Exactly this, on all counts. Killing brown civilians is somehow fine, while killing white civilians is somehow isn't.
355 karma · joined September 5, 2017
The world will not stop isolating Russia while Putin is still in power. And even after he's gone (death from natural causes in 10 to 15 years), it will take another 5 years to partially recover our relationship with the world. The full recovery will never happen.
> I'm sorry but you can't tell me you weren't aware of wars in Afganistan or Chechnya?
1. Identity is an internal belief, which may or may not correpsond to the facts.
2. Factually, Russia never was a country of peaceful defenders (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia).
3. During the post-WW2 Soviet era, the main focus of internal propaganda was Peace and Victory over the nazi Germany. It is during that time the identity of a "peaceful defender" was formed and ingrained into the Soviet psyche (and it survived Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan). Later, this identity was reinforced by Putin.
4. I still know a lot of people in Russia who hold that identity. I would still call it a national identity.
5. After the Ukraine war that identity can no longer be held without denial or serious cognitive dissonance.
6. Many people will go into denial, and many people will have an identity crisis.
7. However, "That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be".
The load-bearing pillar of the Russian identity is the idea that we are a nation of defenders, who fought off the biggest invasion in history. We defend, not intrude.
If you remember history, there was another guy who attacked a slavic country, in the morning, without declaring war, hoping for a blitzkrieg. We are that guy now.
I thought about renouncing my Russian nationality. I may have Russian origins, and I may speak Russian, and I may live in Russia – but my nationality would be blank. Null. Nothing. Empty string.
I decided against that. By renouncing my nationality I would also renounce Lomonosov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Vavilov, Surikov, Vrubel, Tarkovsky, Korolyev, and Gagarin. I refuse to let a single tyrant tarnish the Russian contribution to human civilization.
Absolutely, older Russians ("The TV people" as we call them here) did support Putin before the war. However, I haven't yet formed my opinion about what they think now. Remember, they've been raised during the Soviet era, when Ukraine was considered one of the brother nations to Russia, who fought together with us against Hitler. And now we're bombing their cities -- we're the Hitler now.
Maybe they'll go into denial ("NATO hates us and forced us to do it"). Maybe. Also, their life quality will severely degrade in the coming months -- they'll have to spend much more money on food and medicine; and that would also be a factor.
Yes, I'd be able to live quite well with the cheaper ruble, but that requires being able to retain the foreign revenue flow into Russia and being able to convert the dollar to ruble at a decent rate. There's still a lot of uncertainty about both of these.
As for why am I staying... well, that's a big, big question. I won't feel at home abroad. Yes, I've been to multiple countries in Europe, and I'd be perfectly fine on an everyday level, but I won't be at home. And I'm not exactly young either.
It is sad that the Russian World is really small, compared to the Angloshere, and it's dominated by Putin's Russia. We Russians don't really have another place to run to... Yes we can smuggle ourselves to Europe, but we'll spend decades on getting the citizenship, diligently working boring CRUD jobs, wasting our potential until we're old...
On the contrary, when Puting announced the recognition of two Donbass republics as independent countries a few days before the war, there was a round of cheer and optimism -- because that would mean that the cross-border shellings in Donbass will finally stop. But that cheer has completely evaporated the morning the invasion started.
(Take this with a grain of salt -- this is based on my personal observations of my relatively narrow social circle, plus I may be projecting).
> In Russia the situation is that most people actually support Putin
I've yet to see a single [Z] or [V] sticker on a car in my city. I haven's seen a single Uber driver excitedly telling me about "our victories" -- they've become much less chatty since the war started.
Yes, I saw a few video billboards with clumsy [Z] propaganda, but the ad companies may have been forced by the state to display it, under the threat of withdrawing their license to operate an ad business.
In my social circle (educated people -- architects, artists, IT, engineers, etc.) there's not a single person who supports the war. A few are in denial, but the majority is profoundly depressed by what's happening.
A personal datapoint: My wife hated everything Ukrainian for all her life, way before the war and even before the Crimea events. She has hardwired, biological, instinctual nationalism on a level that would be more appropriate for a football ultra. However, she's been genuinely horrified and gravely depressed since the first day of the war.
> Russia has a military doctrine of "Escalate to De-escalate"
Torrents, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
> I was trying to figure out why the passed this law now.
> I don't know what use Putin would have of scaring his officials.
Also, I predict that Russia may be allowed to sell its oil and gas again, but the proceeds will not go to Russia: they will be directed towards rebuilding Ukraine.
Their approach is working. We've configured our "watercooler" chat to auto-delete messages after 24 hours, and deleted all history.
I didn't comb through my private messages yet, but that increasingly seems like a good idea.
1) Neutralize and disarm the "territorial defence" militias who currently have about 30K assault rifles.
2) Maintain police precence on a large and hostile territory.
3) Provide food, shelter, and medical aid to thousands, if not tens of thousands of people displaced by the war.
And they'll have to do that without oil and gas money, and without western medical supplies (which I assume will not be readily available anymore).
> I sincerely hope all this goes away as fast as possible
It saddens me that Russia won't be able to contribute human capital towards any of these goals for at least 20 years.
> Can I ask, how are these economic restrictions affecting you in your daily life?
My company has two ongoing long-term projects (both took about 10 years), which now increasingly look like wasted time and money. If I'm cut off from my income source, I won't be able to retain key people, and will have to halt the development on both projects.
> what is the likely end game now for Putin?
Endgame for Russia: after the death of Putin, in about 20 years from now we go the old tried-and-true route: crash, Perestroika, re-integration with the west -- but this time, we will be disarmed and de-fanged. Then we remain in that subdued state until the next drastic world-changing event (such as the advent of strong AI), and after that all bets are off.