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Comment by gdy | Hacker News Reader

Dmytro, I'm Russian living in Russia and I'm devastated and terrified by this war of aggression.

I have friends in Ukraine and I can hear siren wailing while talking with them via Skype.

There are already about 30 thousand members of Russian IT-industry who signed open letter against this war. Yesterday it was about 20 thousands.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rSmclqedrhTASIsyXLOz39pU...

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JFYI, I'm also Ukrainian living in Ukraine[0] (Poltava region), actually joined territorial defence forces as volunteer to defend own town.

All Russian should do right now — go outside of your house, gather with other Russsians and strike & show your protest "by hands" near your city administration!

Signing "open letter", "petitions" or just "keep placard" would NOT has any effect — so do not waste your and our time & lives!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395897

I know

I really appreciate your position, but the letter is incredibly weak. I understand that it's aimed at government that won't read it otherwise, but:

You call it "operation", it's not operation, it's war.

You ask to prevent human casualties, but thousands are already dead.

A lot of people signing from companies such as Yandex - a search engine that promotes propaganda and hides evidence-based journalism. From VK - a social network that bans opposition communities and spreads misinformation. You can't have it both ways folks.

I didn't want to imply that we are doing anything meaningful, just that we at the very least don't condone what's happening.

Many are running the hell away from Russia and that's something the government has already got concerned about. Unlike the letter.

The iron curtain was never about keeping people out, it was about keeping people in.

Yes, my fear is that we are moving into 1990s economically, and politically into the times of the USSR.

For now they are promising tax benefits for programmers and IT-companies, cheap mortgage and safety from being conscripted. The last one is scary.

The exact same happened just before the wall fell in other former USSR countries. Anything to keep the smart people from joining the protests because they needed them badly to keep the country running. In most places that did not work, the writing was on the wall. But it took a long time for it to go from protests to the final effect. Longer than I fear we have today.

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