Hacker News Reader

Everyone I know knew, but we live in Europe. Your mileage may vary depending on where you live.

I live in the US, and so far the only people that knew are the very few news skeptics that follow international news sources online. And even then, we had to share with each other a lot.

But I had watched documentaries about Ukraine years ago, and since most people watch only Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, etc... they knew nothing at all.

So when Russia invaded most people were shocked, where I, and those few others that were information, were not as suprised.

I don’t think that being aware of the history of the conflict had anything to do with being surprised or not by the invasion. I have family in both Russia and Ukraine and nobody expected it.

Even the Russian soldiers who found themselves being sent into Ukraine were surprised.

But did they know there was war in Ukraine for years? I suspect this is common knowledge in Europe, but it's extremely rare knowledge here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com