate public opinion. It looks like it worked.

In war the first casualty is the truth.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/business/russia-oil-compa...

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/shell-buys-r...

> 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.

We are going to feel a lot of pain anyway and more the longer that this goes on. Gas prices are already through the roof. Ukraine and Russia are both major grain exporters, meaning this war will have a devastating impact around the world this year. We should be doing everything we can to make sure it stops sooner rather than later even if it means more pain now.

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

Throughout this thread it sounds like you’re bemoaning the fact that there are no ‘precision bombs’ for the Russian economy. So you’d rather do nothing? We’ve seen what appeasement to dictators achieve.

Not true.

I am bemoaning the fact that there IS at least one precision nuke that would single-handedly hit 30% of Russia’s GDP, cause direct pain to Russia’s oligarchs and elites, and immediate decimate Putin’s war machine - all while doing much less damage to ordinary Russians than broad indiscriminate economic sanctions.

I am bemoaning the fact that this tactical nuke we could drop on Russia’s oil & gas sector is clear and obvious to most everyone involved but would result in economic and political blowback for the west so everyone is burying their head in the sand and pretending the option to stop buying oil from authoritarians who attack our allies doesn’t exist.

I have yet to hear a good argument for why broad economic sanctions against an entire nation and its people are more targeted or more effective than just not buying oil or gas from Russia’s elites and stop directly subsidizing Putin’s war machine.

Perhaps someone here can enlighten me?

I just learned that 50% of Russian government tax receipts come from oil & gas revenue.

With one simple decision - banning oil & gas imports - we could devestate Putin’s ability to wage war and it would impose less direct hardship on everyday Russians?

To protect civilians from higher energy costs in Ukraine and EU western governments could temporarily provide direct subsidies.

This seems like an idea worth trying. What am I missing?

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

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.

The sadder truth may be that you won't be getting anything much better than Putin from Russia in its current state.

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.

Russia deserves better than racist Navalny

>This is not true. Even just the opposition party leader Navalny is good enough.

Yeah, only because he's anti-Putin. People who follow internal deals more closely remember how he was marching with slogans "Russia for russians, Moscow for moscovians" and such. He always was very opportunistic in my opinion.

I respect him for what he's done regarding investigations but he's not a president material.

>Good people exist in Russia.

Sure, but being a "good person" does not qualify you as president. No to mention that "good" is subjective. Many people see Putin as a good person.

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.

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.

You forgot

D) stop directly subsidizing Putin’s war machine by buying Russia’s oil & gas.

I didn't forget it. I believe that's a sub-strategy of C.

That said, even if you believe your suggestion is separate from mine, there's nothing to preclude choosing both C and D.

If solely focusing on Russia's oil exports isn't enough to get the job done, we need to apply economic sanctions across a broader section of Russia's economy, if we're going to act at all.

But my point is why start with broad sanctions applied to every Russian citizen instead of putting an immediate end to us directly subsidizing Putin’s was machine?

Clearly the latter is more focused on the Russian government, ends a direct subsidy of our money paying for this war, and has much less direct impact on poor and struggling everyday Russians?

I'm not an economist, nor was I in the room when the sanctions decision was made. I can only guess that the experts who were in the room decided that depriving Putin of economic means was a time-sensitive process, and that petro-sanctions alone would take longer to have their effect than the Ukrainian army could hold out.

At the very least, that's one of many possibilities of what happened.

Putin can write a new law which says all personal banks accounts are now nationalized. He can also inflate the currency by orders of magnitude, and make it a crime to own USD/EUR cache (it was a crime in USSR).

And that's why the broad sanctions. Russian government can always milk population for money, as long as the population has the money. They did it quite a few times in the 20-th century, e.g. rouble was denominated by an order of magnitude in 1961, and by 3 orders of magnitude in 1997. For this reason, focused sanctions not gonna work.

It seems you are speculating that Putin’s response to Oil & Gas sanctions would be to nationalize all bank accounts and therefore broad sanctions are the only measure that could work.

Let’s say that were true. Why then should the west not apply broad sanctions AND include sanctions on Oil & Gas exports as well?

It seems to me that this policy would shut down Putin’s war machine faster than either measure alone.

I suspect the real reason the west chose to exclude oil & gas from other sanctions is the same reason the sanctions include a carve-out for selling Italian luxury goods to Russian elites.

Namely that the west is equally willing to impose pain on the Russian people as it is on Russia’s elites but they are unwilling to take more effective action since it would be politically risky and may impede their chances of re-election - even though it would effectively end the war in Ukraine immediately.

> Why then should the west not apply broad sanctions AND include sanctions on Oil & Gas exports as well?

That's exactly what we're doing.

If we ban Russian oil & gas overnight, the markets will freak out and the damage to our economy will be too large. The negotiations to re-route oil & gas across the planet take time. I hope they already made some progress with Iran and Venezuela.

> 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.

Today, Ukraine MoD announced they will take anyone, except Russian citizens - no military experience required. 16000 Ukraine foreign legion sign-ups last I heard.

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.

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.

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.

It is pretty simple really, consider the 2 options:

1) Stop buying oil & gas from oligarchs and Russian elites.

The oils stays in Russia and Russians stay warm in winter.

Putin loses billions in foreign currency which he was using to wage war in Ukraine - crippling his war machine virtually overnight.

The elites and government lose 30% of their GDP and this was money that never trickled down to the plebs. It hurts the oligarchs and givernment who receive the revenue and taxes directly.

2) Broad economic sanctions mean everyday Russians can no longer buy food, medicine, clothing, batteries, electronics, shoes, or anything else from abroad.

It hurts the middle-class and working class more than elites.

Did you know for example that the sanctions against Russia include a carve-out protecting Italy’s ability to sell ultra high-end luxury and designer goods?

Do you still think this is about targeting Russian elites?

I thought the Italian luxury stuff had actually gone now. Prada etc are withdrawing.

At this point I don’t blame anyone for sanctioning first then Reviewing later. What is happening in Ukraine is obscene. If there is the smallest possibility that any sanction makes any Russian more likely to protest or question putin it’s worth a go. We can check again in 6 months and see if all are still needed ir likely to be effective.

>Many innocent Russians will die directly because of the actions of the west.

They will die because of the actions of their own government.

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?

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.

Why do you conflate Putin with the Russian people?

Sanctioning oil and gas would end a direct war subsidy to Putin. Broad sanctions against the people of Russia don’t do nearly as much to stop the war as simply not buying petroleum-chemicals to fund Putin’s war chest.

The Russian people are no more to blame here than Republicans who voted for George W Bush before he waged a war of aggression and killed 500k Iraqis based on a lie about WMD.

In fact, the Russian people are less responsible than those Republicans since the US is supposed to be a democracy and Americans still have fair elections to vote unpopular candidates out.

The only crime of the Russian people is the accident of being born inside her arbitrary borders.

We should stop dehumanizing and punishing an entire population for the unconscionable actions of their authoritarian leader.

> 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.

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.

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).

Independently of whether it's a rationalisation or not, it might be the actual reality of the situation. Maybe WW3 actually _is_ needed to unseat him (though I hope it's not).

Well if that’s true then we just shouldn’t try to unseat him.

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.

I’m keeping an eye out for future headlines “No-fly zones will mean WWIII and why that’s a good thing”

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/1498025965875875844?... [1] https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

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.

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.

> Speaking of which looks at this post by Edward Norton!

Specifically which parts of that post do you take issue with?

The kind of people you describe thrive on the looming threat of world war, but I highly doubt they actually want it to occur. They can get perfectly fat of government money during peace time as they saber rattle.

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.

> 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/1499157917399...

Lifting sanctions can becime a powerful motivator in any future negotiations.

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.

This might be true, but they aren't being tried for their own crimes. It's just revenge.

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.

UK Property and football clubs don't contribute to the Russian war effort, though. Yachts are not warships. Since trade with Russia has stopped, even selling them would make little difference.

If anything we should be encouraging Russians to flee the country.

Those probably count for as much or more as the rest of the sanctions because they are the things the fat cats use to keep score.

The "fat cats" don't seem to be in charge? Russia is turning into a totalitarian regime.

> Russia is turning into a totalitarian regime.

It has been for the last 20 years or so.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

All easy to say as you post this from the comfort of your home.

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.

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.

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.

>15 day jail time

15 YEARS. I'd rather die, especially if I was giving my life for my country.

> ...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.

Not to mention it literally feeds directly into Putin's delusions.

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?

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.

The Russian soldiers can’t lay down their arms?

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.

This is a good idea. The only issue will be if any of the offramps start banning Russian citizens as well.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Even better: switch addresses every 2-5 transactions (max). This is might be costly buy this way you are harder to track.

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.

I would not put all eggs in one basket, keep safe part of your assets to a safe private digital asset as XMR (Monero).

Yes hedge your bets/not all in one basket.

It's for instance possible various cryptos may get restrictions placed on them somehow to assist with the sanctions.

They can get restrictions only centralized exchanges.

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.

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.

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.

Fair chance it would turn into a bloodbath. Better would a national strike. Equally difficult to organize but much harder to attack.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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).

Why would you assume that? (See Euromaidan)

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.

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.

There's another thing that was different at Euromaidan vs current Russia: Yanukovich and his people had somewhere to run (Russia). Putin doesn't.

He doesn't have to run to someplace, he can just run into some stuff. Preferably a bullet.

Compare the total area of Ukraine and Russia - and max distance between the border and the capital city.

> 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.

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.

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.

>They are not going to kill most of their own people

What makes you think that? Do you think the Uyghurs of which there are millions in China should just walk out shaking their fucking keys?

If Putin loses the war he will lose power. He will no longer win the next election as he'll be seen as weak. So he can't change his mind and if people start a protest in Moscow it is in his interest to do everything he can to quell it.

Furthermore you say you have no sympathy for Russians if they can't manage to get a million people to walk out. So if there are only 10,000 people who are against Putin, they just have to suffer the consequences for the choices that the rest of them made?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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.

One reason sanctions against Putin aren't harder than they are, is because those of us in western Europe are still taking the relative luxury of (in my case) typing this comment sitting inside wearing an t-shirt, instead of having to wear my skiing inside my apartment.

I.e. the current sanctions explicitly excluded natural gas etc. Russia supplies around 40% of the EU's gas, demand is around 2x as higher.

We could just wear coats, but we're not. We could also do something more about it, but we're not.

Yes, and that was dumb, it telegraphed a very clear weakness to Putin.

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.

"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.

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).

There was a massive international solidarity shown during BLM which certainly pressured the US government to take the issue seriously. There was no solidarity with Russian people protesting against Putin, and there is still no solidarity now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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?

Sorry the news are in Russian: https://yandex.ru/news/story/Rosaviaciya_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.

AFAIU this applies only to Russian airlines because their leased planes can be confiscated abroad. But e.g. Turkish airlines can still fly.

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.

I'm so sorry you are going through this. Good luck. I hope you are able to get settled safely.

[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. Молчание - знак согласия. (A popular russian saying).

Leaving is an effective way of changing it.

On the contrary. Leaving results in cementing the status quo because the population that remains are blind Putin followers.

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.

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.

They’re going after neutrals now:

https://mobile.twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/15004118457...

Maybe because I would rather live a normal life instead of sitting in jail for 15 years for mentioning that war is a war?

Normal life?

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.

Words are not as rude as bullets.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

Yes, you are right. Noprovrast setting prevented me from fixing that while editing was still possible.

Do you prefer they stay, get conscripted and shoot you in the head?

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.

he came to Georgia under difference circumstances though, not running away from the government like the people fleeing right now

>>>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.

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.

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.

I look at it like this:

The US has spent ~15 years holding it's finger 5mm in front of Russia's eye saying "I'm not touching you...I'm not touching you....I'm not touching you." When that hasn't been working, we then whispered "Oh by the way, I'm the reason your ex-wife Ukraine left you. I'm definitely touching her." When Russia finally snaps, slaps our hand out of its face, and uppercuts Ukraine**, we sit there with a smug look on our facing going "Dude, why are you such an asshole?"

> 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?

2000-2010? Good move. Would have helped with integration of Russia into Europe. Post 2010 (really post 2007-2008, but it might have taken a few years to react): bad move. This is roughly when the relationship between the US-led NATO and Russia really soured. It should have been obvious what kind of long game the US was playing, given the switch from a Republican President (Bush) to a Democrat one (Obama). Yet the hardline against Russia remained, clearly the work of the entrenched bureaucrats (aka the "Deep State") beholden to neither party's politics for their power.

At that point Germany should have hedged its bets by finding alternative industrial power (keep your nuclear plants!) and heating (other natgas exporters).

But to be honest I don't see how US could have such a big influence on EU-Russia relationship. The conflict is all due to having a dictator in one part of that equation. And then for EU to have good relationships with US, the toughest power in NATO, seems like a good idea.

Sorry but Russia could have played this way better. It's clear that they can't play nice with anyone. Would have been very good for EU and Russia if they were playing nice.

Now it's a bit of divide an conquer for US. Let's face it, Putin screwed both EU and Russia. What an idiot. It's very strange to blame CIA or Republicans. Especially since he's so anti-US, but he's not damaging US in any way.

>>>The conflict is all due to having a dictator in one part of that equation.

Don't pin the turn of events on one man. He is merely the strongest in a coalition of kleptocrats, all of which hold some variation of similar principles. Who do you think will run the country if Putin steps down / retires / dies / goes to jail for warcrimes /etc? Do you imagine suddenly a free democratic election will instantly usher in EU-style rainbows and happiness? The country has ~6,000 nuclear weapons. Do you want a repeat of the collapse of the Soviet Union, where there was a very real concern of nukes ending up in the wrong hands? If not, there MUST be buy-in from the national security apparatus for a smooth transition of power. But you can't transition to a Western-friendly democratic President when the senior leadership of the military (who I'm sure have been carefully vetted/culled) are essentially "Neo-Russian Empire" loyalists. Another forum I frequent has a pretty level headed Russian hawk who is anti-Putin. He's said that Dmitri Medvedev is actually far scarier than Putin. He has most of his strengths but few of his character flaws. According to this guy, Medvedev wanted to do a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

>>>Now it's a bit of divide an conquer for US. Let's face it, Putin screwed both EU and Russia.

I'd argue the US is screwing both the EU and Russia. I think the US keeps NATO alive in order to have America holding the position of primacy in European affairs and security. It keeps a European superpower from coalescing. A 500 million+ population Europe, with advanced tech and industry, a strong global currency, and that actually takes its defense and foreign policy seriously? That would undermine America's unipolar world order. It would be another competitor like China. Can't have that.

>>>It's very strange to blame CIA or Republicans.

I mentioned both Republicans AND Democrats, to demonstrate that these policies are party-independent. Not strange at all to blame the CIA. Look at their history.

https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1730002_colored-revolu...

https://thewashingtonstandard.com/documents-reveal-us-spent-...

from 2004: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

Yup Russian propaganda. Try finding that from any normal / neutral information source.

You've identified two types of information: "Russian propaganda" and "Normal/neutral information sources". Are you aware that there is a third category: "Non publicly-released information"? There is a small demographic of HNers who handle that third information category regularly.

It helps to have coworkers who are ex-JSOC, or ex-NMCC intel briefers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Military_Command_Cent... ). I'll let them know that the conclusions we've drawn mean we are clearly the victims of Russian propaganda. They could use a good laugh.

go back home and fight for freedom. You are the only one that can stop Putin.

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.

That crosses into personal attack and is not allowed here. No more of this, please, regardless of how right your views are or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> That crosses into personal attack and is not allowed here.

Speaking of personal attacks, could you take a look at these comments?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30558831

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30559742

Why is the internet situation like?

Ideas for options here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091

Maybe there is something you can work out with TerraUSD (algorithmic stablecoin) and localbitcoins.com

DAI and MIM are a more battle tested model than TerraUSD

But yes a basket of stablecoins is good right now

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

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

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.

> 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/0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eede...

Here is the contract code of MIM

https://etherscan.io/address/0x99d8a9c45b2eca8864373a26d1459...

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/0xa0b86991c6218b36c1d19d4a2e9eb...

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!

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.

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.

If I was looking for a stablecoin at the intersection of secure, seizure resistant, and well backed, I'd probably go with Liquity (LUSD). It's backed by ETH, doesn't have a dao or anything controlling it, and has been operating for over a year at this point with no issues.

Keeping it simple, love to see it

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.

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.

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.

I think if you multiply the number of Russians who protested against the Ukraine invasion by 100, it's 1% of Russians, max.

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.

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.

[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.

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

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.

For the vast majority of normal people, just leaving the country without plans of coming back is the best they can do.

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...

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).

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.

I’ve yet to see any homeopathy advocates and conspiracy theorists attacking other countries. Stop pretending it’s the same thing.

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.

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.

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

” I've been finding it very easy to empathise with Russians in this.”

>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.

And, where will You find it? (The new government I mean)

Things are, The Reality is, much more complicated.

Corrupt west, of course. At least you can say what you think. Most of the time.

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.

Really? Just go to the east then

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?

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.

> 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.

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.

> As a skilled developer ? Shouldn't be that hard - plenty of options to pick from.

Maybe it used to be that way in the past, but not these days.

When I tried to go to Ireland a year ago, entering the country was impossible due to a multi-year long COVID travel ban. Schengen visas were useless — you needed a job offer AND a job permit just to enter the country.

I passed a bunch of interviews, received preliminary offer from one Irish company, but got rejected during security screening (I have never learnt why). Decided against trying again, because Irish job permit queue was 6 months long and growing.

This was a year ago. Right now it is hardly possible to leave Russia at all — leaving by ground is denied by Russian border forces (remnant of COVID restrictions, which has been repurposed to enact impromptu iron curtain). Leaving by air is impossible because most companies stopped flying, airspace is closed and foreign governments are mass-arresting leased aircrafts. As if that weren't enough, Russian government has enacted a total flight ban, effective starting today.

Even if you somehow leave a country and go to Turkey/Serbia/Georgia with piddly $10000, — then what? You'd have to quickly find a job, rent a place to live, and get a residence permit before you are booted out of country. All of that under extremely hostile conditions, such as not having a bank account and being unable to speak the local language.

This is true, nobody I know emigrated during COVID, was mostly 5-6 years ago in that late 20s period before you settle down.

With regards to Serbia at least, while I'm not from there it's a neighbouring country, Belgrade isn't that bad and working for westerners should be the same as working from Russia, minus a few hours of TZ depending on where you are from. English should be decent as well with the younger crowd, especially in IT, some older folk know Russian. And 10000$ would get you settled for months, people there don't make that in a year on average. Don't know much about the visa/bank account issues - maybe you could open a business and setup a bank account through that.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is also super cheap and a wild west regarding laws - people buy anything there - diplomas, citizenship. Also have working banking system. But standard of living is considerably worse.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> they had decades to make this move

But friends, family and loved ones where they live

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

> 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.

But at least you prevent said country from becoming a global threat. Russia minus its professional class would spiral into total irrelevance in a matter of weeks.

you said « Middle Eastern living in the west, the hostility I experienced were enormous «

Could you explain? I know people in usa are afraid of religious extremists. but I always assumed if you are comings from Iran, Liban, moroco … and speaking good english they will be friendly to you.

That is because majority of american don’t even know where on a map Iran is :-)

It’s not that easy to move to the West when the only preoccupation of our governments has been reducing immigration.

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.

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.

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.

Can you be more precise with which generations you are referring to? Maybe age ranges?

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.

At the same time... https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t6b827/russian_inf...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This seems like wishful thinking. Young people are in no way manipulated by advertising and influencers et al. right?

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.

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.

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).

>>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..

I got to stay at home with my parents through the pandemic and watched them become increasingly old and misled in real time as they attached themselves to the US alt-conservative news, called the mainstream sources "fake", but still watched both, one in adoration and the other out of spite. This trend was evident before, but simply accelerated by the fact that they were not out in the world in any real sense as an actor engaging with specific consequences. They used to participate a little bit in comments threads on the local paper, posting cherry picked sources for their views with the assertion "I'm just providing information". Then the comments section closed down, so they stopped. Now they just spend two or three hours of each day rabidly agreeing with each other that the world is insane and someone or some conspiracy is to blame. Any suggestion that they should try to disengage a little is met with the justifications of addiction.

But I have an aunt who is slightly older and rebuffs attempts to broach political discussion. And she is, so far as I can tell, stable and content with things, even after the passing of her husband. I recall visiting when I was young and the husband carefully managing the TV remote to mute commercials - there was a definite control over exposure and conscious decisions about faith that my own parents would never attempt and only enacted on us children haphazardly.

With people of roughly my generation, I can see the long-term indoctrination creeping up as they settle into careers. It comes and goes more easily early in life, for sure. By eighteen you're molded roughly into whatever society said you should be, and the onset of that is precisely the thing that makes so many teens commit suicide, and so many others foot soldiers to some ideology. But afterwards things become a little more self-inflicted, built off subconscious voices trying to justify how you ended up where you are. Many people do make a break away into "standing for something" that can take them away from the political sphere and engage with life in a more concrete way like my aunt. The terrified, reactionary elderly, I think, never got there, and ended up in a place where they have no pursuits or rules of conduct that would ground them and make them reconsider their concerns about new information. Once you're attached to bad ideas and you have a media source to reinforce them, all your energy starts going to their defense and you have nothing left for yourself - you just hate everything all day and your personal decline only motivates going deeper and rejecting friends and family; additional socialization by itself doesn't do it, it leads to "drama at the dinner table" as the entire conversation is pulled towards their topics of choice; every word out of their mouth inevitably leads back to their attachments. It's really on society to cut off the supply and deescalate, but for now, the war continues, I suppose.

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'...

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.

Одиевич. Поляк?

Polish Belarusian Russian Armenian mix. Lots of family in Byalistok, Gdansk, Krakow and other places like that, but same goes for Armenia and Ukraine

> 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 :(

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?

It is common for visa applications to have a question like "Have you ever been arrested or convicted for any offence or crime, even if the arrest did not result in a conviction". And residency applications usually ask for a police record.

Oops. Having been arrested in Russia maybe should count in one's favor instead

But I guess that will never happen :-(

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.

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

people were arrested even for protesting with empty sheets of paper

None of those quotes are very subtle.

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.

So, Putin won?

Not really. After all, there are no sanctions, it's a financial special operation in Russia.

The term's already become a meme in some places on the Internet.

The wider internet has already embraced this.

After Putin cried that the sanctions are an act of war they reply that no - it is just a limited special economic operation.

> Subtle civil disobedience that the cops will overlook

Oh, you sweet summer child.

You’ll be taken to a police dept by the first cop. Any form of protest is effectively banned. Sometimes with severe consequences.

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?

He didn’t start that way (well, I mean he was, but it wasn’t obvious!), he’s just made it so everyone is actually ok (and near as I can tell, he has wide domestic support even very recently) with him obviously being that way.

Part of this is the psychology of the abused spouse frankly - yeah he’s scary and terrible, but he’s on ‘my side’

Some time ago I saw a beautiful conversation in comments for some article about Ukrainian internal political life. One of their famous politicians (and scammer) Julia Timoshenko was jailed for some months and during that time she asked to transfer her from cell to prison hospital, for many reasons and one of these reasons was an injury, hematoma on her abdomen.

One of commentators said something like: - How is it possible, she's lying, here's no way to get hematoma on abdomen! And reply to him was: - When you will be jailed, you will learn: how is it possible.

So, when you recommending books like this, from the people who wasn't beaten even once, li looks hilarious. How to make revolution with lego figures and funny pictures, wow.

How to get your legs broken during arrest or lose one eye, do you want to know it? Even without new laws. How to get tuberculosis in prison in 30 days? How to get real imprisonment for a years for fabricated felony?

I see a kind of schizophrenia here: if Putin is dictator, he's already can do what he want without approval from electorate, but then I see here accusation for me that I and people like me didn't rid off him. It's not so easy to do, you may know.

More to say, when daughter of some corrupted govenor of one of Russia regions coming to USA, she got visa for extremely talented people, because she owns some startup (captured by her rich daddy).

If I will try to come to USA, I must pass TOEFL, pass through interview for Amazon/Google/whatever and then work, work, and pay rent and smile, and work again. I will have no time for anything except angry dislikes in youtube.

USA and EU made no way for me and people like me in Russia to be involved in politics while being in opposition to my government. It all looks like call "run into Kremlin wall and try to break it with your head, why you didn't it yet?".

There is a lot of rage going around. Some of it misdirected. It's incredibly hard to have nuanced discussion on the broader internet (HN is better than some places).

All attention is focused on Ukraine. They need all the help they can get. But that means forgetting that Belarusians voted to get rid of Lukaschenko and then were violently supressed. It means ignoring the Russians that are protesting even when they know they're risking everything. I saw a video of a Russian guy protesting alone in Kursk. That's an example of bravery.

I really think the Voice vs Exit[0] thing is very important here. If you can't be heard and can't succeed then you go elsewhere. Both at a personal level, but also at a grand economic level. If all the highly trained people make lives outside Russia, Russia will shrink to become less significant.

I will finish with a couple of short quotes from the book Why Nations Fail[1] (an incredibly dense read, but worth it).

> “NATIONS FAIL TODAY because their extractive economic institutions do not create the incentives needed for people to save, invest, and innovate. Extractive political institutions support these economic institutions by cementing the power of those who benefit from the extraction.” ― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

> “A businessman who expects his output to be stolen, expropriated, or entirely taxed away will have little incentive to work, let alone any incentive to undertake investments and innovations.” ― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

[0]: https://genius.com/Balaji-srinivasan-silicon-valleys-ultimat... [1]: http://whynationsfail.com/buy/

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.

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?

> 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.

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.

What's your answer to people who proclaim things like: a) Ukraine has a right to self-determination, b) Putin has moral agency, c) NATO is necessary to protect states that wish to turn away from Russia, d) What about the wishes of Ukrainians?

In the context of the US antiwar movement? Most leftists, even those that have deep mutual disagreements with each other, have long held that NATO expansionism is harmful. But I've been seeing a lot non-leftists use points a-d) to argue that the leftists are wrong. Have you seen this and how would you resolve this?

My own answer has been that NATO is kind of like a road system. Stop building so much and polluting our forests and lands. But if there's an avalanche, it is ethical to use the road to evacuate people. But I still feel I don't understand it fully and I'm not sure what ought to happen or what ought to have happened between NATO versus any country in a situation like Ukraine's.

> 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.

> So to be honest I cannot see how we are not responsible.

I cannot se how you are responsible

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 (ФСО) 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.

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.)

What happened in Putin’s Russia had happened in many other counties. What makes it special is large nuclear arsenal that makes Putin immune to an intervention. I won’t go into how much Russians are responsible if at all as this is just too controversial. But I do believe that a long term solution is international pressure to establish functional political institutes that are more powerful than any single politician working inside them. I don’t care if it is called a democracy or something else. I care about the system which is above any single participant and does not break when someone tries to take full control over it.

You can sidestep the democracy question by just saying you prefer a polyarchy over monoarchy (or autocracy).

how's this rhetoric different that Russia's "there some bad actors in Ukraine, so let's wreck the whole country"? Some people didn't vote for Putin, some even went to protest and been to jail and all got sanctions. Saying it's "deserved" seems rather insensitive. It escapes me how the regular Russian people are often considered the only group that can quickly change the situation today. Yet all they get in western media is hate and shame.

It’s the whole ‘the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men do nothing’, combined with the very real reality that being the first (or part of it when it isn’t enough) to do something usually results in predictable catastrophic terrible consequences for whoever tries to do something.

And that successful evil uses that to ‘boil the frog’ and constantly shift the normal bit by bit in the direction they want, never doing it enough they get a critical mass of resistance, and slowly pruning out all the good people (with terrible consequences for those folks), and then being able to accelerate as they go due to lower and lower portions of folks willing and able to speak out.

It’s terrifying to watch, even more terrifying to know what it can mean unfortunately.

Because we recognize ‘evil’ as being evil and bad because of the horrible and wide reaching consequences of it for everyone in the longer term.

Hopefully Putin made too big a step here (overconfidence maybe, or his hand was forced by something else), we all have recent even painful experience to react strongly enough, and the backlash will be sufficient to actually result in critical change and not a ratcheting up of the ‘new normal’.

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?

"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....

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.

Historically, when enough people rise their countrymen become reluctant to shoot them. There seems to be a tipping point required, which probably varies between cultures. It's probably caused by a combination of empathy and fear of recriminations should the revolution become successful.

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.

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.

With the EU having banned Russia from its airspace, I wonder what route these flights take.

Direct, right? Air Serbia is presumably based in Serbia, not Russia.

My friend is leaving Moscow for Serbia soon. They use Serbian airplanes which don't have any restrictions put on them.

Just check flightradar24. I see one from Moscow to Belgrade flying now over Poland.

"Air Serbia Doubles Moscow Frequencies To Meet Demand"

https://simpleflying.com/air-serbia-doubles-moscow-frequenci...

Serbia does not have any flight restrictions - neither in EU and neither in Russia and Belarus. So they can fly between Moscow and Belgrade...

And they're vaccinated against BUK.

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?

The boomers are unfortunately lost to propaganda.

That's crazy considering that the FSB bombed its own citizens to get Putin into power..

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

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.

Well, from the comments on Youtube, they're insanely indoctrinated. Zero chance it's all bots.

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?

> 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"

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.

>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.

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.

> 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.

I'm not an American, but I don't see how an argument is valid or invalid based on who makes it.

An argument can be biased, an American who never had to live under Putin's regime or in the social/economic context of Russia might not be able to understand that people don't choose to be born in such countries, or not see the wrongdoing of their own country.

> 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.

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.

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/149945792856210227...

> 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.

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).

> 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…)

>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.

> 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%20student...

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...

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.]

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.

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.

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.

In my opinion, economic integration must be preceded by complete nuclear disarmament.

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 Ragnarök, 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.

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.

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?

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.

>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.

It is not discomfort, the threat is real for most who disagree. For many it's 15 years with raping + torturing in prison. And probably even death if you don't give up your views. Google gulagu-net investigations about institutionalized raping in prisons.

> 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.

Land borders are closed and require special permission.

It's a long border. Honest question - is it all well patrolled?

Go fight against Russian zombies in Ukraine to win your right to have a bank account.

Ukraine is not accepting volunteers from Russia. https://twitter.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.

Nobody said it would be easy.

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...

>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

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.

Then they risk getting shot or stabbed by a pro Putin thug or agent. Your advice is patently bad.

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.

It's not cowardly to avoid wearing controversial shirts. There are nuts everywhere just look for reasons to be set off.

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.

Wearing a shirt with profanity printed on it is not heroic.

Civil disobedience is balancing act between "what will inspire revolution" and "what will get me killed". Wearing a FUCK PUTIN shirt in Moscow, today, is almost certainly heroic.

Wearing it in Egypt? The OP knows better than us. It might simply be self-preservation. I won't fault him either way.

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.

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)

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.

For Russians at this time? I am not so sure.

There are no rules against doing business with non-sanctioned individuals in Russia.

Sanctions are changing daily, and lots of business are “self-sanctioning” beyond the formal sanctions boundaries to minimize the cost of dealing with changes (and also of dealing international partners, who are dealing with different sanctions regimes targeting Russia.)

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.

Ah, brave russian bear here with us. Don't poke bear, bear chop your country off. Add some BLM propaganda, add good white people and call everyone running for a normal life a coward. Good bot.

> 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.

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 :/

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.)

> 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.

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.

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.

Hey, have you considered https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/ can be an option to receive money outside Russian bank system.

My friend in Georgia (Russian) told me that while TBC refuse to open accounts, Bank of Georgia still do. Also seems like leading party pushing against this discrimination.

Situation may change fast (already?) so check Bank of Georgia asap.

Is Bitcoin a plausible option in Georgia? I know most US companies don't pay in Bitcoin, but some do.

I hope you found the way to use your money abroad. By many requests I recorded to my friends a tutorial (on Russian language) how to transfer money abroad and minimising risk https://youtu.be/9ZcOfrjseFw

(using stablecoins and p2p on/off ramps)

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.

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.

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?

Well you can move abroad

Your prospects of a “normal life” are over. Whether you decide to do anything to improve it now is up to you.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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

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.

>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

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.

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.

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).

> 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.

Would you say in the same vein that North Koreans are responsible for the dictatorship they are living in?

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

And western people are responsible for a culture that colonizes half the world. Why do you always escape punishment?

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.

>First of all - most of the countries recognized their mistakes and got rid of governments pushing for such things.

After benefiting from stealing their resources, eventually colonization ended in no small part due to huge amounts of resistance from the colonies(ex Ghandi). I don't think that's exactly deserving of a humanitarian prize. Not only are there are reparations for those who were used, there were even recent military incursions in the Middle East

>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.

Cold comfort. That isn't fixing the problem that's just saying "yeah well we feel bad and have problems due to the abuse we inflicted on others". No surprise, but that doesn't help any of the populations that were set back and marginalized by colonization

>After benefiting from stealing their resources

I fail to see what point you're trying to make. You're saying, that in your opinion, other countries were more agressive in the past than Russia (which isn't true - I still see evidences on streets of my country), therefore Russia has unused quota of assholery, and should be allowed to murder Ukrainians whithout being criticized?

> That isn't fixing the problem that's just saying "yeah well we feel bad and have problems due to the abuse we inflicted on others".

Sadly in many cases yes, but also in many cases there were actual govermental or non-govermental help for regions violated in the past. This is not the case in Russia - Russia ended it's invasions only after being forced out and didn't ever even addmited, that it was doing something wrong. Quite the opposite - it tends to suggest it was doing something good like for e.g. in this case: https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1480536745112444936 - have you ever seen such comment from any British official regarding India?

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.

>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.

And who was the most recent to colonize? It's good that it isn't still happening, it really is, but the west still did that until they sufficiently benefited and then gave it up and said "it's okay no one is colonizing anymore! This is a new peaceful Era". No reparations just deciding to forget about it all. So again, what should be taken from western citizens until they are willing to fix their culture into one that makes right on the wrongs they've done?

Punishment, reparations are tricky since you're not punishing the people who are still alive. You might be punishing or asking for monetary reparations from their ancestors, arguing they are beneficiaries, but the reality is you'll also be punishing immigrants, and people who look like the colonialists but have nothing to do with it.

The history of the world is a history of the 1 percent and the 99 percent. Just reading some Charles Dickens will show you how awful life was for the lower classes in London, which were numerous. Child labor, extreme poverty, debtors' prisons. Torture for punishment. The history of Europe is also a history of war, serfdom and even slavery, long before we enter the rest of the world.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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

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.

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.

> 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...

What are they gonna do? Arrest everyone. Eventually the enforcers will get tired of it too

would you say the same thing if Russian citizens were instead from North Korea? The "democratic" Russian Federation is 31 years old (20 of which were under Putin). There has been 0 full generations who saw a functioning or even a fictional democratic process in action.

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.

Solid take. We should offer visas with moving bonus for every stem master / phd

And everyone who refuses to serve in Putin's army (then he gets fewer soldiers to attack with)

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.

I wish the EU would welcome Russians who flee from Putin, in the same way.

(If young men cannot leave, doesn't that mean more people that Putin can try to force to join his army)

Yeah, I think if the goal is to wield soft pressure, then actually providing increased incentives to leave would advance that cause better.

In any case, all the people here seem to be hipster-type, college educated intelligentsia from St. Petersburg and the like. Most I’ve talked to do something tech related.

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

Agreed.

tiny nitpick: immigration -> emigration

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.

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.

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.

Dynamite them now. You could heat all of Europe with a yatch tax

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.

>wealth generated before

Yeah, "generated".

"Generated"... by Africans and South Americans. But yesterday it was OK to do what Russia is doing now.

Ah yes generated at least 200 years ago and were absolutely untouched during a Civil War and 2 worl wars destroying Europe

Spain was practically untouched during both World Wars. Surprisingly - for an European country - it was one of the few states to remain neutral during the conflicts. [1] [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_during_World_War_II

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_during_World_War_I

You are right. Spain basically destroyed itself between the late 19th century and the early to mid 20th century.

> 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

You can buy a nice flat in some areas for less than 20k € so I'd say it's quite cheap, even for locals. There's a website that pairs local salaries to time it takes to buy property and in Spain is quite low.

Rent for a room in a city centre goes from 200€, nice flat 500€ big one 600€

Regarding salaries, it's smaller number of currency units but things are very cheap as well, really great place for investing. Infrastructure is better than in central Europe (was there recently for over a month) so it has everything to grow, and it most definitely will.

> Rent for a room in a city centre goes from 200€, nice flat 500€ big one 600€

Rent for a room in the centre of Barcelona or Madrid goes from €500, nice flat €900 big one €1200+.

If you work in tech, there's a high probability that you work for a company with their HQ there. If you combine that with the fact remote work culture is still settling in, there's also a high chance that you also live there.

> You can buy a nice flat in some areas for less than 20k

A nice flat in the outskirts of Barcelona or Madrid should be about 200-250k. As you get closer to the centre, prices approach 400k, even 500k+ in some areas.

Other than that, Northern Spain has some infamously expensive areas that are comparable to Barcelona and Madrid. Same thing happens in the Costa Brava, some areas in the outskirts of Madrid, and some areas in Southern Spain.

Also, only 11% of the workforce work under what locals call an "indefinite contract". Banks only trust that 11%.

Spain is ideal for a digital nomad that is willing to live in some run down area or what people call "Empty Spain". And even in those places, finding a nice flat for €20k sounds like a pipe dream.

Honestly, if I were a digital nomad from some European country and I wanted to move to Spain, I would just move to Andorra. Spain is a short drive away and taxes are way lower.

Of course it depends of the city, bigger cities, right in the middle it can go up to 2-3k€ a month. I'm not saying right in the middle but close to the centre, maybe 10 min by metro. Also Spain is not Barcelona and Madrid.

You're saying a lot of wrong things, for starters

> Spain is ideal for a digital nomad that is willing to live in some run down area or what people call "Empty Spain".

As a tech worker, and digital nomad myself, I don't live in any "Run down area", I have a high german salary and chose to live here in Spain because quality of life is much higher than in central Europe, including Baden-Württemberg, Czechia, Poland, etc.

With this salary I've bought many properties in Spain, I can literally buy a flat near the beach for less than 20k euros. Stop spreading lies about Spain.

Just a quick look: https://www.idealista.com/venta-viviendas/alicante-alacant-a... there's 491 places for sale in Alicante with price < 60k euros, I could buy 2 in 1 year, average tech worker in Alicante makes 40k+ so they can buy one in over a year.

Alicante has an awfully high unemployment rate and is widely known as a run down area -you just have to look at some of the properties you linked-, except for a few towns in the Costa Blanca.

Alicante is in no way representative of Spain. It should be very close to the bottom of the list, if not at the very bottom.

> I have a high german salary and chose to live here in Spain because quality of life is much higher than in central Europe, including Baden-Württemberg, Czechia, Poland, etc.

Guess what, most people working in Spain don't have "high German salaries".

Also, the average engineer in Alicante makes way less than 40k. Actually, there's a ~20% chance that they don't have a job in the first place. The average senior engineer makes about 45k in the most expensive areas of the country, before paying ~20-25% of it in taxes.

Keep in mind that 43% of Spaniards save less than €100 a month, with 23% of the population not saving any money at all. https://www.europapress.es/economia/finanzas-00340/noticia-4...

All lies and false information, you sound like the typical unidas podemos or PSOE supporter.

I've been many times to Alicante and could work there in an office for 400€/day if I wanted, stop spreading lies.

This is one of the craziest things I've ever read.

How can you say that Alicante is run down? What are you smoking? Putin has a mansion in a nearby neighbourhood worth millions and goes there regularly, huge companies have large facilities in Alicante along with the best comsetic surgery clinics in the world. A very rich and developed area in Europe full of northerners, please don't talk about things you don't know or understand. It's incredible how spoiled some people can be in Europe, you have no idea buddy.

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.

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.

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.

maybe someone else is falsifying google trends ?

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&ge...

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

The article gave you the search terms they used. Why would you make up your own? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&ge...

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.

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

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

This is what russian trolls want.

So much uncertainty, that you don’t belive anything.

Not even truth.

I have given up on 'troll' almost as much as 'literally'.

A troll would pretend to support Putin and so on.

They're using the word in the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_farm

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

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/1498067362595155968 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/25/world/russia-ukraine...

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.

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.

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?

I understand how you're invoking the idea of a double-edged sword. I just don't usually hear it in a context where the alternative is living in dystopia.

> The question is only, how do we make sure the truth is more widely known than the lies?

Listen to alternative perspectives. Engage with ideas you don't agree with. Be aware of your biases, and other peoples' biases. Defend your perspectives using reason and evidence, not emotion or moral values (note: reason and evidence are the only things we can somewhat objectively agree on; though we still have to be aware of people doing shady stuff with studies and using statistics to misrepresent real-world phenomena).

The trend I'm starting to see is that a lot of disconnects stem from ignorance.

Another alternative is Canada, where free speech isn't an absolute right but somehow the whole country hasn't descended into a totalitarian dictatorship.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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)?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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.

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...

> But hey, keep swallowing that Russian propaganda...

To what exactly are you referring? Everything I wrote in my comment is true. RT is factually banned on Telegram.

Telegram was created by a Russian.

Yet RT is still banned on Telegram.

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.

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.

A lot of Russians do have visas they obtained for tourism.

>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...

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.

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.)

Rumors can absolutely be propaganda.

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.

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.

Well, this was coming straight from Russian officials: https://tass.ru/politika/13873997

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.

they essentially allow software/etc piracy, companies instead of paying back $$ loans taken abroad can pay them out in rubles to local accounts. also looks like they are going to steal all leased planes

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.

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?

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."

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

see: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/bounded-distrust

Or applying your comment to a domestic news event. Suppose fox news say there's a school shooting. How do you prove:

- This is true without actually going to the school to see the dead bodies

- The US government isn't hiring crisis actors and then telling the media that there's a shooting

There was a story on front page yesterday for russian IT specialists who want to get out.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091

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.

It will be, but it does not mean that they don't want to try.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

I hope you still believe that Russian is shelling civilian cities, because that is on video

Really? They all have cellphones now filming it.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking things are unknowable. Madness lies at the extremes of believing everything and believing nothing

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)

it s not like there are no checks at airports, it should be obvious if there is a trend

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

The ole, "the science is unsettled argument" a classic. Repurposed for propaganda very fresh, Tasteful even

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.

>> 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.

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?

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.

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.

Yeah it was very gratifying to see Nancy pelosi and others doing things like apologizing and kneeling in kente cloths during the blm uprisings. I knew it was all insincere, but still, they had the right attitude for once. They ought to be a lot more scared, and pretty much begging for forgiveness right now.

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.

The EU needs to do something about Cyprus.

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...

Agreed, but my understanding is that Cyprus also sells EU citizenship.

Not Delaware, Wyoming.

And what Military Industrial Complex Demons do we know about harking from Wyoming... hm..

Gee There are a lot of shell company shenanigans coming from there...

Cheney's reign never ended. He is a blight on American history.

May someone ELI5 what a 'Reserve' is exactly, and how it relates to common folk?

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.

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.

There are apolitical people in every country, no? These people maximise their own benefit (aka capitalism) without caring about others (aka socialism?)

There are also patriotic people like those Ukranians you mentioned that stayed and are fighting. Unfortunately many of the patriotic Russians support the war and they don't care as much about quality of life.

What is happening is kind of like you living in a neighbourhood your whole life and then some thugs move in. Now all of a sudden you don't get mail because the post is scared of those thugs. You can fight the thugs or you can move to a neighbourhood where you can get your mail.

>can get arrested for 14 days

How sure of that are you? Some of Russians who are leaving claim it's years, and whatever the letter of the law is, do you trust the Russian government that much?

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.

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 …

Just say "Slava Ukraine" heh, it seems to have become a rallying cry and a way to immediately see where most Russian speakers stand.

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.

If you're aware of any other refugees Ukrainian or Russian, that need a place in the USA, please let me know. My understanding is that the US is not letting in refugees yet though.

Your understanding is correct atm. USA offers «concern” and “support”, colors airport in Ukraine’s flag (SFO). But they still must have visa, insurance, and Covid test to enter. My family were even asked why they don’t have return tickets.

I am one of these Russians. Or should I say I was, because just moments ago Visa and Mastercard stopped all operations in Russia, and this essentially left us without any money except the (meagre) cash we could withdraw back in Russia.

It really feels the trap is closing in around me right now.

We are actively trying to help Russian IT specialists to flee. We had over 300 resumes submitted by different people in our Telegram community in just two days. Most of these are senior people, many with experience in Yandex, local branches of Google and other international companies.

I wrote about the situation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091

If anyone can help us get these people out — please step forward, all information is in the post. 30+ recruiters are already working with us, but that is not enough.

Hiring

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.

Right, on March 8th two largest Russian airlines suspend all international flights. People get the hell out of Russia while they can.

They were sanctioned, so they had to.

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.

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.

My acquaintance escaped via bus to Estonia yesterday.

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.

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.

> 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 :-)

Domain names and social media handles maybe?

Instead of Google trends, it would be interesting to see how this shows up in geolocation datasets

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.

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.

The fight against Ukraine is also to set an example to the states that want to separate from Russia.

Best outcome is Russians turn to Bitcoin and use it to starve the Russian government of tax income

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.

I dont blame them, South Africa is quite far away and friendly to Russians.

What’s the difference between this and Google Flu trends?

The only people that can stop Putin are the russian People.

"Russians are trying to flee Putin’s chaos"

We all are.

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