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Comment by ISL | Hacker News Reader

If you are in Russia, please do whatever you can, however small, to bring this war to an end. Nobody is winning.

that's the same thing as asking people in europe to please do whatever they can to influence NATO's behavior...

or asking somebody in Colombia to please help stop all that cocaine (or dunno)

there's something deeply flawed in the assumptions of how the world works when pleading to a random person in a country to please please influence the actions of the international institutions controlling the country.

The main sponsors of war with Ukraine are EU and US who continue to buy oil and gas from Putin. It is estimated that since Feb 24 EU has paid more than 60 Billion Euro [1] for resources stolen from Russian people. If this revenue stream would dry out, Putin's economy would collapse overnight. So the most effective strategy is to cut the payments, now.

(I personally think that EU should have stopped buying energy resources from Russia in 2014 after Crimea annexation. Instead, EU countries increased energy dependence on Russia and continued to fuel Putin's oppression and war machines)

As for my personal efforts, well, I don't think that there is a realistic way of doing something significant. I have protested Putin's regime for more than 10 years, was detained once, cops threatened to plant drugs on me, and do nasty things to my family. I don't think unarmed protests have any prospects in stopping Putin's regime anyway: Ukraine has an army with heavy weapons, Javelins and Baryaktars, and help from the West, and they still have difficulty stopping Putin's orcs. And whatever he has thrown on Ukraine he has at home - so good luck fighting that barehanded. By now I think everybody understands that if the protesters will gather enough strength so riot police would not be able to disperse them, he'll just order to mow the protesters down with machine guns and flamethrowers.

So, a few years ago I moved most of my business offshore to EU, and pay ~zero taxes to Putin's regime, but now this virtue signalling campaign by western businesses cancelling everything russian actually creates great difficulties to simply function. Russians were discriminated even before by EU and US institutions and banks, and now this discrimination is turned up to eleven. The sad irony is that most of these discriminating measures actually help Putin, like idiotic ban of Visa / Mastercard payments - now Russian people have great difficulty paying for foreign VPS services, for example, and can only visit websites that perpetuate existing state propaganda.

[1]: https://crea.shinyapps.io/russia_counter/

Thank you.

When people said the same thing about Iraq and Afghanistan, what did you do?

I voted and advocated for change in directions I felt were healthy and positive.

Well, I too have always voted against Putin and his gang, and was always very vocal about my political views. Somehow, it didn't help.

Yeah, because this is how wars are stopped. /s

The prolonged war is a US strategy. Asking a random Russian citizens to stop it is like asking a random American to stop it

This is a weird framing. “Prolonging the war is a US strategy” only makes sense if you believe Russia has an unassailable right to conquer Ukraine. If Russia wants to stop the war, it need only withdraw its forces. The US is only prolonging the war in the sense that it’s preventing Russia from winning it. It’s unreasonable to expect the rest of the world to roll over and play dead because easing Russia’s conquest would shorten the war.

Russia needs to control Ukraine to prevent NATO. Ukraine is a pawn in a larger game. The US is prolonging the war to deplete Russia but the strategy is costing Ukraine lives, Ukraine cities, causing a European energy crisis and costing the west wealth all while making China stronger.

That’s a completely delusional viewpoint. Russia can claim to need anything it wishes to, but that doesn’t entitle it or a resistance-free conquest. Russia invaded another sovereign country, which is obviously the thing that is costing all of those lives. The idea that you can invade your neighbor and then hyperventilate about them fighting back is childish and naive. It’s comical to rain artillery fire on another country and then blame America for proving the ammunition to shoot back. Again, your frame only makes sense if you think Russia has some special, magical right to invade its neighbors and kill their citizens, which practically no one outside of Russia believes.

Yes, it’s killing lots of Ukrainians, causing an energy crisis, and enhancing China’s relative position. Those are the horrifying consequences of Russia’s invasion, not of the fight against it. There’s no world in which you get to invade another country and then shame them for fighting back, at least without the derision of the rest of to world. What did you think would happen? “Ah, Russians think they ‘need’ to do this, better lay down and die”,

Of course the US is funding and arming Ukraine. It would be foolish not to. But what game are Ukrainians a pawn in? The fight for their own survival? If Russia doesn’t want to be “depleted” it need merely leave. The decision has always been in Putin’a hands.

Russia has the same degree of agency as any other country, but you are acting like it’s the pawn in its own foolish war. Perhaps Russia is a nation of children who think they are merely blown about by the wind, unable to take responsibility for even their most explicit actions?

Putin repeatedly kicked a massive tiger and then acted hurt, full of righteous indignation, when the tiger’s claws came out. No amount of mental gymnastics is going to change that.

Russia cannot leave or NATO will let Ukraine in and put troops/bombs on the edge of Russian. Failing to understand that makes you an easy pawn. Calling millions of people children tells me you are out of your depth.

You are the one claiming Russians are children, but with different words. You say Russia has no choice, but you are also claiming the American response is a strategy to prolong the war, as opposed to, say, the natural reaction. So in your telling, Russian behavior is compelled and mechanical, utterly lacking agency, and the US is, somehow, from the other side of the planet, the one with agency on how the war goes. That is a child and an adult.

Pawns are the players not making choices.

I don’t think that; I think instead that Russia is being foolish and contemptible in prosecuting an unjust and insane war, and is surprised to find out the world isn’t playing along. They are adults and they are responsible for their actions. And obviously the war is their action.

> The prolonged war is a US strategy.

If so, that's a stupid strategy. Russia can easily defeat the US's strategy by leaving Ukraine.

Russia cannot give up the Ukraine anymore than the US could not let Canada fall into the hands of China. Ukraine is a buffer to NATO.

It's a Biden strategy.. so classifying it as stupid makes sense. The thought is to prolong the war so Russia becomes weak and wastes resources and go bankrupt. Meanwhile it benefits China..

No, no I am not.

If I were winning, the demagogueries we call democracies would be extinguished from existence, and new nations would be forming in their place.

And as far as Russia goes; it would have never gotten this far if 'I' were winning.

The Cabal is winning, and they have been for years now. Russia vs Ukraine is just their latest plaything.

Nothing we do or say will end this bullshit until the rest of you do what is right for once in your lives, and not just whatever is most convenient to you.

Have a nice day. Might be your last. Who knows? Nobody.

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