Comment by gip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gip | Hacker News Reader

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I have family in Ukraine and Russia. From the data points that I have, I'd say that most people in Russia support Putin (including in my family). While the average citizen will be impacted first by the current situation, it will have an effect on the leadership IN TIME (e.g. in years, not days). In fact, severe sanctions should have started in 2014 [1].

As for the argument that popular opinion will turn against the west: it already has [2] and I think we should not talk about sanctions any longer, but of separate blocks with minimal exchange and interaction. I understand that going back to an iron curtain of some sort may be shocking for some, but at least that will severely limit the risk of miscalculation and nuclear war. Putin is a dictator and we have to act.

[1] Says a former Russian diplomat: "They also thought the EU was weak because of how toothless their sanctions were in 2014" https://twitter.com/andreivkozyrev/status/150061067692600525... [2] https://twitter.com/ABCNewsLive/status/1499449302728462342

> From the data points that I have, I'd say that most people in Russia support Putin (including in my family).

Russians are bi-modaly distributed: there are people who approve of him (many Russians like strong leaders, which explains photographs of topless Putin riding a horse, Putin in an expensive car etc.) and there are also Russian people who demonstrate and speak out despite the clearly severe consequences that come with that attitude (4,300 arrests of protesters against the invasion of Ukraine to date).

In this thread on sanctions versus non sanctions it is discussed whether the sanctions hit only ordinary people or also the super-rich. What we need to also mention is that a large part of the pro-Putin people are only supportive because of government propaganda bias, and the absence of any high-quality international media.

Finding more effective ways to make ordinary Russians aware of what is going on might be the least painful path to ending the nightmare (but it's still a long game).

> Russians are bi-modaly distributed

Sure. I applaud the people who protest. However I also want people reading this to understand that most people support Putin. At least I have strong data points that support this and denying that fact doesn't help anyone.

> Finding more effective ways to make ordinary Russians aware of what is going on might be the least painful path

Maybe. The US tried to build a western society in Afghanistan for 20 years and that failed. I'm not convinced "educating" Russians to what we (the West) think is happening will work either.

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