921–930 of 933 posts
We are actively trying to help Russian IT specialists to flee. We had over 300 resumes submitted by different people in our Telegram community in just two days. Most of these are senior people, many with experience in Yandex, local branches of Google and other international companies. I wrote about the situation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30552091 If anyone can help us get these people out — please st…
I'm in Istanbul right now, and it's absolutely full of young Russians who've escaped. Random people who don't even know each other are hugging and crying all the time. They've also been treated very well by the Turks. One lady in a hostel was just totally flustered trying to figure out how to accommodate a Russian family with kids at the last minute. Just another eye-witness perspective.
I wish the EU would welcome Russians who flee from Putin, in the same way. (If young men cannot leave, doesn't that mean more people that Putin can try to force to join his army)
In any case, all the people here seem to be hipster-type, college educated intelligentsia from St. Petersburg and the like. Most I’ve talked to do something tech related.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
2000-2010? Good move. Would have helped with integration of Russia into Europe. Post 2010 (really post 2007-2008, but it might have taken a few years to react): bad move. This is roughly when the relationship between the US-led NATO and Russia really soured. It should have been obvious what kind of long game the US was playing, given the switch from a Republican President (Bush) to a Democrat one (Obama). Yet the har…
But to be honest I don't see how US could have such a big influence on EU-Russia relationship. The conflict is all due to having a dictator in one part of that equation. And then for EU to have good relationships with US, the toughest power in NATO, seems like a good idea. Sorry but Russia could have played this way better. It's clear that they can't play nice with anyone. Would have been very good for EU and Russia…
Don't pin the turn of events on one man. He is merely the strongest in a coalition of kleptocrats, all of which hold some variation of similar principles. Who do you think will run the country if Putin steps down / retires / dies / goes to jail for warcrimes /etc? Do you imagine suddenly a free democratic election will instantly usher in EU-style rainbows and happiness? The country has ~6,000 nuclear weapons. Do you want a repeat of the collapse of the Soviet Union, where there was a very real concern of nukes ending up in the wrong hands? If not, there MUST be buy-in from the national security apparatus for a smooth transition of power. But you can't transition to a Western-friendly democratic President when the senior leadership of the military (who I'm sure have been carefully vetted/culled) are essentially "Neo-Russian Empire" loyalists. Another forum I frequent has a pretty level headed Russian hawk who is anti-Putin. He's said that Dmitri Medvedev is actually far scarier than Putin. He has most of his strengths but few of his character flaws. According to this guy, Medvedev wanted to do a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
>>>Now it's a bit of divide an conquer for US. Let's face it, Putin screwed both EU and Russia.
I'd argue the US is screwing both the EU and Russia. I think the US keeps NATO alive in order to have America holding the position of primacy in European affairs and security. It keeps a European superpower from coalescing. A 500 million+ population Europe, with advanced tech and industry, a strong global currency, and that actually takes its defense and foreign policy seriously? That would undermine America's unipolar world order. It would be another competitor like China. Can't have that.
>>>It's very strange to blame CIA or Republicans.
I mentioned both Republicans AND Democrats, to demonstrate that these policies are party-independent. Not strange at all to blame the CIA. Look at their history.
https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1730002_colored-revolu...
https://thewashingtonstandard.com/documents-reveal-us-spent-...
from 2004: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe he actually doesn't want to kill the civilians but wants to overthrow the government that he believes is targeting Russians in Eastern Ukraine and wishes to deploy US missiles on Russian borders? I don't think we can find a diplomatic solution unless we truly try to understand the enemy. Saying he did this with no reason doesn't help this. There's always a reason for any war. Bush had a reason to invade Iraq…
I can agree on many issues regarding the Iraq war, I think we all heard about the "weapons of mass destruction" that turned out to be false (well, never proven at least). It wasn't the only reason, though [1]. A very important quote from there: > UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was "not in conformity with the Security Council" However, I find…
Here’s the situation and the order of events that led to this invasion:
Pro-Russian government was in power pre-2014.
Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.
This caused the mostly ethnic Russian region of Donbass to declare independence and break away from Ukraine, resulting in war.
Russia tacitly supported them, but did not recognise them.
The Minsk Accords was supposed to end the fighting in 2015, but Ukraine has not lived up to the agreement.
Ukraine has been shelling and bombing the region on and off for 8 years now.
Putin finally decided enough is enough and recognised the region as independent.
He sent troops into the area to protect it and his invasion of Ukraine is meant to destroy the Ukrainian military to prevent them from attacking Donbass.
Now its up to you whether you think Putin is sincere or he's just using it as an excuse to grab Ukrainian territory. Geopolitics is complicated and believing anyone is innocent in geopolitics is ludicrous at best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting that free speech is responsible for misinformation? The first amendment is absolutely not a double-edged sword. The alternative is STRICTLY worse. You end up with governments, like China's, who lie and challenging that lie is punishable.
It fits a pretty strong definition of a double edged sword. It protects the rights of people say false statements as equally as true statements. The false statements are dangerous as it makes it difficult to make good decisions with it because those are based off of bad information. Calling it a double-edged sword is not meant to say it’s not valuable. It absolutely is. It’s the bedrock of our democracy in the US. Th…
> The question is only, how do we make sure the truth is more widely known than the lies?
Listen to alternative perspectives. Engage with ideas you don't agree with. Be aware of your biases, and other peoples' biases. Defend your perspectives using reason and evidence, not emotion or moral values (note: reason and evidence are the only things we can somewhat objectively agree on; though we still have to be aware of people doing shady stuff with studies and using statistics to misrepresent real-world phenomena).
The trend I'm starting to see is that a lot of disconnects stem from ignorance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like you are conveniently skipping the part where millions of ordinary Russians are being economically devastated by broad brush sanctions that punish the poor and middle class Russians who are innocent of war crimes, simply because they were unfortunate to be born in the wrong country and they may justifiably be afraid for their lives if they protest. For those who say beat the war drums, punish them all, jus…
The tax income produced by those people is being used to fund the war. It is unfortunate but it's better to have a person become poor than another person being bombed. Ín a world without nukes they would be bombed too right now, because wars have a tendency of doing that regardless of who fights.
With one simple decision - banning oil & gas imports - we could devestate Putin’s ability to wage war and it would impose less direct hardship on everyday Russians?
To protect civilians from higher energy costs in Ukraine and EU western governments could temporarily provide direct subsidies.
This seems like an idea worth trying. What am I missing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can agree on many issues regarding the Iraq war, I think we all heard about the "weapons of mass destruction" that turned out to be false (well, never proven at least). It wasn't the only reason, though [1]. A very important quote from there: > UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was "not in conformity with the Security Council" However, I find…
Copy-paste of a comment from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfArW6zppYw Here’s the situation and the order of events that led to this invasion: Pro-Russian government was in power pre-2014. Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government. This caused the mostly ethnic Russian region of Donbass to declare independence and break away from Ukraine, resulting in w…
Sounds about right.
> Violent coup overthrew the government in 2014 and installed a pro western, anti Russian government.
That's already where the chain breaks. Ukrainian people, not military, overthrew the government. Of course that can be argued, how do we know that - did the majority agree with the protesters? You could make a poll, but to be sure the results aren't manipulated, you have to make a referendum... Or just an election, in which who was elected? Did Putin send observers to control the elections, did he point out the problems with the system? No? Well, that's where this narration breaks. The world is full of such subtle solutions like election monitoring; it's ridiculous to claim benevolence but skip those solutions and go straight to violence.
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…
(using stablecoins and p2p on/off ramps)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So we should just let Russia invade whatever country it wants and kill their way through Europe because otherwise ordinary Russian citizens might suffer? No, absolutely not but that is a false dichotomy and I think you also know that. This isn’t a simple binary choice between doing nothing and imposing broad-stroke sanctions on every single citizen of Russia. One simple first step could be for the US and Germany an…
>This isn’t a simple binary choice between doing nothing and imposing broad-stroke sanctions on every single citizen of Russia. Again, the west is not attacking Russian citizens, but the Russian government. We can't change the fact that ordinary Russians are subject to the Russian government and therefore will also suffer to a degree no matter how you try to slice the sanctions. Especially when Russia would rather de…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alicante has an awfully high unemployment rate and is widely known as a run down area -you just have to look at some of the properties you linked-, except for a few towns in the Costa Blanca. Alicante is in no way representative of Spain. It should be very close to the bottom of the list, if not at the very bottom. > I have a high german salary and chose to live here in Spain because quality of life is much higher th…
All lies and false information, you sound like the typical unidas podemos or PSOE supporter. I've been many times to Alicante and could work there in an office for 400€/day if I wanted, stop spreading lies.