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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

#161

Post by bnralt »

agumonkey wrote: post #53
arka2147483647 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what russian trolls want. So much uncertainty, that you don’t belive anything. Not even truth.

Just today someone posted of a video involving brit journalists' car being shot It's a 'shocker' sequence, but then someone explains "one of the journalist was involved into staging false interviews before". So I thought it would be nice to share the article talking about the previous staged interviews, as a cautious tale for all to avoid responding to shocking civilian shot videos. Few minutes ago someone told me th…

That article was strange. The journalists say that they were in an area controlled by the Ukrainian government, full of tense checkpoints, and at the time thought that they were being fire upon by Ukrainian soldiers at a checkpoint. But then the Ukrainian government claimed it was Russian saboteurs, so all the news just uncritically repeated that.

It's not that these checkpoints aren't prone to shooting at people. Here's a Twitter thread[1] by an American journalist where the unit he's embedded with kills people in an ambulance that didn't stop at a checkpoint. Again, the ambulance is labelled as Russian saboteurs.

Keep in mind 7 days ago the New York Times were reporting about intense gun battles in Kyiv[2], which again, were blamed on undercover Russian squads. "Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news site, reported combat 400 yards from Maidan Square in central Kyiv." But there hasn't been much evidence of a Russian invasion of the city yet from what I can find, or that the city is crawling with Russian soldiers.

I think it's at least an open question right now of where the violence inside the city is coming from (and how much of it could be connected to flooding the civilian population with guns).

[1] https://twitter.com/terrelljstarr/status/1498067362595155968 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/25/world/russia-ukraine...

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

#162

Post by lolinder »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #124
hutzlibu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Every Russian who leaves is a Russian who won't get conscripted, who will pay no more taxes to Putin. They know what's going on on the inside and can share with the rest of us so we can make informed decisions. And aside from all of that, they no longer have to fear for their lives if they oppose the regime.

From both a humanitarian and a strategic perspective, embracing Russian defectors is the very most important thing that we can be doing right now that we aren't already doing. The only reason not to do so is hate.

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

#163

Post by skeletal88 »

therusskiy wrote: post #6

I managed to escape the country yesterday, had to flight to Egypt of all places, because ALL (even business) tickets were sold out. The recent news is that starting March 6 all international flights are suspended, the trap has closed. The disheartening thing is that even if you never supported Putin, other countries treat you as enemy. I am at Georgia now and banks refuse to open bank accounts to Russians, and I need…

I have a colleague from Russia who moved here a few years ago. But.. still he is using talking-points that come from Kremlin's propaganda, like "The US will fight Russia to the last ukrainian" and "I would feel safer here if we weren't in NATO, this makes us a target for Russia" and "You know that it was promised that NATO wouldn't expand?" and "Your country joined the Soviet Union voluntarily".

So.. even when some people move abroad and say they don't support Putin, they still have this.. imperialist mindset that everyone is out to get Russia and it's actions are justified to protect itself and so on.

As an explanation about what people think, not as an accusation against you.

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

#164

Post by daenz »

jacquesm wrote: post #123
daenz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 domest…

That makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is why it is presented in such a duplicitous way. It's one thing to say "When a country has this kind of internal turmoil, martial law is something that we need to watch out for." It's another thing to say "Unnamed official sees 'signs' on social media about martial law."

One way is transparent, re-enforces critical thinking, while the other way is "believe this because we told you."

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

#165

Post by croes »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #124
hutzlibu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wrong question. If Russians have a choice, why not Ukrainians?

People who don't wont to fight are bad as soldiers so why force them?

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

#166

Post by bitcharmer »

therusskiy wrote: post #115
yoavm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeating the parent comment - What's the option, though? What better things can we do to help the > 1,000,000 Ukrainian refugees, and all the other millions that are currently being bombed by Russia? Putin _is_ getting his power from the Russian people. It's unfortunate they believe his lies, but they do, and that's what makes him strong.

to be honest, I don't know, that is the reason I left, I have no hope and don't know how to change things. What could help is all these companies that are blocking Russians sending information to Russians about this war and about Putin's actions. If all Russians on Google, Playstation and etc saw more information it would help get through the blockade. Companies haven't been doing it because it requires more effort a…

No post body was provided.

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

#167

Post by akamaka »

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…

> Am I saying the quiet part out loud?

Yes, in some sense. This is your own internal process of turning all the information into a picture of what is really going on.

When you start projecting it on other people and making judgements about whether they are “reasonable”, you’re going find out that they have a very different picture from you. There are a lot of people who have lived or worked in that part of the world, speak the local languages, and have a much higher ability to filter the news stream into an accurate picture of what’s actually happening on the ground.

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

#168

Post by akomtu »

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.

It didn't work with North Korea, it won't work with Russia. Populace there is unarmed, disorganised and divided, while the Putin's gang is very organised and not shy of using violence against dissenters. When NATO says "we're trying to push russian joes to fix their government", they really mean "we're afraid to confront your bully, he's just too strong and cruel for us."

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

#169

Post by hutzlibu »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #124
hutzlibu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

It does not, as only a very tiny fraction of those who want to get out, can actually get out. And some choose to stay because of family, buisness, whatever.

But those who left will be the reminder of the status quo for everyone - especially if it was the well educated who left.

"And like I said, Ukrainians have no choice."

But this is the choice of the ukrainian government. I am against mandatory conscripting and would not accept to be force drafted myself. And I would not want to fight next to people who might flee any second.

"They can stop it."

And have you stopped the iraq war? Or closed guantanamo? Or stopped the war in yemen?

Why not? Or are you in support of them?

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

#170

Post by formvoltron »

therusskiy wrote: post #128
formvoltron wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lukashenko & Belarus is different than Russia because in Belarus, it is all the people vs the Lukashenko regime PLUS Putin's regime.

In Moscow there is no foreign influencer. It is 11 million Muskovites vs the Kremlin. Who would win that battle?

Even just 2 million people shaking their keys would send a message that Putin needs to change course.

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