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Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

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Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#721

It's a bit alarming that some HN posters are saying that Ukraine never applied to join NATO. That they did is the central seed of the John Mearsheimer lecture 'Why is Ukraine the West's Fault?' [1], which got about another 2m views in the last 48 hours. Mearsheimer provides a direct quote demonstrating NATO's resolve to eventually incorporate Ukraine, which was pledged at the Bucharest 2008 summit. Bush was also push…

I know you’re going to disagree with this using some silly rationalization, I won’t respond to after this because it fundamentally sounds like you don’t believe is Ukraine’s right to self determination and you think that they should be bound by deals the US or Russia have made on its behalf in the past which Ukraine had no say in. Here it is, NATO is fundamentally a defensive organization, and Ukraine is a democratic…

They did, in 2014 their democratically elected president chose to stop/delay EU talks because it would cost the country much more at the time (Russia was giving them 1/3 price for the gas and much more money than EU wanted to give). Then Maidan happened and the rest is history.

I agree with you in principle, but it is a sad reality that we live in a world where it is not the case. If you had a bully in a classroom, you would not go around provoke him, you would try to live with him even though you don't like him.

As for the NATO membership, yes Ukraine can want to join, but NATO had to accept them, all members had to approve before that happening. NATO could have said publicly that they would not accept Ukraine into NATO for at least 20-30 years, and that they would not put NATO equipment or troops in Ukraine, that would not prevent Ukraine from doing whatever they wanted with their own military.

There is a reason why not European countries are in the EU. Ukraine wanting to be in NATO does not automatically make it wise for NATO to accept them. Kosovo (which US recognizes as a separate country) cries on all bells to be accepted in NATO, but it is not happening, why? Because it is unwise at the time to do that. NATO loses nothing, and bully is not provoked.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#722
post #508

I am in Ukraine right now. In a small village to the north of Kyiv. I am the author of PhotoSwipe ( https://github.com/dimsemenov/photoswipe ). Yesterday I was filling bags with sand to make a fortification for local defenders. I hear artillery as I am writing this. And by the way, you get used to it. In the last few days I received about 20 emails offering support, none of them were from russian devs. One asked a te…

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...

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

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#723

I havent seen what Russia's and China's combined military stats are to NATO yet. Russia lead on most nukes, US everything else, but China is 3rd and we know they have some very disciplined military and a far larger population. Here in the UK we have been forbidden in law from interacting with any Russia entity, so Russian bank accounts are frozen, cant provided good's or services to any Russian entity.

There is data here, IDK how reliable it is https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.php

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Georgia and Ukraine are tightly connected in this through the same precursor events. The "West" is simply deaf. Multiple analysts had brought these concerns since before Crimea. (Disclaimer I am from the West -- trying to be objective here and focusing on the non-NATO side.) The diplomatic relationships since Russia Federation's birth have been problematic and idiosyncratic. Russian people wanted recognition of their…

I've watched the Pozner video before, but I would be highly skeptical. Vladimir Pozner is a former KGB propagandist according to his own admission. Thus he has quite a good understanding about effective propaganda: "Intelligent propaganda is not a propaganda that tells blatant lies. It's something where you try to show the good side of what your [sic] supporting and you don't tell about the negatives, you only tell a…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#725
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

For 11 months. Wow.

My point is (surely obviously? I do know the war happened!) not that it worked out greatly, just that yes, they did think they might talk Hitler down.

If you really get into it, there's an argument that it bought valuable time; that maybe it was only ever supposed to be a delay, but I think that might be giving too much credit - a positive sure, just perhaps not the intention: Chamberlain returned to London declaring 'peace for our time'.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that only thing EU and US have done about Russia escalating situations all over the place (Crimea, North Caucasus, Georgia, South Ossetia, Chechnya, Dagestan etc) is talk, talk, talk. Has it helped? Nope. Russia seems to be immune to talking.

We talked, but what concessions did we make?

You mean concessions like giving up security guarantees for all Eastern European NATO countries and completely giving up any support for the sovereignty of Ukraine, allowing Russia to dictate to Ukraine which alliances they can choose?

Because these were literally Russia's ridiculous "demands".

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. JetBrains, s.r.o., producers of IntelliJ (and a bunch of other IDEs such as Android Studio, PhpStorm and CLion) are incorporated in the Czech Republic, but in practice, all the development is done in Russia.

Russia is certainly about to lose some serious technical talent. I can't imagine any devs would want to stick around in that country. Hope Putin doesn't block all ways for them to emigrate.

https://3dnews-ru.translate.goog/1061104/mintsifri-predstavi...

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#728

Are any countries accepting refuges from Russia that seek asylum? I know some Russians that are wholly against their Government's actions. I hope some provisions are being made to allow those who wish escape to do so...

>Are any countries accepting refuges from Russia that seek asylum? This is an important topic. Some EU countries like Czechia are even blocking visas for Russian citizens now and I think this will be a trend in other EU countries. AFAIK, since Russia is the aggressor here and is (on paper) a democratic country (but not really), then its citizens are not considered yet victims of the war, and are most likely not falli…

> They're forced into a conflict they don't want to be in, and are suffering the consequences.

Ukrainians are also forced into a conflict they don't want. Unfortunately, it's up to both the Ukrainians and Russians to do something about it, not Ukrainians alone.

The Ukrainians clearly made their decision. Now it's up to the Russian people to make theirs.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#729

Are any countries accepting refuges from Russia that seek asylum? I know some Russians that are wholly against their Government's actions. I hope some provisions are being made to allow those who wish escape to do so...

>Are any countries accepting refuges from Russia that seek asylum? This is an important topic. Some EU countries like Czechia are even blocking visas for Russian citizens now and I think this will be a trend in other EU countries. AFAIK, since Russia is the aggressor here and is (on paper) a democratic country (but not really), then its citizens are not considered yet victims of the war, and are most likely not falli…

CNN finds that twice as many Russians believe it would be right for Moscow to use military force to prevent Kyiv from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as say it would be wrong.

One out of every two Russians (50%) says it would be right, while only a quarter (25%) say it would be wrong. The other quarter (25%) are unsure, according to the survey.

But the poll also found that more Russians think it would be wrong than right to use military force “to reunite Russia and Ukraine” – two countries with a long and complicated history of being intertwined.

It’s a close call, but 43% of Russians said use of military force against Ukraine to join it to Russia would be wrong, while 36% said it would be right. (The rest of the respondents said they didn’t know if it would be right or wrong.)

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

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#730

What are the possibilities for an average russian citizen to leave russia and start over somewhere in the west? How about visas? Does anyone know?

My brother was on the verge of traveling to Russia from Latvia recently as a tourist. Apparently you can get a bus from Riga to St Petersburg that takes a few hours. I presume you could take one in the other direction to get around the lack of flights etc, but I have no idea about visas etc.

You can get to the border, but it will be hard to impossible to cross it legally right now.
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