Dude, right now all of us are in deep shock, while:
- some are trying to find their relatives in Ukraine
- some are coordinating and volunteering
- some are trying to get themselves and their families outside of Russia (which gets harder by the minute because of prices and sanctions)
- some are trying to smuggle at least some of the money outside, because their entire life savings are now blocked
- some are trying to preserve what they have despite ruble and market crashing
- some are hunkering down with what they have and their loved ones, trying to stockpile some food before prices skyrocket
and no one has any time to cope and process anything - don't forget usual workloads, too. planning for a week feels like it's already a strategic, not a tactical scope
I get what you're trying to do, but can't you at least give more time for everyone? Right now I need to drop everything and migrate my DNS as well because my private email that I use for docs will stop working in 6 days. And to figure out how to pay the transfer fees while doing all that. It's very much fucking stressful already.
edit: I've worded that badly - I'm not complaining, I'm just asking for a bit longer grace period for everyone. It's very easy to miss an email for 6 days during these times. All of these issues are obviously dwarfed by what Ukrainian people are going through right now.
I just want to point out that this is the first time I've read a Russian resident's perspective on what's happening right now.
The overall picture I get in Western media is that Russians are being dragged into this against their will by Putin. People have started calling for sanctions on certain regime members and supporters, but have so far avoided more broadly demonizing the Russian populace. I hope it stays that way.
My understanding is that older Russians tend to be more supportive of the war.
Not only do they more broadly believe Ukraine isn’t a legitimate country independent of Russia, they’re also more likely to perceive threats from the west and the potential for Ukraine to become a contributor to the threat very quickly. They’ve witnessed conflicts materializing very quickly in the past, and they’re aware it could happen again. Ukraine has dramatically improved their military training, equipment, and size since Crimea. Given that alone it’s clear to see how many Russians might see Ukraine as a threat with their non-NATO status and demilitarization not being guaranteed.
Having said that, it seems Putin has been trying to encourage acceptance of war in Russia for months because evidently there isn’t a broad enough acceptance as it is. At least from the government’s perspective, as they’ve been planning this war for quite a while. I believe the necessity of the war from their perspective came sooner than expected, otherwise they likely would have been seeding the idea of the need for war much earlier. I’m not sure.
So there are certainly a lot of Russian people who believe the war is justified. I’m not sure what the ratios of for/neutral/against are, but I suspect they’re not especially lopsided. Unfortunately. It doesn’t seem there’s significant reason to believe Putin will back down, or that Russian people will force him to.
The whole country premise is based on war. Unfortunately the world only became global in the past 2 decades which means a lot of Russians (despite being kind) still haven't gotten up to speed on all available information including the propaganda they have been subjected.
I was born in Russia and emigrated in 1999. Till then, I only heard about the glory days of USSR and how we liberated the world of evil.
I moved to Czech Republic and went straight to school. Little did I know that Russia has a bad rep by being an occupant as well as textbooks describing completely different picture of the world. Including the facts of red army raping everything in their way to Berlin's parliament building.
If you would have grown up subject to propaganda for more than 30 years, you would probably turn out in a similar way.
Asking a person to think independently without expanding their peripheral brain thinking is super hard and almost impossible IMO. Curious if there are any scientific studies how to do it.
I am not defending people for "not-knowing" just trying to paint the picture of how it was living and growing up there compared to the rest of the world. All my friends who left Russia are against the war. Unfortunately the divide is also growing in Russia and I had to forgo several people I knew from childhood because they are adamant on war being justified and I am sure I am not the only one.
Years of brainwashing... also partially the reason why people haven't revolted already.
Thanks for that, it’s really helpful to get more insight from people closer to Russia, the people there, and countries close to it. Although I can find a lot of information online, I find it difficult to find the experiences and opinions of people who aren’t from North America. Language is likely a large part of that - I’m sure many of the people close to this simply aren’t hanging out and communicating in English in the places I am.
Brainwashing is certainly a term that comes to mind as I learn more about this, but one I have a hard time using since it can seem sort of like a slur from here in Canada. The truth is though that it seems us here in North America are somewhat brainwashed to fear and resent many parts of the world as well, including Russia. It’s scary. As I’ve tried to make sense of this by asking questions or generally discussing the current conflict online, I’ve been attacked for being pro-Putin or a Russian troll several times. I’m nothing of the sort, I never take a side, and I do my best to be objective, but many of the people I live with here are furious if you aren’t laser-focused on condemning the war and Russia. I’m absolutely opposed to the war, but banging that drum eternally doesn’t help me understand it any better.
Regardless, you’re making a great point. Questioning the war would be difficult for any human being if they were raised in a culture in which it was justifiable. How many Americans supported the Iraq war which ended as an abject failure with very little support? All that changed was that people were forced to face reality. The war didn’t make any more or less sense from the day it started. It’s easy to criticize Russia from across the world, but they’re no different from us here in Canada or the USA in that sense. As you mentioned, it’s remarkably difficult to break out of the sort of cultural mould we’re born and raised in.
Thanks for the response. I hope the friends and family you left in Russia are safe, whether they support the war or not.
English is not very widespread in Russia and ex-USSR countries to the south. Even the IT crowd among me knows very little of the language (enough to read an answer on StackOverflow or write a badly worded commit message).
And now I know why it's not being taught more widely, despite the obvious economic advantages this could provide. You don't want the population to be able to speak to their 'enemies' or read news from the other side easily. It's pretty obvious now the mad lunatic has been preparing the country for what's happening for about a decade, and he truly believed when he talked about the 'encirclement' and 'sending nukes to Florida'.
Precisely. Imagine your area of knowledge is like a circle, you think you kind of get 80% of it in terms of worldview and subjective opinions. Now some random people come in and saying you are wrong and there is this other big circle which is in order of magnitude 100x bigger which shrinks your knowledge and understanding. Its very difficult to recognise that we might not be understanding all the things. But just being open for trying to get the other side helps tremendously. Even understanding the root cause of why perhaps people even think that way?
It's kind of scary... and we tend to block the scary things. Because well... its easier.
The issue in the conflict such as this is that it's never black and white. And if someone is telling you that you are pro-putin by just not condemning Russia without hearing your reasons or just blatantly attacking you - thats very short-sighted and personally I just end the debate right there, because its not up to my standards of rationality.
There are obviously now messages coming through condemning US and EU for their actions in various conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Kosovo etc. And again, what is right and what is wrong? Never that easy to say - all depends on your personal context.
I wish we could have a conversation something like that:
- Ok lets look at the claims:
- Claim X
- Claim Y
- Claim Z
Alright, claim Y is not that simple, because remember what happened was A, B, C.
Ok valid point, but B is also not so certain because of G.
I feel like our world really needs more education on critical-thinking and meta-learning.
Oh please. I'm all on board with criticizing the war, criticizing the human rights abuses, criticizing the megalomaniac Putin.
But once you go into this kind of criticism, you start the same propaganda you are criticizing Putin of. Make a difference between a corrupt regime and the country, the people. If you really want to make the point of the "whole country" being based on war, you need to be fair and do that to every country. The U.S.? Based on genocide of the natives, slavery and oppression of Africans and now playing world police bullying everybody who does not want to play along. China? Thousands of years of history of basing their power on war or the threat of it. British Empire? India?
> Russians are being dragged into this against their will by Putin.
Unfortunately, this is profoundly incorrect. I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice".
> I know a lot of young(-ish) educated Russians, and at least 50% (by my estimate) kind of agree with Putin that "they were left no other choice"
I grew up in South America. If you knew the kind of crap we are fed by our own very teachers that vilify american citizens as invading thieves without any care to make a distinction about the people and the government. I clearly remember during a certain heavy metal concert the keyboard player innocently tried to make a solo of the country national hymn followed by the american hymn and he was attacked by an angry mob of retards throwing things while literally chanting "Bin Laden". And yeah I was young and I thought "the yankee bastard had it coming".
I was in my 30s when I started realizing its all bullshit and the american people don't really have a say about the atrocities their government is causing in foreign lands. We've been fed with propaganda and programmed to hate people we don't know.
There is one thing I do not understand and I was hoping you (or any other person who knows a lot of Russians) can explain: I hear that Russia and Ukraine have many personal connections from the past. I happen to be from the Czech Republic and I imagined that it is probably similar to our relation to Slovakia - we used to be one state, many people having friends or relatives in the other country, mutually intelligible languages, mixed marriages... I always assumed that personal ties are stronger than propaganda (if I know that my Slovak brother in law and all of his friends are not fascists, I would hardly believe the propaganda claiming that they are). My view was obviously incorrect, but how? Did I overestimate the connectedness between Russia and Ukraine? Or underestimate the influence of propaganda? Or something else?
This is what propaganda will make. If you keep your population only speaking a language that the rest of the world does not use, it makes propaganda so much easier.
With enough determination (and it doesn't take that that much) you can make propaganda work just fine in any language. And that's they key part, it doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. Look at Fox News or Alex Jones.
And even if you make the effort to evaluate both sides objectively, having too much information in any language doesn't work that great either. Most people aren't equipped to properly select their information sources, to parse everything and discriminate fact from feeling, propaganda from truthful reporting. To highlight how difficult it is, this happens at scale even in the most civilized of countries, with solid education systems, and freedom of speech and press.
Most people tend to choose sides which become core to their beliefs, and are reluctant to reconsider ever again. Once they picked a side it's "just" a matter of selecting the information that supports it. This is why the same person can read the same information and decide whether it's good or bad based on who did it rather than what was done? Some people read "country X bombed school in country Y" and purely depending on their "allegiance" will decide whether the school was full of terrorists or the bomb was launched by terrorists.
Whatever you do to change that will earn you the label of "other side's troll" (sometimes, ironically, from both sides) and you quickly learn that freedom of speech only works when you exercise it in your own bubble, thus reinforcing that bubble.
I hope it is not an argument againt freedom of speach?
I wonder what are your conclusion on how to tackle the problem? Because I ask myself this question regularly when I observe both sides arguing on the topic of free speach. But it’s very hard for me to be against free speach.
Education (and future to be invented tools) isn’t any magical stick, but the best I can think of for the long term.
possibly tools like: having feed filtering algorithms also implemented clients side. You’ll always be in some sort of bubble, but having more say in it (like many inventions have evolved). This of course creates new challenged, but that’s a natural thing
Yes, and the propaganda starts already before kindergarden and continues in school. And since the parents are already convinced by the propaganda, it's reinforced from there too.
It's hard for me to send my sympathies to you - my relatives are either hiding in bomb shelters, or fighting your countrymen in the east and in the south. They are all Russian speaking people who hate Russia and everything Russia stands for with passion these days. Anyway, please accept my sympathies, and find strength in yourself to do more.
When your country is attacking another country, asking for empathy is best done by relating what YOU are going through, personally, as opposed to telling stories for others.
I suppose that's somewhat metaphoric for the philosophical differences in how authoritarian rule manifests vs. whatever it is we call it in the West.
I have empathy for everyone in Russia who is going through hardship during this time.
silently losing your email address because you've missed one email in that rush sounds very very bad, esp if you're waiting for some important documents that can make or break your life/immigration/whatever.
This is surprisingly healthy view, you are probably (sorry for labeling you) not watching main stream media and get your news from more independent sources?
The entire purpose of the sanctions is to make life difficult for Russians. Do you find this unfair? Then tell me the alternative. The West have tried appeasing Putin, but clearly he is not going to stop, ever. This very moment the Russians are closing in on Kyev, ready for the slaughter. While Russians are scrambling to save their money, Ukrainians are scrambling to save the lives of their loved ones. Should the West use weapons instead of economic sanctions? This would be third world war, probably the end of Russia but more likely the end of the world.
So tell us what we should do instead of sanctions?
Surely nobody promised you that sanctions would not have any ill effects on the general population? There is no way to seize Putins war chest directly, so the purpose of the sanctions is to hit him and his power structure indirectly through the entire Russian economy and society. It is an extremely crude weapon and hits Putin critics just as hard as Putin supporters, and as always the weakest suffers the most. But what is the alternative? Doing nothing or just applying mild sanctions have been tried - it just embolded Russia and let to current murder of Ukraine. Do you have a better idea?
It's heart breaking to hear about people getting their lives turned upside down on both sides because a political elite on one side decided to forcefully take everyone on a horror-themed joy ride.
I see many stories of people mobilizing to help Ukrainian refugees however they can and those are great; I hope those of you getting caught in the chaos on the russian side can also find compassion from someone, in what I imagine is just the start of these coarse collateral-damage-prone punishment-minded moves (well intentioned as they may be).
It's the standard PR appeasement of companies - complain loudly in a place others might see, and we shall see to your needs. Thousands of others who might also be suffering and don't have the means to do so or don't know that this is how it works - well, too bad.
Call on your government to end the war. Immediately. That seems much easier than working down your list, because it will grow longer with each day of this invasion.
It's not a government, it's a dictatorship, and if you protest or call it a war you can disappear in prison; I just read that Putin has a 15 years punishment in mind.
You might as well say "just assassinate Putin, it's much easier".
But agreed that figuring out something to do would be good
About two million people on the streets of Moscow should be enough for authorities to stop arresting people. Or how do you think Germany was reunited [1]? It is sickening to see people afraid of their government, the entity which exists to care for them and protect them.
Economic sanctions hitting the small man might be the best chance you'll get to see that happening. The only question is how much military support the government really has, lucky for us the USSR was busy collapsing so that gave a window of opportunity.
It’s nearly impossible to organize a large scale protest in Russia. All the opposition leaders were jailed or murdered and even just posting info about protests is a criminal offence. There’s also a problem with many people being indoctrinated by the state propaganda, because independent mass media is banned.
There was an ECHR decision ordering Russia to free Navalny, but it was ignored by Russian government and Council of Europe did nothing about it.
If enough people call it a war, then then there won't be room to fill all the prisons. Putin can't put millions of people in prison. He also won't kill millions of his own people. OR maybe he will, but he'll do that anyway if he launches nukes like he has warned. Your life is already under threat, you really don't have a choice or any other options but to rid yourselves of this madman.
I can't even call on my government to fix a pothole and this guy has to convince his dictator to let go?
I'm pro-siege, because I see Russian activists as collateral damage to stopping the machine, but it's not their individual fault they can't overthrow an authoritarian government.
Yeah right. So atm I'm sitting in Kyiv centre, central traint station was bombed in the night. Babyn Yar, Holocause memorial was bombed yesterday - it was a try to destroy tv broadcasting tower. I'm so not fucking sorry for your shitty incovinience. I managed to get wife and kids out of country. And five more women with children to Poland. All of that under bombings. Go fuck yourself, I don't remember that ukrainians were given time.
Are you really honestly shocked? Has the news in Russia been completely opaque to the preparation to this invasion? It seems like everyone else has known about it for months.
My eastern relatives are all brainwashed by putin's pr. They only read news that come from their fb feed, and they all point to tacc/rt/sputnik/etc. I have already had so many arguments and now have asked them to not speak to me about it and just "inform themselves". They don't trust western media so I asked them to read Indian/Israeli/other neutral press
No, they did not. Nobody did actually expect invasion in Russia. Neither civilians, nor army. Putins orders came as a total surprise, he was not expected to cross the border.
At worst everybody was thinking about new escalation in Donbas. The military buildup was considered a strategic negotiation game.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., in the weeks leading up to the invasion, our Government was holding routine press conferences showing exactly where Russian forces were gathering and the threatening posture they comprised as they encircled Ukraine from three sides. Combine that with Putin’s and his foreign minister’s unrealistic demands, and the writing was on the wall. If the Russian people didn’t get the same information, that would certainly explain their surprise.
The same information was available in Russia, just different conclusions were made. Every political analyst focusing on Russian foreign policy is throwing away now years of their publications and research, because they based them on a wrong assumption (the one that Biden administration did not have - that Putin is rational).
Hey I saw a post on a local FB group today from an Aussie company who worked with a Russian dev years ago and had their contact details on one of 50 domains, and they're being asked to move everything.
They said support is not responsive, any way you can be more discriminating about the level of Russian involvement that will trigger a suspension? I will post a link to your statement here for them.
When you're in a crisis situation, the last thing one needs is even more pressing things to get done. Especially ambiguous ones like writing some pleasant appeal to support, and hoping for understanding. And worrying that if support falls back to the large print policy, then having even less time to effect a transfer.
If you're serving the like of RT.com then redirect that to somewhere truthful yesterday, but turning the screws on individuals feeds right into Putin's censorship goals. At least consider moving your deadline back to something more graceful like 60 or even 30 days.
It's a bit counter productive to shut down the people that is actually trying to help. Then there is only Putins views out there... That is exactly why the west did NOT shut down internet to russia, if we do that, there will be noone speaking against Putin.
> It's a bit counter productive to shut down the people that is actually trying to help
It has been said that exceptions can and will be made.
Though I suspect it might not be as easy as just asking because if it was everyone would just ask, so those needing an exception will at least need to take time to formulate an explanation, and wait for responses, etc.
Not ideal, but IMO understandable from namecheap's position.
This is NOT a "whim of the CEO" - 82% of Namecheap's employees live in Ukraine, 1700 people. And you're expecting them to support Russians? Think again.
I'm 100% supportive of Namecheap's actions in this.
Wait aren't they obligated to do this under the new sanctions anyway? Same goes with any company that wants to continue doing business with US and EU, am I wrong?
I mean, honestly, if there wasn't moderation here I would be bluntly insulting you. I will definitely boycott you from now on. Both as a person and as a company.
- some are trying to find their relatives in Ukraine
- some are coordinating and volunteering
- some are trying to get themselves and their families outside of Russia (which gets harder by the minute because of prices and sanctions)
- some are trying to smuggle at least some of the money outside, because their entire life savings are now blocked
- some are trying to preserve what they have despite ruble and market crashing
- some are hunkering down with what they have and their loved ones, trying to stockpile some food before prices skyrocket
and no one has any time to cope and process anything - don't forget usual workloads, too. planning for a week feels like it's already a strategic, not a tactical scope
I get what you're trying to do, but can't you at least give more time for everyone? Right now I need to drop everything and migrate my DNS as well because my private email that I use for docs will stop working in 6 days. And to figure out how to pay the transfer fees while doing all that. It's very much fucking stressful already.
edit: I've worded that badly - I'm not complaining, I'm just asking for a bit longer grace period for everyone. It's very easy to miss an email for 6 days during these times. All of these issues are obviously dwarfed by what Ukrainian people are going through right now.