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Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

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Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#121

Post by lmeyerov »

daenz wrote: post #2

This may very well be true, but I'm having trouble believing anything, from anyone, about the conflict. There is so much propaganda around the subject, that unless you are personally connected to an official source, I believe you can't know with any reasonable certainty. The primary source for this story appears to be public Google Trends data.

Official sources are less reliable: Russia is heavy on propaganda at the state and media levels, and destination country reports will be spiky, slow, or nonexistent.

This presentation is interesting because it is a data presentation that is large, direct, and open: Of Russian IPs using a Google, search terms associated with leaving are going up, even pre-war. Your own research can now be on alternative hypotheses like maybe Google became that much more popular in the last few months in spikey per-keyword patterns, or that the Russian population using Google is big (some X%) but has opposite beliefs of all non-Google users. For both, you can check against something like Yandex, which has a similar feature.

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#122

Post by jmyeet »

Russia is seizing foreign currency reserves (effectively, by forcing conversion to the ruble) held by average Russian citizens. These sanctions are going to be a bad time for them. There are no military options so what else can you do? Still, we shouldn't forget that sanctions are a form of collective punishment that disproportionately affect average citizens.

My faint glimmer of hope here is that the West finally takes actions to stop enabling oligarchs and they can start with denying them real estate in Western urban centers (primarily London and NYC). The UK too could enforce disclosure of who the beneficial owner is for an LLC, something they're meant to do but are incredibly lax about.

The US in pareticular seems to be compltely fine with civil forfeiture (which, for the record, is a disgusting practice that targets people who can't fight back). The least we could do is seize the assets of oligarchs, particularly when identified as having enriched themselves from state theft.

I'm not that hopeful.

As for the Russians trying to escape, I would too, just like I would if I were in Ukraine right now. Best of luck to both groups.

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#123

Post by jacquesm »

daenz wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that there is plenty of evidence that this is really the case. Russians are crossing the border in unprecedented numbers, for instance: https://yle.fi/news/3-12345301 Flying is getting harder and harder so while the borders are still open (there is talk of martial law in Russia, which, even though it was just denied does not seem to have much effect on calming things down, in fact the denial seems to have the…

>there is talk of martial law in Russia I want to highlight this, because I think it illustrates my point about propaganda. I dug around for a source on that statement, and this appears the most reliable source[0]. An anonymous EU official picking up on "signs". Again, this also may be totally true, but it's presented in such a flimsy way, how can a reasonable person be expected to believe it at face value? Am I sayi…

Historically, if the news wasn't good or the situation needed a larger boot to step on people then martial law was taken out of the cupboard to control the population. With 8000+ Russian protestors arrested, a ban on factual news, lots of other restrictions put in place and so on talk of martial law is not all that strange.

Maybe for you it is strange, but for me it is a fairly logical next step in a series of domestic escalations. The same happened in Poland in the 80's in response to the Solidarity movement, authorities used it to be able to use the military against their own civilians. Not that that worked, but that's besides the point, they did in fact try.

And just like with the invasion being a total fabrication of the West right up to the point that it was a fact you could of course do the same thing with martial law.

But some elements of martial law are already present today, some more may follow and who is to say when it becomes enough to say that it actually happened? Would you be satisfied with 8000 people jailed and a ban on the media to report the facts or will it take a Russian army battalion shooting at protestors? Maybe some kids protesting the war jailed? Oh, sorry, that already happened. Or do you believe that is Western propaganda?

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#124

Post by Mikeb85 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #99
Mikeb85 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because Ukrainian men don't have the choice to flee. It's not like Russians are moving away during peaceful times. It's a full on war in which one party is bombing the civilians of a democratic country, threatening NATO with nuclear war and Russians are the only ones who can actually stop it.

I still do not see the logic of punishing people who left russia - as they obviously do not support the war. If they stay and get drafted to fight in the war for real, how does this help? And sure, they could try to organize revolts - but would you? That is extremly dangerous and a million times easier said than done. Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the other hand. Helping those people will mean he…

>Fleeing the country is a strong peaceful revolt on the other hand

No, it just ensures that the only people left in Russia are the ones who support Putin.

And like I said, Ukrainians have no choice. Why should Russians? As another poster said, even autocracies need a certain level of support to operate. It's not fair to punish Russians but their country is literally waging a full scale war while threatening the west with nukes. They can stop it.

Or we can all wait until Kyiv looks like Grozny, millions have died and we're sacrificing the Baltic states to "prevent nuclear war"...

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#125

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Procedural wrote: post #76
formvoltron wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Another reason we don't like Russians is that they are afraid to stand up to their own government. What about billions of Chinese that are afraid to stand up to the communist party?

Billions of Chinese? The PRC only has 1.4 billion people or so.

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#126

Post by formvoltron »

rossdavidh wrote: post #83
formvoltron wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

As an American who has had plenty of disagreement with acts of violence by my government in the past, I have to say I have more sympathy for a Russian who is in this position now. Even in democracies, marching in anti-war protests and voting for anti-war candidates at the next election doesn't always seem to have much impact on the government's behavior, at least in the short term.

Russia is an interesting case because.

* their capitol is also their largest city. 10% of all russians live in Moscow. * If just 1 or 2 million of the 11 million people of moscow went downtown to shake keys in protest, something would change. * The protest does not need to immediately change things. Simply it sends a message. And by shaking keys it sends a message of peace but also of dissatisfaction.

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#127

Post by vbezhenar »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
vbezhenar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> West countries have similar laws. Sorry, but no, we don't. > They even have an entire culture: Cancel Culture. You are either unaware of what cancel culture means or you are changing the subject. > While I hate every discrimination of speech freedom, you can't paint Russia as something unique, West is an example they follow. I think the repression of the free media in Russia is quite uniquely all it's own. It's the…

> Sorry, but no, we don't.

https://www.praguemorning.cz/expressing-support-for-russia-o...

https://spravy.rtvs.sk/2022/02/za-podporu-vojnovej-propagand...

I don't see any difference.

> You are either unaware of what cancel culture means or you are changing the subject.

Of course I'm aware what does it means. I'm also aware of "deplatforming" and other ways to silence unpleasing speech. Which could be described as a single word: censorship.

> I think the repression of the free media in Russia is quite uniquely all it's own.

I thought the same until Europe started to ban Russia Today and other websites. And don't even tell me that it's different. It's a perfectly legal website which tried to present alternative view point. But West is too afraid that its citizens might believe to something other than official propaganda.

> It's the only country that I'm aware of where the head of state gets a dead journalist for their birthday.

Baseless accusations. I could say that western agents killed him. It's just as likely.

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#128

Post by therusskiy »

formvoltron wrote: post #107
therusskiy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

try blaming people born in North Korea, maybe if they are sanctioned and hated more they stop "voting" for kim jong un?

See what I mean. Now you are comparing your situation to North Korea. I doubt you have it as hard as that. Just gather people together, go the central square, and shake keys. They don't have enough jails to hold everyone.

it's not North Korea YET, but it's pretty damn close right now. Remember Belarus protests a year ago, Lukashenko lost the vote by something like 95%. Almost everyone went to protest against Lukashenko, but because he holds on military the protests couldn't do anything. When it comes to how much military Putin has, Lukashenko is not even close.

Re: Russians are trying to flee – data from Google Trends

#130

Post by lenkite »

Tistron wrote: post #47
bsedlm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lot of people seem ok with punishing Russian individuals for the actions of the government. maybe these people have grown in better functioning democracies (unlike Russia or my own country) so they act as if the people were well represented by their governments; unlike reality for most countries with a serious corruption problem.

Everywhere I've seen anyone motivate restrictions on Russian citizens it's been about pushing them to revolt against their government, not about punishing. I don't know whether it makes sense, but it does seem like one of few avenues to try to get rid of putin that has low chance of resulting in atomic war.

Didn't see any revolting Americans when the Iraq War was initiated.
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