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Comment by devwastaken | Hacker News Reader

Be aware that citizens fleeing Russia are not necessarily against the Kremlin, nor against the war. Beliefs are complicated, one cannot expect individuals whom have lived their whole lives under one government to toss it aside. For example, plenty of Russian immigrants voted Republican in the last presidential elections. They don't like Russia painted negatively.

That isn't to say there aren't plenty whom desire liberty, simply that it's not a requirement of migrating.

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Yes and no. You're more likely to find counter-culture beliefs among the tech crowd in Russia just like rest of world. How many of us watch TV for our news? I have 20+ Russian / Belarussian engineers working at my company and granted its a small sample size but views tend to range from "I need to get the hell out asap" to "I really should get out... but I have X keeping me here... this is fine." (dog w/ flames)

1. You may find a (very) small fraction of Putin supporters among Russian immigrants in general but among the latest wave it is as low as ever. Many my friends and acquaintances left Russia in the wake of the war and none supports it (or Putin).

2. I expect fraction of Putin supporters among Russian immigrants to be highest among people immigrated in 1990s - many (but definitely not all) from this generation continued to watch Russian TV while living abroad. In 1990x Russia had relatively free press but Putin slowly turned it into a propaganda tool and this slow transition allowed Russian TV to keep old audience.

3. Support of Democrat/Republican IMO has little to do with the support of Putin or Russian government. I don't even think Republicans hate Russia less than Democrats. Trump showed a fondness for Putin but didn't do anything that would benefit Russia, quite the opposite. If you are not in a partisan bubble choice between Democrats and Republicans is not the choice between good and evil, it is an attempt to choose a less evil one. Russian immigrants know too well that socialism failed in the Soviet Union and Democrats talking about socialism can be enough to tilt the scales.

> rump showed a fondness for Putin but didn't do anything that would benefit Russia, quite the opposite.

I would count photo ops with Putin and Kislyak in the WH as a win, but not as big as Trump blackmailing Ukraine or openly floating a U.S. pullout from NATO. We're talking about the same Trump, right?

The Russians and Ukrainians I have met in the U.S. all bring up corruption, not the failure of socialism. They tend to be pretty clear on their politics.

I am russian born (thats just for context). I feel incredibly fortunate that this war happened when Trump is no longer in office.

I think were it happen while Trump was actively disparaging NATO, sowing discord among allies, ridiculing soft power of liberal democracies, all happening against a backdrop of deferring to tyrants and dictators, a spinning rotating door of chiefs of staff and secretaries of state at the White House, self-pitying rallies of sycophants, daily scandals, active sabotage of long-standing institutions of government with loyal figureheads, holding military aid to Ukraine hostage for political blackmail, questioning the need of foreign aid for populist points, the pattern of denial, shifting responsibility, blaming others as a response to pandemic… Need I go on?

I don’t think Putin would’ve needed much more than that to tip the scales in his favor.

In my opinion Putin either tremendously miscalculated the timing of the invasion to after Trumps term in the office, or was expecting his second term to bring about even more fertile conditions.

Disparaging NATO by making sure other countries increased their spending that they skimped out on? His goal was to increase NATO defenses against Russia.

All administration staffing and mean tweet problems aside, there’s a reason Putin waited until Trump was out. Trump was very unpredictable and that alone prevented this from happening years ago.

Right, it wasn’t astonishing incompetence, fluent morality, and unrestrained narcissism, but rather a strategically clever display of unpredictability to keep the enemies off-balance and guessing.

It’s like Roosevelt said, “yell whatever comes out of your mouth and carry a big retinue of inexperienced but loyal sycophants” diplomacy. Thanks, Throwaway!

Even assuming that’s is true - does it matter what they believe, as long as they don’t actively support the war?

We should not forget that it was Mitt Romney who called out Russia as a threat when campaigning against Obama, and he was ridiculed about it by democrats.

Reasonable people can revise their prior conclusions based on new evidence. For example until recently I was in the crowd of people who thought - why do we need such massive military spending when we could do so much more with that money?!

Well, I am kind of thinking now that we may need to keep the military spending as it is after all.

I think a lot explains where they went to go.

Considering most want to go to EU, UK, Canada and the US and not eg. Turkeye / Kazachstan / ... They don't share the Putin mindset.

Note: Turkey is popular, bit less than the west according to my observations on telegram where they want to relocate.

You're right. I do agree that a lot of Russian immigrants I met are against Putin. Just to give context - I'm a Ukrainian. However, do expect that a lot of people who are immigrating or planning to immigrate now would be economical immigrants due to degrading standards of living in Russia. So, they may actually support Putin but they're looking for better life. For instance, the IT company I worked for had a client IT company from Russia and they decided not to do business with us after 2014 (annexetion of Ukrainian Crimea) because they supported Putin. The company was small-to-medium but those were IT people mostly. Also, based on the most recent polls, 70-80% of Russians support the aggression.

I think the solution should be on a government level: a government who doesn't support Russian aggression (and that's is the whole world accept ~10 countries), I'd introduce some sort of a visa/work permit/citizenship requirement for Russians to state if they support Putin or not. I'd also make a video recording of their answers similarly to the citizenship oath in many countries in case they "change their minds" later on. If they don't have a process like that or a similar process, they may introduce people who are pro-war and pro-Russian into their societies. I consider it extremely dangerous for countries that are neighbouring with Russia because Putin's propaganda used "Russians oppression" or "Russians mostly live there" as an excuse for aggression in Pridnistrovia, Goergia and Ukraine. This is especially true for Baltic states were standards of living are higher and they are potential destinations of these new waves of immigrations.

I'm not sure if a business owner can do something like that because it might be considered as a discrimination of political views or something similar. I assume no one was asked during a job interview if they supported Hitler, right ?:)

If you want to know if a Russian person supports the war, among questions like "do you support war in Ukraine/Putin?" you can ask if they supported of annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014. Most Russian immigrants I met said "of course no, it's a crime and a violation of the internal laws". But some avoided answer and said something like "well it's a complex question, Crimea is mostly Russian and they were treated badly", "or Crimeans were suffering", "Crimea was never a Ukrainian territory" or something along those lines - that's a red flag. Or "it's a politics and I'm trying to stay out of politics" is also a red flag. No one will tell you directly that they support the aggression in 2014 after what happened in Feb 24th.

I do hope that "good" Russians will get a better life and "bad" Russians will stay in Russia and enjoy the products of their believes.

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