I don't think there is much one can do on their own. Even our relatives can't help because most countries closed their borders and aerospace and tech firms are not inclined to hire Russians right now. I for one could not get any kind of ways to evacuate.
Countries did not close borders to regular citizens. Unless your insist on flying a Russian airline, you can leave and apply for residence or even asylum (if you are against the war, you are under threat of political prosecution).
not exactly true. In retaliation to prohibiting Russian airlines in their airspace, Russia in turn prohibited the airlines of other countries in Russia. So right now you can fly to some Soviet republics, Turkey, Israel, South Korea and that's it I think.
With all the airline shutdowns, payment system sanctions and COVID lockdowns (which are still in effect on the Russian border), the west has done a great job of locking Russians inside Russia, where they have three choices:
1. Protest against Putin and go to prison, in the hope that if Putin is gone the west will drop all sanctions (not very likely).
2. Keep head down.
3. Support the government.
Given that the rest of the world is trying as hard as possible to fuck Russia and random ordinary Russians in every way, I suspect a lot of them will conclude it's us vs them and pick (3). Really a bad set of strategies, in my view. It would be ironic and sad if WW3 was triggered by virtue signalling.
Ep. № 74: 11 days of war: Russia tortures civilians, Ukraine begs to close the skies
March 6, 2022
Russia continues to torture civilians and shell humanitarian corridors, breaking earlier commitments to let civilians to evacuate from war-torn cities. Ukraine is begging NATO to close the skies over the country or at least to provide more air defense systems. There is a humanitarian disaster in the Kyiv suburbs. We continue our “Explaining Ukraine” podcast by sharing our analysis of the Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance. Hosts: Volodymyr Yermolenko, analytics director at Internews Ukraine, and Tetyana Ogarkova, in charge of international outreach at the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre. The “Explaining Ukraine” podcast is a product by UkraineWorld.org. Support us at patreon.com/ukraineworld
What they're doing is quite medieval. They're encircling cities, cutting them off, then shelling them into oblivion, cutting off food and resources. Literally a modern day Roman siege.
>What they're doing is quite medieval. They're encircling cities, cutting them off, then shelling them into oblivion, cutting off food and resources.
Yeah, that's how sieges work. The concept might have been around for ages, but so has warfare and we don't call them (eg. us invasion of iraq) "quite medieval".
Blogs? That's anecdotal evidence and is therefore completely unreliable and should be dismissed.
At least that's what we have been told every day for over a year.
Well when the original comment is flagged (and not merely downvoted) on a topic that is just a call to activism (which, honestly, why is this here?), it's almost proof positive that in fact there are "sheeple" attempting to prevent anything that questions their narrative from entering the discourse. I image the wisdom of "I don't automatically trust my TV" will AGAIN only be judged as wise AFTER the fact. For now, it's unwelcome trolling of the typical hacker news user, who is barely distinguishable from the average reddit user.
If only someone was there, able to take pictures and report on it! You know, like all the news organizations across the world. Or refugees were streaming out of the area with horror stories. And satellite pictures and spy planes showed Russian troop movements. And the tyrant of Russia even said he was sending troops into another sovereign country, while contextualizing it under an obviously false narrative (that would imply the democratically elected ethnically Jewish president of Ukraine was a neo-nazi), and threatening a nuclear response to any armed involvement by other countries.
Oh if only.
Get out of here with however many worthless rubles you're getting paid.
Should we also tell them about all of the WMDs we found in Iraq that those same news organizations told us existed for sure? How many other false narratives do those "trusted" organizations need to tell before you stop trusting them?
Maybe US media was different (I wasn't in the US in 2003, and too young to read foreign media at the time), but here in Europe the media was pretty clear that it was a case of "The UN inspectors didn't find any WMDs but the USA insist they're there". There was a significant protest movement here to ban the US air force from our airports because they were using them as stopping points on the way to Iraq.
I don't think the rest of the West took the US invasion of Iraq as uncritically as you think they did
>> that those same news organizations told us existed for sure
No they didn't. They reported on what US leadership was claiming; they did not claim to have seen it, did not provide video footage, did not have people in Iraq going "Yep. Right there. That WMD. Right there. Oh, also, over there is the crater where they tested it", etc etc.
That is precisely what is happening now. They are reporting what US leadership, intel agencies, and outright silly propaganda tells them. They don't have boots on the ground. It's "Yep, there's the Ghost of Kyiv right there in this video game footage. Yep, that's a granny torching 100 Russky tanks".
I don't think you understand what 'triggered' means; you certainly don't know where my post is coming from. Feel whatever you like; the point is your attempts at projecting yourself as some critical thinker only paint you as someone with their fingers in their ears, eyes closed, choosing to believe what you want to believe rather than what the entirety of evidence indicates.
I would probably advise against doing this. There have been rumors of Russian police looking through citizen's phones for indications that they are engaging with western viewpoints on the "special operation". And the penalty for such activities is quite high right now.
A random phone call from a U.S. citizen might look suspicious, and I don't imagine Russian police are giving much benefit of the doubt right now.
On the spot, at a checkpoint? I mean it's obviously possible but is it likely to happen on random inspection? (Serious question, I don't know in Russia, definitely not in other places)
Why wouldn't a police-state have a way to check phone logs from the phone network they control? Police in most countries can query number plates on the spot, it would be similar for phone calls if their laws admit it.
Well there's 144 million Russians. That's a lot of phone numbers to call. Probably need to call at least 5 million of them for it to be effective cover?
Not quite. This is causing a relative risk of someone getting arrested in Russia, to create a minuscule chance that this person out of 150 million russians can make a difference in the public opinion, and the minuscule chance that a shift in public opinion in Russia can have any consequence at all on the war in Ukraine.
It's more than a miniscule chance. And it's not just about the shift in public opinion. It's also about consuming the limited bandwidth that the Russian security services have available to deal with stuff like this.
Think of it like DDOS-ing their internal security apperatus.
I really don't think this is how you change a warmonger's mind. And it's anyway under the assumption that you get enough people to make it a DDOS level thing.
It’s ok to be upset about what’s happening. That doesn’t mean one should be deluded into thinking they have a direct personal impact on the outcome of events.
Parent commenter pointed out that making a bunch of unsolicited calls to Russians is counter productive. Proclaiming “something must be done!!” Might make you personally feel better, but that’s not a good thing if it only comes at a detriment to others.
Seriously, how do you respond to unsolicited phone calls? This plan is half baked and will only harden the resolve of people who don’t already agree with the western point of view, and get people who do agree arrested.
I take umbrage at the notion I can’t critique a bad idea unless I’m some sort of saint.
Their condescending, sarcastic response implied (somewhat ambiguously) that it was too small and insignificant an effort and therefore not worth doing. They didn’t make a meaningful argument why. They further glossed over any knock on effects, such as what the caller might learn about the callees viewpoints and situation.
Sometimes action driven by good intent that does not lead to a desired outcome can serve as a precursor to more effective action. While I too think this is probably not a good idea, i do also wonder if it is so meaningless, why does Russian government need to suppress information, news, and discussion among their citizens in the first place?
Cheerfully paying higher gas prices. Trying to convince my government to send more weapons, money, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Donating heavily to refugee aid organizations. Sometimes happily passing on Ukrainian propaganda. (Go, Ghost of Kyiv!)
I also kind of wonder how effective it would be. Put yourself in their shoes. What if you received a random phone call from someone claiming that all the media coverage of the war in Ukraine is actually fake and that there is no war at all and it’s all a peace keeping in response to Ukrainian atrocities. Would you believe it? Given what I’ve seen in the news, I’d just write the person off as crazy personally. I’d expect a Russian’s reaction to be similar.
I would listen to the person's arguments and say what I don't like about those arguments.
I find the symmetrism you represent ridiculous.
How do we know the Earth isn't flat? Maybe flat-earthers are right? How do we know if santa claus exist? Well, we gather data and apply reasoning to that data...
Just like you listen to the persons arguments and engage with them when someone calls you and says "Hello I am federal tax Marshall john Smith, and there is a warrant for your arrest. Or you can buy gift cards and send money to us to settle your debt."
I'm certain you spend a while evaluating and debating those arguments.
I don't understand what you're trying to argue here? If a government official wants to arrest me, of course I'm willing to argue to avoid that. Not sure what you mean with the gift cards either, are you referring to some scam going on in US? I don't live in the US so please consider how hard it is for me to figure what you mean.
I had a Jehovah's witness visit me once, and unlike most people I did talk to her. She made some arguments, I counter-argued that I don't believe things without a proof, she asked me if I believe that air exists, and she followed my confirmation with the statement "but you can't see it" - to which I responded that I actually can see both the air directly (just like you can see foil laminate if you stack it into multiple layers) as well as indirectly through various experiments. She had no response to that, other than handing me a flyer, which I accepted.
> I would listen to the person's arguments and say what I don't like about those arguments.
Well if Russians in general are similar to you, this strategy may work. If they are similar to me, I'd guess it will not work. It seems only time can tell how effective the strategy will be.
Imagine being a Putin bootlicker and then still getting thrown in prison because of a suspicious phone call. I guess these people really do want to go back to the Soviet Era, eh?
We can allow fear to turn us all into slaves, or we can take simple acts like this to defend our freedom.
Acting together, we can reach out to hundreds of thousands of individuals. The Russian police cannot arrest all who are contacted, and even if they try, all of that time, money and manpower that they pour into policing is time, money and manpower that is taken away from brutalizing people in Ukraine.
So even if someone is arrested; even if they are imprisoned -- they can be proud to know that they have done something tangible and significant to help save lives.
I'd assume that the majority of foreign calls are wiretapped and automatically converted to text for keyword searches. Russia gets to go directly into the server/networking rooms to install their black boxes.
So self-censor certain keywords... as you normally would on the internet.
All phone calls and text messages in Russia must be recorded and stored for at least 6 months according to the law. Also, about 1 month worth of Internet traffic is also recorded.
I've always wondered how good nation states are at converting the speech to text. In my experience working with stuff like Twilio it can be a challenge to do it at scale when trying to identify individual speakers then generating a screenplay like output.
Text to speech doesn’t have any mechanism for “recording” the tone of the speaker. Something that will be perfectly “acceptable” in a transcript can be said in such a way that it’s meaning to the listener is the complete opposite of it’s meaning to the reader.
Which is fine for NSA/FSB purposes; the text to speech reduces the absolute flood of calls to the trickle that they may want to pay attention to ... ah who am I kidding, they'll sit on some drive somewhere and never be paid attention to, just like all the 9/11 warnings.
Those who know, already know. If they do not know or knowingly support the war, your call will not magically change their mind.
If you are a citizen of a European country, call your government and ask to help Ukraine instead. Drop humanitarian supplies, people experience food shortages. Send in troops, the more losses Russia suffers the harder it is for the government to maintain the pretense of normalcy. No one likes fighting a losing war.
I feel very skeptical that a stranger can quickly change someone's mind over a phone call. Most people expect some kind of scam or sales pitching when a stranger is calling them.
I called a lot of my friends in Russia and they are mostly aware of what's going on. But they all live in big cities. The problem is large rural population and smaller towns, which is majority of the population in Russia. They still seem to support Putin no matter what.
What a silly plan. Consider the reverse situation.
You are a US citizen, and your phone randomly rings. On the other line, there is a guy speaking English with a heavy russian accent:
"Hello. I call from Russia. This website I find ask me to call and inform you of real happenings in Ukraine. Your media full of lies. Trust me. Look. I have pen."
Yeah I can totally see Americans taking up arms against their government after a couple of spam calls like this.
I wonder if there's a correlation to how often "it's no problem" is uttered to how likely it actually is a problem.
I never relax when someone tries to assure me with the "it's no problem" tactic.
I was once contacted by a person claiming to be from Dell about a technical support request I was supposedly on for a company I no longer worked for. After informing the person I didn't work for the company they were referring to, I was informed it was "no problem", and they continued on whatever they were talking about.
I could see a spambot calling thousands of numbers a day from europe with a recording versus an actual person. We laugh about the car warranty scam calls we get everyday, but we're all aware of the messaging.
No, think about it. We have all of these free speech advocates who insist that sunlight is the best disinfectant, that only necessary response to misinformation is information, that one simply needs to engage with extremists in rational debate on the facts, etc. Let them loose on the Russian public and the war could be over in a matter of days!
To be honest I find the notion of "We" here to be rather dubious. Russia and Ukraine are at war, and while us private citizens of the broader English-speaking world can condemn one side, and support the other, pushing others towards the belief that this is somehow a total war and that every action is justifiable seems patently false.
I don't mean any offense, but I think it's somewhat fascinating that the idea of total war seems assumed by both your comment and the original post. Even if the US and Russia were at war, the notion that private citizens were not just involved, but obligated to contribute seems to be a remnant of the world wars. What's interesting to me is that this notion seems to have disappeared, since to my knowledge there wasn't such an expectation with Vietnam and Korea (though maybe we can argue that the witch hunt for communists was something of a continuation).
Maybe it's due to the positioning of Russia as an existential threat? It just reminds me of the whole freedom fries vs french fries thing and the idea that there isn't a separation between geopolitics and domestic politics.
Right, and I'm not saying you're wrong for feeling that way, nor am I saying that Russia isn't an existential threat. But, at the risk of over-intellectualizing the situation, I think it's worth noting that for some reason, this Ukraine-Russia conflict has brought out feelings that citizens should be prepared to fight for their country.
This, at least from an American perspective, seems to be a sentiment that comes and goes, but has only appeared in very few cases in our past. I cannot speak for the French in this case, but in general I think it's worth pointing out because you'd expect military conflicts to be resolved between militaries and their respective states - this social contract being something of the foundational idea to Western politics.
Thinking that this is just between Russia and Ukraine is such a common mistake. Ukraine is the latest move in a larger chess game (remember Transnistria, Georgia, Bellarus?) where the end goal of Russian is a new world order. Instead of the current order based on western values and laws, Russia wants the so called "uni-polar world" to change such that it has it's own sphere of influence. That sphere would consist of weak countries subjected either politically, economically or militarily. It sees those as buffer states... and there are never enough of those.
If we are at "war" right now, then what is it called when US troops roll tanks into Russia... "super war"? Words have definitions. The definition of war is "a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state."
If that scenario is defined as "Russia and Ukraine are currently engaged in battle" then sure. The United States and NATO are not at war with Russia and I'd prefer it stay that way.
Funny thing that word "war"... By that definition US has never been at war with Russia/USSR yet a large part of last century was called "The Cold War". Kinetic war is not the only form of warfare.
You are free to blur the lines all you want, but OP and everyone else here knows what the end game is and they're going to drift that direction regardless of what people like me say about the dangers of doing so.
Their country is killing thousands of innocent men, women, children, grandparents, babies etc. The West needs to prioritize on worrying about whats best for Ukraine, and saving their lives. Have more sympathy for them. Once Russia lays down arms and skidaddles back across their border perhaps we start feeling sympathy for the invaders then.
What Russians need to do now is pick sides. Take a stand against Putin, or, leave Russia. Stay home & keep quiet? They Own him. His deeds. His mass murders.
Very easy for us westerners to criticize Russians for not protesting. I wonder if you'd be protesting if you lived in a place where doing so could get you killed?
Putin has been in power there for 20 years. Been attacking neighbor nations for at least 14 years, offhand. He has a clear track record. Info has been out there, and for a looooong time ordinary Russians were able to get facts, if they wished.
They've had plenty of time to move away. Some have. Some chose to stay. These are the consequences of the choices they made.
People have been protesting; So far, 13,000 have been arrested.[0] Remember: Russia's judicial system is not the same as the US'. It's easy to armchair criticize when your life isn’t on the line.
Great. I have massive respect for any Russian who has stood up. Hopefully they set an example and embolden more.
There are several ways Putin can exit office, or exit the world. In the best scenario for everyone, the Russian people should make it happen. Thats a thing they get to choose. The kind of future they want. I bet that ordinary Russians dont want to wake up in a nuke wasteland, eg, and no American, European or anyone else wants to either. Because that is madness. But the Kremlin is a wild card now, and credible reports is they simply dont have the kinds of safeguards and mediating forces that most Western nuke powers do. Best if Russians themselves show him the door, before its too late for anyone.
We really cannot over-emphasize the seriousness of the stakes now. For humanity. Russians best step up, show the rest of us what kind of people they are, down in their hearts.
I doubt that FSB will intercept random calls from the USA.
First, there's got to be a lot of calls since a few million Russians live in the USA.
Second, everybody is using Skype/WhatsApp anyway so whatever they manage to capture is mostly pure noise ("granny, can you repeat your Skype login letter by letter").
I get the general sentiment but wouldn't it make more sense to send letters to random people? Maybe even disguise it as a travel ad where the images of iconic places are replaced with their current state.
I think it's important to get past the initial barrier against believing what is happening and you can only do that by being sneaky.
Once you realize that someone is trying to convince you of something that goes against your core belief it's very likely you shut that information down but anything that got already past that barrier will slowly take root and grow.
>* create distrust toward the FSB. This would be the result of people getting arrested for receiving phone calls from the US.
Feels like calls like these are pretty easy to filter out just by looking at the metadata (ie. random incoming call from the west). On the other hand random calls like this definitely fuels the "foreign interference" that the FSB is probably pushing right now, and would make it more trustworthy.
You’re probably right, but it’s possible that the environment is such in Russia right now that this could be impactful. From what I’ve been reading and seeing, the Russian people are more willing now than ever to protest and question their government. Those who are on the fence may actually be swayed by a random call like this, but only if they are already suspicious of the information the Russian government is showing them.
Is this a joke? Putin is wildly popular because he 'stands up to the west' and had presided over economic prosperity.
He got away with blowing up four apartment buildings, with plain-as-day evidence showing the bombings were conducted by the FSB. The population didn't care. They didn't care when he went around assassinating people outside the country. Didn't care when he invaded Crimea. Chicken in the pot, car in the driveway.
There wasn't any "anti-war" sentiment until the sanctions started kicking in.
Now that the ruble is worth less than toilet paper and they can't watch Netflix, they're willing to stand up to him?
Welcome to the cost of your country shitting all over the rest of the world for two decades. Hope y'all enjoy being sanctioned into the stone ages.
> There wasn't any "anti-war" sentiment until the sanctions started kicking in.
LMAO, sorry, but you have absolutely no effing clue what you're talking about. Russia and Ukraine are very interconnected, almost everyone has friends and relatives on the other side. Anti war sentiment was there long before 24th of February.
If you're speaking about news coverage in the US, well, that's another story. Even in western EU, there was a lot of commotion since January.
There is a major element of shaming and condescension here. The very act of this implies "hey, I know more than you do! what you know is less, and also false. because your government tells you wrong things, but my government tells me the truth! so let me educate you". How do you think you and the rest of the West would come across?
Unless you have a personal connection with the person and managed to find common political ground beforehand, this may actually sway them in the other direction, especially so if the person has any national pride.
So, talk to existing Russian friends, network with Russians more, build rapport. Be subtle and open-minded, rather than robotically delivering fixed agenda.
It's entirely possible that those calling Russia from abroad would learn something from the conversation as well, but I think it's that absurd to suggest that Russians (who have heavily restricted Internet and media) would be completely resistant to the idea that people calling from places without such restrictions would have information that hasn't been made available to them
Maybe I misunderstood what was meant in the parent comment.
The Russians may not know, or believe, that there is the shelling of cities with mass casualties among civilians. But they certainly know that Russia is somehow militarily involved in Ukraine right now. Even if they only consume the state-run media, they would have heard this from Putin himself. They know that their economy is collapsing; they know that various payment systems have stopped working; they know that imported consumer goods are disappearing from the shelves, and that stores of international brands are closing. Whether whatever is causing this is called a “special military operation” or a "war" is not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of language usage.
I think we should ask some marketing genius on how to approach this one.
Robo-calling and having a recording say "the people are stronger than Putin", or something like that, could have an impact if people hear it often enough.
Robo call in Russian and say: Z is For Zelenskyy, if you support Zelenskyy put a big Z on your vehicle. (Russia's trying to create their own Swastika out of Z which is very poor marketing since Zelenskyy's name starts with Z and you can't really google 'Z'... etc...
The best counter is to make the Kremlin have to guess if you're Z is secretly counter-support or actual support for their 'narrative' of what 'Z' stands for.
To be fair, Russia _does_ do a version of this extensively, with bots on social media. It still only manages to have some (maybe?) effect on ~30-40% of Americans, so your point stands, the tactic has limited effectiveness.
I'm glad this is the top comment because this is indeed an absurd and ridiculous plan. It's pretty amazing how many people in this thread and in MSM are copy/pasting the exact playbook run by Dick Cheney and his gang of liars, and doing a "Ctrl-F" to replace "terrorist" with "Russian". Notice as well that these analyses are not making a claim that Ukraine itself represents some specific national interest to the US and NATO, security or otherwise. The tone is consistently vengeful and demonizing. The difference between 2022 and 2003 is a matter of velocity in terms of how quickly the fervor can spread via our technology, and how difficult it is to pare back the insane calls for escalation.
Part of Putin's narrative of control is that the west is out to get ordinary Russians and have been since the Berlin Wall came down. Much of what we've done over the last several weeks in response to this crisis is making that fiction a reality in the minds of Russians. This "call random Russians, troll them" idea is part of that same general philosophy that's making it so easy for people to advocate things that would directly lead to WWIII with a rather uncomfortably high probability that we'd see the use of tactical nuclear weapons (a no-fly zone for just one example).
I'm sorry for mentioning this but so far the content on HN about Ukraine has been of very low quality. Today only a 'call Russia' and a 'Putin is actually smart' post. I hoped to find many interesting developments, but HN has been awfully quiet on this war (for good reasons probably), but the content that has been posted has been mediocre IMHO.
Every post on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is coopted by the same narratives. Whataboutism, US centric idea that everything in the world is because of the US, CNN brought up for no reason, someone trying to explain how literally everything is propaganda. It's boring.
No one thought about or cared about Ukraine a month ago. Now it's everyone's greatest cause of their lives. Meanwhile, I'm certain there are many atrocities the ruling class isn't forcing your focus on that you don't care about at all. All of this feigned outrage is so fake.
I don't agree with the characterization that it was "feigned" (which implies the person is intentionally doing it), but I do agree that it's a meme that blew up in popularity, and people suddenly felt the need to do something, anything. I mean, we had namecheap canceling russian accounts, of all things. I definitely wouldn't have imagined that happening a few years ago (eg. for xinjiang/hong kong/syria).
It’s happening in Europe, close to the Western world. So it’s understandable that Westerners care.
I’ve seen a few comments about how outrageous it is that people in places like India and Africa are not up in arms about this conflict (I’m just taking their word for it). Not so strange though if you consider their proximity and compare that (lack of) reaction to how few Westerns care about conflicts like the one in Yemen.
It isn't fake. US and other western nations are extremely close Ukrainians, and Ukrainians are very close to other European nations like Poland. Since, many Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Czech, Lithuanians, Slovakians live in the US. They protest and spread the word. Plus, there are protests in individual countries.
There always will be some issues in the society, but what is happening in Ukraine is giving people WW2 vibes and Poles can relate.
It is a matter of time until Russia will crumble though.
If you want to help the protest movements in Russia, support the russian opposition, NGO's that provide help to people arrested during demonstrations (13750 as of today) https://ovdinfo.org/ , and independent journalists who are currently escaping the country to continue their work abroad in relative safety.
Calling random people, messing with the russian internet, targeting the russian opposition/journalists escaping the country who just had all their cards turned off because of the visa/masterkard decisions is simply counterproductive.
While I agree that helping the opposition is be the best move think of the rhetoric Kremlin would spin up: they'd claim the west is interfering with their internal affairs and should the opposition ever win any elections they'd quickly arrest them for plotting a coup.
They already claim that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law ), the opposition is already not allowed to participate in the elections and obviously cannot win them when they are not even allowed to run and the main opposition leaders are already in prison (Navalny) or killed (Nemtsov).
I think another good move is help tank Russian economy faster, the faster it all implodes the more 'time' Russians have and more 'encouragement' to blame their leaders.
Examples of things you could do: Form a convoy and block access points to Coke, Starbucks, and McDonald's warehouses/convoys in your country as a protest - continue this until they pull out of Russia. This will cause a lot of lost jobs, wages, and lost business for Russia. Rinse and repeat until every western business has left.
Work on ways to move Chinese businesses (as many support Russia) over here or to EU countries, not the business itself but the industry or product that is needed or shipped from Asia, i.e. help find ways to end our dependency on autocratic societies.
They want to support each other then we need to block them, and make it hurt for anybody else who does.
I am from Czechoslovakia, trying to imagine what would happen in 1980s if people then were getting unexpected political calls from unknown foreigners. They would mostly assume it is a secret service provocation and react accordingly. Yes that's hard to believe for westerners that your own state would do such nasty stuff to you, but it was commonplace then.
Shortwave radio station that is possible to tune to in Moscow and beyond, where they can listen to people they have known before, would have much bigger impact. Like Radio Free Europe did.
Maybe robocalls reminding people of the shortwave frequencies and how to listen?
That might be less suspicious and would not implicate anyone since it's clearly just a random advertisement (but of course, you can come up for grounds of arresting anyone looking at a Coke-Cola can the wrong way).
>Yes that's hard to believe for westerners that your own state would do such nasty stuff to you, but it was commonplace then.
We are just about there ourselves. FBI labeling political opposition of domestic terrorist is kicking it off, replete with false flag operations and political prisoners.
> Shortwave radio station that is possible to tune to in Moscow and beyond, where they can listen to people they have known before, would have much bigger impact. Like Radio Free Europe did.
This is what should be done. Random people calling on the phone and trying to "tell you what's really happening" is not going to work, especially in a place like Russia. Shortwave radio is perfect for this.
The great thing about Shortwave radio is that radios are cheap, low powered and easy to hide. The infrastructure is already out there and due to the Cold War, Russians are already familiar with it.
What might work is Russians living in the west with family in Russia, call their family, ask them how they are doing with all the chaos/sanctions/etc.
Care about the people there. THEN you can tell them that you've been watching the footage showing Russian convoys are being ambushed and bombed in the roads - that the advance has stalled. That you've seen videos of Russian kids surrendering and dead - Russian losses are much higher than the Russian media is claiming. Ask them if they have any friends and family with men fighting and convey your concern for them.
You are trying to convince them of your authenticity and shared values - that is how you influence someone.
Then tell them that the Russian generals have become frustrated and started mass bombing of the cities - killing many thousands of civilians.
The real villain is Putin and his dogs. Wish them well and pray for them. We are in this together with the majority of the Russian people. You guys should hear the Russian moms calling the Ukrainian helpline crying for any information about their conscripted sons.
It's helpful to think of this as akin to a DDOS-like attack on the Russian internal security infrastructure.
They've only got so much bandwidth - money, personnel and time - to deal with all of the myriad security issues which keep popping up.
The more people we can reach out to, the more 'leads' the security services will have to investigate, then the less effective they will be at propping up Putin's empire of fear.
Putin holds power because everyone is so afraid. As soon as the security services stop being effective, and people learn that they don't need to be afraid any longer ... then the only thing keeping him in power will begin to evaporate.
Why aren't russians telling eachother? At least a fraction of russians read and trust trustworthy (international) news sources, but if their peers won't believe them, why would they believe me if I called them?
Russia isn't North Korea. Yes there has been a tightening lately and all easily accessible media has been propaganda for a long time. But that doesn't mean any Russian can't - with some effort - consume a wide selection of news. And that's their damn responsibility to do so. For example, if you are a soldier asked to go fight in a country, it's your responsibility to read news from other countries before you leave. Otherwise, how can you be sure you know whether the orders are even legal?
We need to stop giving a pass to russians because they have an authoritarian leadership and strict media control. It's very easy to say this from an armchair in a liberal democracy but I'm still going to say it: Russians have a responsibility to protest the regime now, carrying the personal risk despite perhaps having little to no personal responsibility. Else they have the blood of Ukrainians on their hands.
And the same applies to anyone else in an armchair whose armchair is in room temperature because of russian oil or gas.
I would guess that cognitive biases are in play, in part. People want to believe that their country is doing something good, and that their suffering is for a good cause. So if a news source reinforces that (such as "Special Operation to liberate Ukraine from Nazis"), it's easier to listen to than a narrative that runs counter ("Destroying both countries to appease a tyrant's ego").
That's not the only factor, but here in the US it's certainly a big part of the appeal of misleading news sources.
> Russians have a responsibility to protest the regime now, carrying the personal risk despite perhaps having little to no personal responsibility. Else they have the blood of Ukrainians on their hands.
Back in 2003, Americans had a responsibility to protest the Bush regime. And hundreds of thousands of us did, but it didn't do a damn bit of good. We still have the blood of over one million Iraqis on our hands.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is illegal and unjustified, but what moral grounds do Americans have to say anything about it?
Well, both Putin and Bush started their terms roughly at the same time. I see only one of them ruling today. America is by no means perfect, but Russia is entirely different thing.
This is crediting the citizens for something achieved by fundamentally different systems of governance and people in power. Yeah the Iraq war eventually was seen as a mistake, if you believe the polls it still took 2-3 years to convince people of that fact, it still took far many more years to pull out. At some point we have to recognize the fact that a citizen _not_ protesting something isn't a sign of support so much as its a recognition of the fact that even millions on the street doesn't necessarily achieve anything.
I think we need to accept that some problems are bigger than single generation. Each can push border just a little bit in each direction. But it's important to keep pushing, because otherwise you end up like Russia - in lawless country where citizens either feel powerless or so flooded with propaganda, he does even sees that anymore.
Obama was Commander in Chief and had authority to instruct military and replace members of Joint Chiefs of Staff until it got done. Obama kept the military conflicts rolling.
Since the dawn of the liberal world order and international law?
Or throughout human history? We aren’t condemning Russians for atrocities even 50 years back we are talking the past 2 weeks or possibly the past 8 years.
> And hundreds of thousands of us did
I think more than that, right? Millions across the US, probably some individual protests were in the hundreds of thousands? Largest protests ever until recently? It was a bit of a coalition too. General anti-war activists, weirdo far-left maoists with their pamphlets, paleocons, libertarians talking about peak oil, and plenty of us regular ass liberals. And we didn't make any difference.
> Russia's invasion of Ukraine is illegal and unjustified, but what moral grounds do Americans have to say anything about it?
The same moral grounds as when we condemned and protested the US's invasion of Iraq? Yes, we were a minority. The majority was hopped up on state propaganda about WMDs and 911 etc. Basically the same as Russia's "denazification" message or whatever it is today, only the US establishment is much better at it.
I'm sure many of the people who supported attacking Iraq are condemning Russia's war on Ukraine right now, but I'd rather support their current positive stance rather than take them to task over past views and seeming nationalist hypocrisy.
If you look at Russian groups on Facebook - they are ALL talking about the war. ...very passionately.
Russians with western contacts are overwhelmingly against the war. Russians physically in Russia try to be silent online for fear of arrest but they too talk to one another about this clusterF of an invasion.
There are plenty of Russians on Youtube commenting under pleas posted by Ukrainians asking them to help stop the war. And there are plenty of videos taken by people on the ground in Ukraine that show what's going on. But due to the way Youtube works, the Russian users are not very likely to come across those videos.
Consider interacting with them by replying with links to the videos.
If somebody from Youtube is reading this, I understand that you need to curb spammers who post a lot. But if you could somehow help with this effort, it might actually help change the public opinion in Russia.
I'm partial toward the people who got invaded but I cannot even verify the stories and sources to a reliable degree. Simply because I lack the resources.
Having a clear bias (support for one side) makes it cognitively even worse.
So I have two choices:
1. Risking telling "noble" lies because in the grand scheme of things Russia (bad actor) has invaded Ukraine (good actor) so even if I'm wrong in some things my intentions are good.
2. Calling Russians and trying also to hear their side of the story and with an open mind figure out together how to bring this war to an quick end.
I believe the vast majority of Russians and Ukrainians have good intentions and want peace.
But borrowing from the proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" one has to have a way of self-correcting i.e. hearing the other side.
So call Russians and tell them your side of the story but don't pretend to know "better".
The amount of footage is overwhelming. Just watch as much as you can from both sides and try to draw your own conclusions. The Russian side has a stale message, it blocks real footage and only works by abundant repetition. They downplay the whole situation to their own peoples claiming the other side is using actors and staging footage. Here is where you can use your own judgement.
Phone call is sort term, high effort, and maybe even annoying to those pro-Russians.
Just a thought: I been viewing the evidences of Russian war crimes (photograph, video) that people posted on Twitter since the very beginning of the invasion. A lot's of them are real and fact-checked.
Maybe it could be a good idea to setup some sort of online and physical memorial to show the timelines of how each single innocent people lost their life in the invasion, completely neutrally and uncensored, only tell the story, no decoration.
My rational is this: it is just impossible to convert the entire Russian population to be peace-loving, let's just face it, it won't happen as long as the regime needs brainless tools. But for the curious ones who really wants to understand, the memorial can plant the seed in their head. Every 0.0000001% counts.
During the first several days. When the outside world pulled Russian news channels off air and, possibly, blocked them on social media (I don't remember if that's what Facebook did); and started DDoSing its servers.
I am curious what makes people keep directing things at ordinary people in Russia. Imagine WWII, except with the world trying to shame people in Germany instead of actually fighting. We'd probably live in a world with very different history books.
> I am curious what makes people keep directing things at ordinary people in Russia. ... trying to shame ...
You know, as an Asian myself, I watched all the shit unfolded on Asian people because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I know what vigilante mobs can lead to. Russians who hated the war should suffer none of it.
However, it is important to notice the fact that most Russian supports the ongoing invasion effort (see 1). That means the "ordinary" people supports what Putin has done and they're looking for more.
You may now think "hey but that's all government propaganda". Well, an "ordinary" Russian who's not against the invasion might help or even join the invasion effort. Propaganda or not, the effect is real.
It's not about shaming, it's about providing the critical information needed before someone picked a side and locked themselves at that side.
If people ended up ashamed by this, then hey, their nation did this, maybe they Should feel ashamed.
But I don't really see the message the caller is supposed to relay once they dial in.
You are supposed to relay stories about bombed hospitals and shelled houses that you've either picked up from the media a day ago, or just from the web site's caption text. Are you ready to answer the question "what were you doing in the last 8 years"? Are you ready to even understand it? What about Alley of Angels, are you ready to talk about it?
I would expect there would be some "weaponized" facts at a minimum, or you may be losing in that artillery duel quite fast. Because Russian TV and state media does supply a lot of weaponized facts of its own.
Consider telling your counterparty that Russia prevents civilians from getting out from besieged cities, and they respond "I've just saw on the TV that Ukrainian far-right batallions are not letting their civilians out to use them as human shield". How are you going to reason from that point? I'm honestly interested because I don't know whose truth is there.
This is ridiculous, nevermind the fact that you are assuming you are getting accurate information if you are not in Russia. There is massive disinformation coming from both sides.
When US invaded Iraq (because of false claims about weapons of mass destruction), people did not call random numbers in America. And ordinary Americans did not do anything to stop their government from invading another country on false premises.
Excuse me I was outside with a sign protesting even before the invasion when the votes were being counted in FL then I volunteered for the campaign for a primary challenger after and I certainly had numerous calls from my relatives in Germany where we talked about Iraq.
I posted a few days ago about how seeing Canadians protest against the war in Iraq made me question the premise of the US invasion. It’s not the same as a phone call and I didn’t have any say in the matter because I was only a teenager but I do think the perspective of an “outsider” can sometimes shake you out of blind acceptance or at least put some cracks in the foundation. I suspect a “trusted” outsider would be a lot more persuasive, though. A phone call from a random Belarusian or Kazakhstani would probably carry a lot more weight than a random Westerner.
And yet, instead of killing/imprisoning the dictator, US-led invasion resulted in many civilians killed, their houses destroyed, not to mention drone strikes against civilians. If (many) innocent people get killed in the end, I see no big difference.
Except that the US literally did capture, try, and executed Saddam Hussein.
The vast majority of the death in Iraq occurred from sectarian violence fomented by Iran and later Sunni extremists, to undermine the prospect of having an American ally in the region.
232 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 90.2 ms ] threadAnd now there is no way for me to even go abroad but still send money back home.
1. Protest against Putin and go to prison, in the hope that if Putin is gone the west will drop all sanctions (not very likely).
2. Keep head down.
3. Support the government.
Given that the rest of the world is trying as hard as possible to fuck Russia and random ordinary Russians in every way, I suspect a lot of them will conclude it's us vs them and pick (3). Really a bad set of strategies, in my view. It would be ironic and sad if WW3 was triggered by virtue signalling.
https://ukraineworld.org/
https://ukraineworld.org/podcasts/ep-74
Ep. № 74: 11 days of war: Russia tortures civilians, Ukraine begs to close the skies March 6, 2022
Russia continues to torture civilians and shell humanitarian corridors, breaking earlier commitments to let civilians to evacuate from war-torn cities. Ukraine is begging NATO to close the skies over the country or at least to provide more air defense systems. There is a humanitarian disaster in the Kyiv suburbs. We continue our “Explaining Ukraine” podcast by sharing our analysis of the Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance. Hosts: Volodymyr Yermolenko, analytics director at Internews Ukraine, and Tetyana Ogarkova, in charge of international outreach at the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre. The “Explaining Ukraine” podcast is a product by UkraineWorld.org. Support us at patreon.com/ukraineworld
Yeah, that's how sieges work. The concept might have been around for ages, but so has warfare and we don't call them (eg. us invasion of iraq) "quite medieval".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege#Modern_warfare
"What, you really believe Ukraine exists ? Wake up, sheeple !!"
Oh if only.
Get out of here with however many worthless rubles you're getting paid.
I don't think the rest of the West took the US invasion of Iraq as uncritically as you think they did
No they didn't. They reported on what US leadership was claiming; they did not claim to have seen it, did not provide video footage, did not have people in Iraq going "Yep. Right there. That WMD. Right there. Oh, also, over there is the crater where they tested it", etc etc.
You're triggered because I have a different opinion. It's coming from fear and pain. I feel nothing but compassion for you right now.
A random phone call from a U.S. citizen might look suspicious, and I don't imagine Russian police are giving much benefit of the doubt right now.
Think of it like DDOS-ing their internal security apperatus.
Parent commenter pointed out that making a bunch of unsolicited calls to Russians is counter productive. Proclaiming “something must be done!!” Might make you personally feel better, but that’s not a good thing if it only comes at a detriment to others.
Seriously, how do you respond to unsolicited phone calls? This plan is half baked and will only harden the resolve of people who don’t already agree with the western point of view, and get people who do agree arrested.
I take umbrage at the notion I can’t critique a bad idea unless I’m some sort of saint.
What are YOU doing better?
Sometimes action driven by good intent that does not lead to a desired outcome can serve as a precursor to more effective action. While I too think this is probably not a good idea, i do also wonder if it is so meaningless, why does Russian government need to suppress information, news, and discussion among their citizens in the first place?
How many Americans would have responded well to unsolicited calls in 2003 from Iranians saying the Iraq war was misguided?
The condescension was in response to the assertion that not making said calls was equivalent to letting Ukrainians die, which is ridiculous.
I find the symmetrism you represent ridiculous.
How do we know the Earth isn't flat? Maybe flat-earthers are right? How do we know if santa claus exist? Well, we gather data and apply reasoning to that data...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
I'm certain you spend a while evaluating and debating those arguments.
I had a Jehovah's witness visit me once, and unlike most people I did talk to her. She made some arguments, I counter-argued that I don't believe things without a proof, she asked me if I believe that air exists, and she followed my confirmation with the statement "but you can't see it" - to which I responded that I actually can see both the air directly (just like you can see foil laminate if you stack it into multiple layers) as well as indirectly through various experiments. She had no response to that, other than handing me a flyer, which I accepted.
Well if Russians in general are similar to you, this strategy may work. If they are similar to me, I'd guess it will not work. It seems only time can tell how effective the strategy will be.
Imagine being a Putin bootlicker and then still getting thrown in prison because of a suspicious phone call. I guess these people really do want to go back to the Soviet Era, eh?
Acting together, we can reach out to hundreds of thousands of individuals. The Russian police cannot arrest all who are contacted, and even if they try, all of that time, money and manpower that they pour into policing is time, money and manpower that is taken away from brutalizing people in Ukraine.
So even if someone is arrested; even if they are imprisoned -- they can be proud to know that they have done something tangible and significant to help save lives.
So self-censor certain keywords... as you normally would on the internet.
I've always wondered how good nation states are at converting the speech to text. In my experience working with stuff like Twilio it can be a challenge to do it at scale when trying to identify individual speakers then generating a screenplay like output.
If you are a citizen of a European country, call your government and ask to help Ukraine instead. Drop humanitarian supplies, people experience food shortages. Send in troops, the more losses Russia suffers the harder it is for the government to maintain the pretense of normalcy. No one likes fighting a losing war.
I called a lot of my friends in Russia and they are mostly aware of what's going on. But they all live in big cities. The problem is large rural population and smaller towns, which is majority of the population in Russia. They still seem to support Putin no matter what.
You are a US citizen, and your phone randomly rings. On the other line, there is a guy speaking English with a heavy russian accent:
"Hello. I call from Russia. This website I find ask me to call and inform you of real happenings in Ukraine. Your media full of lies. Trust me. Look. I have pen."
Yeah I can totally see Americans taking up arms against their government after a couple of spam calls like this.
I never relax when someone tries to assure me with the "it's no problem" tactic.
I was once contacted by a person claiming to be from Dell about a technical support request I was supposedly on for a company I no longer worked for. After informing the person I didn't work for the company they were referring to, I was informed it was "no problem", and they continued on whatever they were talking about.
Or maybe they don't even bother asking and just gulag him.
What would you do if you ran a country and the CIA was running a psyops campaign on your citizens?
A) Ask them nicely to please stop.
B) Do it back
C) Do it back and then call for a truce
D) Nothing whatsoever
From a game theory as well as a moral perspective I think theres one right answer here, but Im curious as to what your answer is.
https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2022...
I could see a spambot calling thousands of numbers a day from europe with a recording versus an actual person. We laugh about the car warranty scam calls we get everyday, but we're all aware of the messaging.
The point is to:
* create noise in the telephone logbook to annoy the FSB.
* create distrust toward the FSB. This would be the result of people getting arrested for receiving phone calls from the US.
> You are no better than the FSB itself then.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They have gotten Schroder on their payroll so he would sabotage german and Europe energy.
Now, they have been threatening western Europe with nukes.
Yes, we are clearly at war with Russia.
Maybe it's due to the positioning of Russia as an existential threat? It just reminds me of the whole freedom fries vs french fries thing and the idea that there isn't a separation between geopolitics and domestic politics.
This, at least from an American perspective, seems to be a sentiment that comes and goes, but has only appeared in very few cases in our past. I cannot speak for the French in this case, but in general I think it's worth pointing out because you'd expect military conflicts to be resolved between militaries and their respective states - this social contract being something of the foundational idea to Western politics.
What Russians need to do now is pick sides. Take a stand against Putin, or, leave Russia. Stay home & keep quiet? They Own him. His deeds. His mass murders.
Zero sympathy for evil.
They've had plenty of time to move away. Some have. Some chose to stay. These are the consequences of the choices they made.
Is it North Korea's citizens' fault that they have a dictator? After all, they do have a "democracy" where Kim Jong-un is "elected": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_North_Korea
[0]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-police-arrest-1...
There are several ways Putin can exit office, or exit the world. In the best scenario for everyone, the Russian people should make it happen. Thats a thing they get to choose. The kind of future they want. I bet that ordinary Russians dont want to wake up in a nuke wasteland, eg, and no American, European or anyone else wants to either. Because that is madness. But the Kremlin is a wild card now, and credible reports is they simply dont have the kinds of safeguards and mediating forces that most Western nuke powers do. Best if Russians themselves show him the door, before its too late for anyone.
We really cannot over-emphasize the seriousness of the stakes now. For humanity. Russians best step up, show the rest of us what kind of people they are, down in their hearts.
Now or never.
By the same logic Ukrainians can stop resisting and prevent WW3. Is it "Zero sympathy for evil Ukrainians wishing WW3?".
First, there's got to be a lot of calls since a few million Russians live in the USA. Second, everybody is using Skype/WhatsApp anyway so whatever they manage to capture is mostly pure noise ("granny, can you repeat your Skype login letter by letter").
I think it's important to get past the initial barrier against believing what is happening and you can only do that by being sneaky.
Once you realize that someone is trying to convince you of something that goes against your core belief it's very likely you shut that information down but anything that got already past that barrier will slowly take root and grow.
Feels like calls like these are pretty easy to filter out just by looking at the metadata (ie. random incoming call from the west). On the other hand random calls like this definitely fuels the "foreign interference" that the FSB is probably pushing right now, and would make it more trustworthy.
He got away with blowing up four apartment buildings, with plain-as-day evidence showing the bombings were conducted by the FSB. The population didn't care. They didn't care when he went around assassinating people outside the country. Didn't care when he invaded Crimea. Chicken in the pot, car in the driveway.
There wasn't any "anti-war" sentiment until the sanctions started kicking in.
Now that the ruble is worth less than toilet paper and they can't watch Netflix, they're willing to stand up to him?
Welcome to the cost of your country shitting all over the rest of the world for two decades. Hope y'all enjoy being sanctioned into the stone ages.
LMAO, sorry, but you have absolutely no effing clue what you're talking about. Russia and Ukraine are very interconnected, almost everyone has friends and relatives on the other side. Anti war sentiment was there long before 24th of February.
If you're speaking about news coverage in the US, well, that's another story. Even in western EU, there was a lot of commotion since January.
Unless you have a personal connection with the person and managed to find common political ground beforehand, this may actually sway them in the other direction, especially so if the person has any national pride.
So, talk to existing Russian friends, network with Russians more, build rapport. Be subtle and open-minded, rather than robotically delivering fixed agenda.
The opposite of random calling, basically.
There are different ways to discuss political questions and hopefully get a thinking person to adopt your viewpoint. "Educating" them is not one.
How can you know this?
The Russians may not know, or believe, that there is the shelling of cities with mass casualties among civilians. But they certainly know that Russia is somehow militarily involved in Ukraine right now. Even if they only consume the state-run media, they would have heard this from Putin himself. They know that their economy is collapsing; they know that various payment systems have stopped working; they know that imported consumer goods are disappearing from the shelves, and that stores of international brands are closing. Whether whatever is causing this is called a “special military operation” or a "war" is not a matter of knowledge, but a matter of language usage.
Robo-calling and having a recording say "the people are stronger than Putin", or something like that, could have an impact if people hear it often enough.
The best counter is to make the Kremlin have to guess if you're Z is secretly counter-support or actual support for their 'narrative' of what 'Z' stands for.
Even a tiny effect on that much of the population is huge.
Part of Putin's narrative of control is that the west is out to get ordinary Russians and have been since the Berlin Wall came down. Much of what we've done over the last several weeks in response to this crisis is making that fiction a reality in the minds of Russians. This "call random Russians, troll them" idea is part of that same general philosophy that's making it so easy for people to advocate things that would directly lead to WWIII with a rather uncomfortably high probability that we'd see the use of tactical nuclear weapons (a no-fly zone for just one example).
Or even better:
"Privet kamrad. My name John. Zer is a site Utub. Itz no blokt in Rasha. Taip Ukreyn in surch boks end it vil shou yu trus yu didn't no."
I’ve seen a few comments about how outrageous it is that people in places like India and Africa are not up in arms about this conflict (I’m just taking their word for it). Not so strange though if you consider their proximity and compare that (lack of) reaction to how few Westerns care about conflicts like the one in Yemen.
There always will be some issues in the society, but what is happening in Ukraine is giving people WW2 vibes and Poles can relate.
It is a matter of time until Russia will crumble though.
Calling random people, messing with the russian internet, targeting the russian opposition/journalists escaping the country who just had all their cards turned off because of the visa/masterkard decisions is simply counterproductive.
Do you guys really have zero idea what country Russia is? Russians have been protesting since 2011 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot... ) and been methodically and systematically repressed for over a decade already.
Examples of things you could do: Form a convoy and block access points to Coke, Starbucks, and McDonald's warehouses/convoys in your country as a protest - continue this until they pull out of Russia. This will cause a lot of lost jobs, wages, and lost business for Russia. Rinse and repeat until every western business has left.
Work on ways to move Chinese businesses (as many support Russia) over here or to EU countries, not the business itself but the industry or product that is needed or shipped from Asia, i.e. help find ways to end our dependency on autocratic societies.
They want to support each other then we need to block them, and make it hurt for anybody else who does.
Shortwave radio station that is possible to tune to in Moscow and beyond, where they can listen to people they have known before, would have much bigger impact. Like Radio Free Europe did.
That might be less suspicious and would not implicate anyone since it's clearly just a random advertisement (but of course, you can come up for grounds of arresting anyone looking at a Coke-Cola can the wrong way).
We are just about there ourselves. FBI labeling political opposition of domestic terrorist is kicking it off, replete with false flag operations and political prisoners.
This is what should be done. Random people calling on the phone and trying to "tell you what's really happening" is not going to work, especially in a place like Russia. Shortwave radio is perfect for this.
The great thing about Shortwave radio is that radios are cheap, low powered and easy to hide. The infrastructure is already out there and due to the Cold War, Russians are already familiar with it.
Care about the people there. THEN you can tell them that you've been watching the footage showing Russian convoys are being ambushed and bombed in the roads - that the advance has stalled. That you've seen videos of Russian kids surrendering and dead - Russian losses are much higher than the Russian media is claiming. Ask them if they have any friends and family with men fighting and convey your concern for them.
You are trying to convince them of your authenticity and shared values - that is how you influence someone.
Then tell them that the Russian generals have become frustrated and started mass bombing of the cities - killing many thousands of civilians.
The real villain is Putin and his dogs. Wish them well and pray for them. We are in this together with the majority of the Russian people. You guys should hear the Russian moms calling the Ukrainian helpline crying for any information about their conscripted sons.
They've only got so much bandwidth - money, personnel and time - to deal with all of the myriad security issues which keep popping up.
The more people we can reach out to, the more 'leads' the security services will have to investigate, then the less effective they will be at propping up Putin's empire of fear.
Putin holds power because everyone is so afraid. As soon as the security services stop being effective, and people learn that they don't need to be afraid any longer ... then the only thing keeping him in power will begin to evaporate.
Russia isn't North Korea. Yes there has been a tightening lately and all easily accessible media has been propaganda for a long time. But that doesn't mean any Russian can't - with some effort - consume a wide selection of news. And that's their damn responsibility to do so. For example, if you are a soldier asked to go fight in a country, it's your responsibility to read news from other countries before you leave. Otherwise, how can you be sure you know whether the orders are even legal?
We need to stop giving a pass to russians because they have an authoritarian leadership and strict media control. It's very easy to say this from an armchair in a liberal democracy but I'm still going to say it: Russians have a responsibility to protest the regime now, carrying the personal risk despite perhaps having little to no personal responsibility. Else they have the blood of Ukrainians on their hands.
And the same applies to anyone else in an armchair whose armchair is in room temperature because of russian oil or gas.
That's not the only factor, but here in the US it's certainly a big part of the appeal of misleading news sources.
Back in 2003, Americans had a responsibility to protest the Bush regime. And hundreds of thousands of us did, but it didn't do a damn bit of good. We still have the blood of over one million Iraqis on our hands.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is illegal and unjustified, but what moral grounds do Americans have to say anything about it?
Years after he left the scene gitmo is still open and drone strikes still happen.
GWB is gone but his policies endure. Turns out US leadership likes it that way.
Or throughout human history? We aren’t condemning Russians for atrocities even 50 years back we are talking the past 2 weeks or possibly the past 8 years.
The same moral grounds as when we condemned and protested the US's invasion of Iraq? Yes, we were a minority. The majority was hopped up on state propaganda about WMDs and 911 etc. Basically the same as Russia's "denazification" message or whatever it is today, only the US establishment is much better at it.
I'm sure many of the people who supported attacking Iraq are condemning Russia's war on Ukraine right now, but I'd rather support their current positive stance rather than take them to task over past views and seeming nationalist hypocrisy.
> what moral grounds do Americans have to say anything about it?
Interesting question, but even if every American shuts up billions of us can still speak up.
That's how I see request to Russians to stop Putin.
Also hey Russians, we rob all you money in online services and stop those services to work for you. Stop this train!
I see so many variations on that argument, but they all commit that fallacy.
If you look at Russian groups on Facebook - they are ALL talking about the war. ...very passionately.
Russians with western contacts are overwhelmingly against the war. Russians physically in Russia try to be silent online for fear of arrest but they too talk to one another about this clusterF of an invasion.
Consider interacting with them by replying with links to the videos.
If somebody from Youtube is reading this, I understand that you need to curb spammers who post a lot. But if you could somehow help with this effort, it might actually help change the public opinion in Russia.
I'm partial toward the people who got invaded but I cannot even verify the stories and sources to a reliable degree. Simply because I lack the resources.
Having a clear bias (support for one side) makes it cognitively even worse.
So I have two choices:
1. Risking telling "noble" lies because in the grand scheme of things Russia (bad actor) has invaded Ukraine (good actor) so even if I'm wrong in some things my intentions are good.
2. Calling Russians and trying also to hear their side of the story and with an open mind figure out together how to bring this war to an quick end.
I believe the vast majority of Russians and Ukrainians have good intentions and want peace.
But borrowing from the proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" one has to have a way of self-correcting i.e. hearing the other side.
So call Russians and tell them your side of the story but don't pretend to know "better".
The amount of footage is overwhelming. Just watch as much as you can from both sides and try to draw your own conclusions. The Russian side has a stale message, it blocks real footage and only works by abundant repetition. They downplay the whole situation to their own peoples claiming the other side is using actors and staging footage. Here is where you can use your own judgement.
Just a thought: I been viewing the evidences of Russian war crimes (photograph, video) that people posted on Twitter since the very beginning of the invasion. A lot's of them are real and fact-checked.
Maybe it could be a good idea to setup some sort of online and physical memorial to show the timelines of how each single innocent people lost their life in the invasion, completely neutrally and uncensored, only tell the story, no decoration.
My rational is this: it is just impossible to convert the entire Russian population to be peace-loving, let's just face it, it won't happen as long as the regime needs brainless tools. But for the curious ones who really wants to understand, the memorial can plant the seed in their head. Every 0.0000001% counts.
The world will be watching the memorial as well, one of it will wake up, the Russians population or the world.
You know, as an Asian myself, I watched all the shit unfolded on Asian people because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I know what vigilante mobs can lead to. Russians who hated the war should suffer none of it.
However, it is important to notice the fact that most Russian supports the ongoing invasion effort (see 1). That means the "ordinary" people supports what Putin has done and they're looking for more.
You may now think "hey but that's all government propaganda". Well, an "ordinary" Russian who's not against the invasion might help or even join the invasion effort. Propaganda or not, the effect is real.
It's not about shaming, it's about providing the critical information needed before someone picked a side and locked themselves at that side.
If people ended up ashamed by this, then hey, their nation did this, maybe they Should feel ashamed.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/08/russia-publi...
You are supposed to relay stories about bombed hospitals and shelled houses that you've either picked up from the media a day ago, or just from the web site's caption text. Are you ready to answer the question "what were you doing in the last 8 years"? Are you ready to even understand it? What about Alley of Angels, are you ready to talk about it?
I would expect there would be some "weaponized" facts at a minimum, or you may be losing in that artillery duel quite fast. Because Russian TV and state media does supply a lot of weaponized facts of its own.
Consider telling your counterparty that Russia prevents civilians from getting out from besieged cities, and they respond "I've just saw on the TV that Ukrainian far-right batallions are not letting their civilians out to use them as human shield". How are you going to reason from that point? I'm honestly interested because I don't know whose truth is there.
Donno if it helps tho. Saw a tweet about it and lots of people were saying they were sending texts and getting replies.
Ukraine is a democracy.
HUGE difference.
The vast majority of the death in Iraq occurred from sectarian violence fomented by Iran and later Sunni extremists, to undermine the prospect of having an American ally in the region.