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Comment by stefan_ | Hacker News Reader

Long lines at the ATMs:

https://mobile.twitter.com/taxfreelt/status/1497811412265099...

Seeing this really makes me sad. We rightly stand in solidarity with Ukraine, but ordinary Russian people will also suffer enormously because of this. Imagine living somewhere where your future just got vaporized and if you speak up about it, you risk ending up in a gulag. It’s a nightmare.

It is sad. Unfortunately the least damaging way to put pressure on Putin.

Solidarity with working class on both sides

It is, especially considering the typical Russian is not for a war in Ukraine and is also not a Putin supporter. Putin is a president by force, Russians cannot unseat him without any bloodshed.

I haven't seen any calls for him to resign, just protests against the war. What's the breaking point for Russians against Putin?

When internal security forces switch sides (or stand down).

Tends to be how revolutions go.

Or when someone close enough to Putin grows a pair.

Maybe it'll be the guy in this clip.

https://twitter.com/smod4real/status/1496913558138867731

It's quite something, and makes it pretty clear Putin's getting the "no one wants to give bad news" treatment the Soviets were similarly famous for.

Is he still breathing?

Are you sure they are not for war?

For example: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-uk...

They are surely less for war now but the effect would be opposite if they managed to capture Ukraine within a few days.

They should be standing on main squares of their cities or standing in territorial defense units inside Ukraine, not in front of ATMs. Zero empathy until the war is stopped, people are dying, we don’t give a single flying fuck that somebody is inconvenienced by atm queue.

No sympathy with people who have no control and don't support this war? The last pill had support at 8%.

You can't speak your mind in Russia. The population is not guilty.

That's the price for standing and watching Putin take more and more power.

people of russia have control. they can go and protest or they can go and fight their fascist army. if they choose to do neither - they are complicit, so fuck them.

Yeah no, I do actually sympathize. I'm not booking a ticket to Ukraine to go fight, and similarly people in Russia have not signed up to revolt. Everyone has their own lives and families to look after.

I may be fine with hurting 'Russia' in the abstract, but it's not really fun that the only way to realistically do that is to hurt the ordinary people.

people of russia have control. they can go and protest or they can go and fight their fascist army. if they choose to do neither - they are complicit, so fuck them.

Please, show me a war where the elite, political class suffered more than the commoners. I’ll wait.

I’m as sad as anyone that OnlyFans “content creators” in Russia aren’t getting paid ( https://news.yahoo.com/russia-blameless-onlyfans-stars-ve-12... ) but democracy is worth more in the long run.

In WW1 the British upper classes, who made up the officer class, were killed at a substantially higher rate than the largely working class enlisted men.

1. what was the army participation rate of the upper class vs the lower class? A cursory search seems to suggest the differential was 17% ("officer class") vs 12% ("largely working class enlisted men"). That's close enough that differences in army participation can drown the two out.

2. also relative to the army participation rate, is the suffering of civilians. If working civilians had to suffer rationing, starvation, and disease, while the nobility just chilled in their country side estates tended to be servants, that could more than make up for 1% (or whatever) of nobility dying in battle.

Sure, the elite everywhere will rest safely in private, but their very public, pet tyrants often don't always as well. Caligula, Hitler, Saddam, Gaddafi, et al did not retire peacefully.

In Cambodia, just days after the Khmer Rouge took power, they ordered 2 million people living in Phnom Penh and other urban areas to head to the countryside.

The idea was based on an extreme version of Maoism and a belief in the superiority of the Khmer people, the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia. Citizens were to be turned into traditional rural peasants, referred to as the "old people" by the Khmer Rouge. Urban workers and intelligentsia elites were viewed as "new people" and easily expendable.

Good example but I probably should have said “interstate war” because civil war is by its nature very often about class warfare. Also, how a war ends doesn’t count: we were talking about sanctions as a means of inflicting suffering during a war.

It may not count but roman centurions used to lead from the from and had huge mortality rates [0]

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-average-lifespan-of-a-Rom...

lead from the from?

front

Honestly the Roman Republic did come to mind when I wrote it because they fielded largely citizen armies, and were better to conquered peoples than everyone around them. But I don’t know enough history to know for sure, nor what it was like to be a victim of Roman aggression.

The only time they get their comeuppance is when the peasants come knocking on their doors and want their heads and usually things don't progress that far. Then new bad humans take over and start the cycle anew.

I'm gonna go with the Romanovs, which is more than slightly ironic.

> ordinary Russian people will also suffer enormously

True. But who will remove Putin from power if not the Russian people? They won't do so without suffering a lot, they have been used to criminal leaders for more than a century.

I am not saying it's the fault of individual people. But all there governments have been incredibly inhuman basically for centuries. It certainly affects the society.

How many of those have voted for Putin?

Nobody knows. Not even the Russian election committee.

In a free and fair election? Zero.

It wouldn't be zero. Strangely enough there really are Russians that want to go back to 'the good old days' and they will vote for Putin in an actual free election.

I'm not saying zero people would vote for Putin in a free and fair election.

I'm saying there hasn't been such a thing, and that means we don't have any good idea what that number would really be.

Ok.

No. It's difficult to say how a free a fair election would look like because there has not been any free press for at least 10 years (if ever...) and it got much worse recently. So it's not even clear who would be the opposition.

But I would not be too surprised if were similar as in the US. 50% vote for Trump.

117%

Probably something between 70% and 80% according to independent polls. Of course after most oppositional candidates where hindered by the government in various ways.

How many of them believed that Putin would start a aggression to erase whole country from the map? Very few. As still the vast majority of the people in Ukraine did not believe it a week ago. And many European leaders either. Such wars have not existed in Europe since Hitler and not many believed they would return any time soon.

As a Hungarian I'm quite happy that finally the EU put pressure on Hungary to not steal all EU funds and direct to Viktor Orban and his family. After 12 years finally we have an election where we have a good chance (about 50%) to unseat him and significantly decrease corruption in our country.

Of course in Russia the situation is much worse at this point, but Russians know that they can get back their money if they elect a less corrupt / aggressive leader.

> but Russians know that they can get back their money if they elect a less corrupt / aggressive leader.

I don't think there are any clear opposition candidates in Russia. They have been silenced, imprisoned, nearly poisoned. So even if there were an election without massive fraud I doubt many Russians would know whom to vote for.

Alexei Navalny may be in prison, but he's still alive. It's true though that if Putin goes down as a leader he would bring Alexei down with himself

Sadly Russians need to be forced to get rid of their dictator. The only way to do it is if Putin stops getting more money from outside, and it will be extremely painful at this point.

Russian economy (applies to Eastern European in general) is generally cash-heavier than Western world. Having been burned by inflation before, Russians are skeptical of ruble as a life-savings mechanism, and diversify into gold or hard foreign currency, which is the reason you see those currency-exchange kiosks with neon signs well beyond areas frequented by foreign tourists.

Point of no return has passed. Things like this will affect not just 0.001% of the population (as the idea of blocking Github), it will affect everyone in Russia. And this will finally make them fight against the regime.

> And this will finally make them fight with the regime.

Don't be too sure of that. But it does increase the chances.

"Fight with" can mean "fight for" or "fight against", which do you mean?

fixed, thanks.

All it takes is 5 million of it them out on the street in protest and Putin's goons will be overwhelmed. They face arrest while Ukrainians face bombs. The whole world is rallying behind Ukraine and the Russian people themselves have the biggest power to stop him.

5 millions unarmed protesting people can do nothing to dictatorship. You need military to stand against Putin.

Exactly, Belarus did not go well.

If 5 million people march against him, the army will follow

That didn’t happen in Belarus and Hong Kong.

3% of the population rising up is enough to make social change. At some point there is a tipping point where even the army can't stop it.

There is no point where unarmed population can win with military and police. 2 million Hong Kong protesters out of 8 million population didn’t win.

From my US perspective the average Russians are enabling their government by allowing them to wage war. If average Russians leveraged consequences on your leaders that reflected your 8% approval rate; then the conflict would end.

Also, from a US perspective and ignoring the news media... from a former webmaster... Russia is literally the Brotherhood of Nod from the CNC game series. Your leader is Kane. By all appearances; Russia has no organic traffic. Just spiders and saboteurs. I have never seen a large organization that did not unilaterally geoblock any and all requests specifically from Russia and Belarus. Do you know why? Because there are no legitimate users from those countries. Just the worst kind of spam; the worst kind of fraud; basically the bane of the internet. Probably about 3/4 of the crap in the honey pots is Russian sponsored. It would be great if Russian citizens would demand accountability from their government for harboring and promoting international cybercrime. I can't speak for the rest of the world but from where I'm sitting; Russia gets a lot more value from being part of the internet than the rest of the world gets from Russia being a part of the internet.

>By all appearances; Russia has no organic traffic. Just spiders and saboteurs. [...] Because there are no legitimate users from those countries. Just the worst kind of spam; the worst kind of fraud; basically the bane of the internet.

That sound suspiciously close to

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

> From my own US perspective the average Russians are enabling their government by allowing them to wage war. If average Russians leveraged consequences on your leaders that reflected your 8% approval rate; then the conflict would end.

From my US perspective, average Americans are enabling their government by allowing them to wage a 3-decade long war against Russia. If average Americans leveraged consequences on your leaders that reflected your president's god awful, approval rate, then the conflict would end.

You don't have to stan for Putin to see that US and NATO (i.e. the US) have a huge amount of responsibility for what's happening right now. The crazy thing is that it's the only thing we as Americans have even a hair of a say about. We can't influence the Russian government. Maybe we can influence our own.

> Russia is literally the Brotherhood of Nod from the CNC game series

You love to see guys just tell on themselves like this.

> zelon88

Completely unrelated I promise but what do those numbers mean

> You don't have to stan for Putin to see that US and NATO (i.e. the US) have a huge amount of responsibility for what's happening right now.

Woah - how huge an amount are you talking about ? Higher than Russia / Ukraine ?

The Russian elites seemed to be doing great - they own Aluminum companies, soccer teams, Putin built his new palace - why the need to invade a neighbor country ?

Not OP, but I assume they are referring to foreign policy makers that believe in balance of power politics. If you have committed and great powers being pushed to the brink, they are not going to fall over easily, which causes them to take rash actions like we see today.

> Woah - how huge an amount are you talking about ? Higher than Russia / Ukraine ?

Yes, way, way higher than Russia/Ukraine:

https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE

We can influence our own if we demand it. The people compelled Obama & Kerry to backpedal on their plan to invade Syria in 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/31/syrian-air-str...

'... a dramatic turnaround by the White House, which had earlier in the week indicated it was on the verge of launching strikes against Syria ... '

Sad indeed.

Do you see any creative options?

I wonder if the Ukrainians could try to make it super easy and somewhat attractive for Russian soldiers to defect.

Maybe the EU could fund desertion bonuses for Russian soldiers and make a deal with remote countries like Paraguay to temporarily resettle them? Could be a very cost efficient and humane way to tilt the military power balance. It would also put economic pressure on the Russian military apparatus to increase soliers' wages, and Ukraine would get hold of some much needed gear.

> I wonder if the Ukrainians could try to make it super easy and somewhat attractive for Russian soldiers to defect.

That's what they constantly calling for: surrender if you're in the action. It's very attractive when the alternative is getting shot. Of course, there's matter of what to do with POWs after this is over, whether to kick them out back to Russia from them to taken to the wall or to the gulags. But that would be later.

The problem is acting on that when you're a soldier. All soldiers of all countries are brainwashed into following orders, not making they personal educated decisions about every operation they participate in. It's also a bit hard to just go and surrender when you're not cued in into what's happening and was not following news for the past week from the comfort of your home. It's a bit hard to surrender immediately when your first contact with the other side starts with a strike on your column and gunfire in your direction.

>" whether to kick them out back to Russia from them to taken to the wall or to the gulags."

I think if that's the offer they'll pass

I saw a comment on Twitter from a Russian expat saying something like “if the EU offered NATO citizenship to every Russian soldier, this war would be over tomorrow morning.”

Obviously a lot of magic-wand-waving there. But… seriously, is it that crazy?

Well, NATO citizenship doesn't exist as a concept, so taken literally, yes. NATO is a defensive pact between nations, not a supergovernment like the EU.

This is very good idea. Not sure about Paraguay as it will just guarantee nothing but miserable life but if offered resettlement into West I think they would leave in droves. Putin might wake up without the soldiers.

They could not guarantee the safe transport of their families away from Russian reach for this to succeed spontaneously.

Aren't ordinary Russian people fairly supportive of the Russian imperialism? Didn't Putin have a very strong improvement in ratings in 2014, when first meddling with Ukraine's affairs? Around half of Russians were positive about the current invasion days before it started (and went well south from there). Keep in mind, we talk about one of their most brotherly nations out there.

It's sad in some universal way but I'm far from feeling empathetic. It's been too much abuse.

Do you trust opinion polls of people subject to autocratic regimes? Do you trust the people doing the polling? If you lived in Russia and you got a call from a stranger asking if you support Navalny would you say yes?

Seems obvious these issues basically mean all such polls are garbage.

Well, we know that in many dictatorships support of the leader is marginal (e.g. just across the border - Belarus). This does not seem to be the case with Putin.

And yes, you can say you don't like the war in a poll. It's not North Korea.

Maybe you can see changes but you can’t see the actual number. The people being polled and the pollsters themselves are incentivized to lie.

They poisoned Navalny and then killed the doctor who treated him. If I am Russian living in Russia and I am asked by a stranger if I support Navalny, I don’t see any problem lying.

I doubt the average Russian is worried of receiving the same treatment that Navalny was given. The same way the average American isn't worried about being treated like Snowden or any other person labeled "enemy of the state".

Responding as someone that has spent a good amount of time there, having trained a long time to fight Russians.

> We rightly stand in solidarity with Ukraine

Which Ukraine? There are actually two of them!

The eastern half is culturally, economically, philisophically, politically, Russian and in Russia's sphere of influence.

The western half is like continental Europe.

This is why I have joked w friends there, calling the East "Little Russia", or, "Western Russia". This was before all the recent wars too.

> Imagine living somewhere where your future just got vaporized and if you speak up about it, you risk ending up in a gulag. It’s a nightmare.

The Russians on the Wastern Front really defeated the Nazi War machine of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe & SS, not us Yanks & Brits on the West. They did this at a huge cost and lost ~8-10M men, ~20M in total, in the process. This is actually seared into the Russian memory.

They will never permit a hostile enemy this close to their borders again.

Particularly not an enemy that promised a number of times never to move NATO Eastward [1] [2] , and has recently fomented color revolutions [3] in a number of their allies, and, is regularly enlisting NGOs to attack them.

Nope, we gave them casus belli a long time ago, and the US mainstream media regularly stokes the fires of Russophobia [4]

Remember, it is the same Pro-Nazi Azov Battalion [5] that found a prominent place in the Western Ukrainians military, and then promoted them to SF, and gave them western advisers and western arms.

> "Although Moscow had little choice but to acquiesce to the admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into NATO, Russian concerns grew as enlargement continued. It didn’t help that enlargement was at odds with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s verbal assurance to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that if Germany were allowed to reunify within NATO then the alliance would not move “one inch eastward”—a pledge Gorbachev foolishly failed to codify in writing. (Baker and others dispute this characterization, and Baker has denied that he made any formal pledges.) Russia’s doubts increased when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003—a decision that showed a certain willful disregard for international law—and even more after the Obama administration exceeded the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and helped oust Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. Russia had abstained on the resolution—which authorized protecting civilians but not regime change—and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates later commented that “the Russians felt they had been played for suckers.” These and other incidents help explain why Moscow is now insisting on written guarantees." [6]

Yet, here we are, literally getting in bed with Nazis for the sake of NATO adventurism. This is why I am against getting involved.

[1] https://mltoday.com/new-document-us-promised-not-to-expand-n...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-01-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution

[4] https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/

[5] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ab7dw/azov-battalion-ukrain...

[6] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-cri...

The whole Nato expansion promise thing seem a pretty strained argument. The same parties negotiated and signed various treaties regarding this issue in the following years (paris charter, budapest memorandum, NATO foundation act with russia). There russia and other signatories guarantee ukraine their souvereign borders and free choice of military alliance. NATO has an open door policy since its inception 1949, nothing changed there.

Why would anybody think that NATO would be bound to this verbal musings that are clearly superceded by signed treaties?

@4) "...This is scarcely surprising because, for all the expectations of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine predicted as imminent by President Biden and Boris Johnson, this has not occurred. Supposedly, Russians commanders leading 190,000 Russian troops had received definitive orders to attack at the weekend, and by now their tank columns should be racing towards Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, but in fact they have not moved."

This did not age well.

@5) Yep. Ppl tend to get radicalized if they are in an protracted existential war against a superior enemy.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and to join NATO, it needs the confirmation of 30 countries. Because Russia has strong ties to many of the countries in NATO, NATO is not likely to confirm Ukraine membership.

Putting a powerful alliance on your borders, and moving missiles close to your borders is a casus belli

We Americans have moved to blockade Cuba (but calling it a quarantine to be PC) when the Russians did the same with Cuba. [1]

> This did not age well.

They are not seeking to destroy Ukraine, only to capture it. This is not a repeat of the Nazi's capture of Ukraine in which much of the cities were destroyed.

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

How can it be a casus belli when russia signed multiple treaties explicitely allowing ukraine free choice of military alliance.

The cuba missile crisis was pretty bonkers from the US side. We were lucky that there were more level headed people on the sowjet side.

Yes, you are right that ukraine acceptance into NATO was not going to happen soon, most likely many decades away. Nobody would allow a country in that has open territorial conflicts with russia.

Putin wants to annex belarus and ukraine, all other words out of his mouth are just tactical blabla.

Looks like a run.

According too this article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russians-withdraw-2413-...

Russians withdrew 111 billion rouble ($1.3 billion) on Wednesday and Thursday. That's a marathon.

Not sure how much cash those people think that ATM can hold.

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