Russian news channel RT to broadcast on Rumble after Big Tech curbs

Maybe, maybe not. There would probably be no point in peacekeeping operations if there was no transcontinental military industrial complex as a factor for geopolitical destabilization.

> Russia's track record goes back in history much further than 1949

Considering the historic period you are referring to, Russian track record seems much more restrained then other superpowers rising in 20th century. Maybe you should be more specific?

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Fortunately you don't seem to have much (any?) history of posting like the above, so it should be easy to fix.

> Sounds ridiculous, like a half-fake unnuanced broken-phone twisted misrepresentation

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30578125 "Moscow police officers stop people, request their phones to read their messages"

Read the comments, not just the headline. It sounds like what many people would expect in any country tending towards dictatorship. If it's not happening, then of course, great. But it doesn't sound ridiculous.

>> There are by now many reports of people in Russia who simply don't believe that's what's happening

> And this, kids, is the exact reason why we need a real pluralism of opinions and shouldn't rely on one-sided biased sources, as you can't even do a reality check.

And thank you for contributing your own opinion. It could have done without the "that's ridiculous" etc. though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60600487 "My city's being shelled, but mum won’t believe me"

Parents say things that children see are contradicted with their own eyes. The parents are, like your writing, dismissive, laughing it off, saying the other person is silly. Understandably, the children are distressed and think their parents are out of touch with reality.

In the West we all know large numbers of people who think naive things. So it's reasonable to think there can be plenty of Russians who think in that way too.

>> If I were in Russia and asked my view,

> This image is cartoonishly ridiculous. Do you actually unironically believe in some sort of secret police, asking for your opinion on war?

Russians leaving Russia in a hurry have said they were questioned at the airport by border guards about their views on the war, and being very afraid that if they give the wrong answers they won't be free to leave. There is certainly some asking about opinions on war going on.

Maybe it's too much to worry about secret police in some countries. But at least parts of Russia have a long history of secret police and good reasons for paranoia during the cold war. You cannot dismiss the re-emergence of that out of hand. We still remember the polonium-204 and recent Novichok poisonings by Russia in the UK, so we're inclined to think of Putin as still thinking that way.

So with that in mind, we were talking about "independent polls". That means phoning people at random, or similar. It's not that I'd expect some poller to be secret police, it's the 1% possibility that my answer might get processed somewhere with extremely bad consequences if I were frank and vocal with my answers. What would you think if someone you've never met or heard of phoned you at random, in Moscow, to ask your views on the war in the last few days?

The recently enacted anti-protest law with ridiculously long prison sentences shows there is a crackdown happening. We know the authorities like to hand out long sentences for holding the "wrong" views. Remind me, how long has Navalny been imprisoned so far? "Alexei Navalny faces 15 more years in prison as new trial starts" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/alexei-navalny...).