This statement shows you have no idea what Russians like to think. Better stop embarrassing yourself further with such opinions.
Source: I'm actually Russian.
Of course not everyone in Russia is like that, far from it. But a very significant number of actual average Russians are like that. While US coverage of any events is far from perfect with tons of conflicting info, there is no straight up "you aren't allowed to publish or see this, or else suffer the consequences" thing going here, unlike in Russia. You could criticize the government all you want, in public too.
Just the fact that you aren't allowed to, it would create an echochamber stronger than any self-induced FB echochamber in the US can suck one into. The main problem is that instead of many different echochambers, you primarily get one - the one controlled by the russian government. And your only options are being in it or not. The issue is that there are only 2 options, and you are heavily disincentivized from opting out. And the larger an echochamber grows, the stronger and more influential it gets. The chilling effect alone is crazy and suppresses people from saying anything. I was called a "traitor" by my classmates back when I was leaving the country. What a betrayal, wanting to actually get good education and live a good life outside of that place. And that was a bit over a decade ago, before russia-west relations got heated up to the current point, and years before Crimean invasion has even started.
Edit: half the replies down this exact thread in sibling comments seem to be a great illustration of what happens when the type of echochamber I described actually ends up working.
And I would put more stock in that than in someone who isn't Russian.
Source: I'm Russian too.
Current Russian society has proven incapable of self-management as well as incapable of responsible management of such a large territory and military force including nukes. I suppose that as a result Russia, similar to Germany after WWI and WWII, may be broken up with limits on military force, giving up nukes, and other restrictions. Very probably losing that key place in UN Security Council. In short - Putin with clear permission from the whole society, save for a few brave souls, blew up any last chances for Russia to be a great country. (note: Putin is counting on China's support here agreed upon in exchange for Russian support in the future Taiwan takeover, yet that senile moron completely misses that once things go wrong in the Ukraine invasion - and they will - China will be the first to use the chance to get rid of that aggressive nuclear powered neighbor and to replace it with a docile client state comprised of the Far East part of that former neighbor)
The propaganda inside Russia is very strong. Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering (economically or otherwise). And then maybe they'll wake up.
What makes you sure that it won't cement their position even more? Western countries hurting russia's economy via sanctions basically confirms the "evil westerners" narrative.
You just stated that the people of the whole country need to start suffering. There already was period in our history when one politicial stated that we must all be destroyed as an ethnic group and our lands repopulated, and that was not good at all.
Western countries do a number of bad things, but they're not evil.
Killing millions of people after WWII for sure qualifies. What else would you call it?
Have you forgotten all the wars the US put themselves into over and over again, often based on lies?
Have you forgotten what the CIA did, and still does, to countries all over the world?
Oh wait, did you mean evil to us, or evil to everybody else?
Enough that there are protests in most major Russian cities against the invasion of Ukraine.
Just yesterday, Moscow police arrested over 1,000 protesters. They can only keep up that pace for so long.
It, uh, didn't accomplish much. I'm not sure that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is any more inclined to listen to protests than the Department of State was.
Sorry, do you mean the protestors can only keep it up for so long, or the police can only keep arresting for so long?
> In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!
Unfortunately there’s no other options left. Sanctions are not a short term deterrent.
And getting worse.
> Let’s hope Ukraine will be able to resist long enough to force Putin to negotiate peace and to forget about any attempt to reach his goals along the Western borders of Russia by military means.
I hope with you but the force asymmetry is large. But so far they have been doing much better than could have reasonably been expected.
> It’s too bad that our hope is that enough Russian soldiers will die for Russian public to notice that war is in their house.
This will be one of the most carefully controlled statistics, there is no way that official channels will get close to communicating these numbers. I've been wondering if this isn't one of those areas where the tech world could really assist.
> There’s no popular support for the war, but the pain of war is not yet felt.
And likely won't be for weeks or even months.
> Unfortunately there’s no other options left.
Agreed.
> Sanctions are not a short term deterrent.
Also agreed, but they are a message, especially if those sanctions hurt the EU as well. I would be happy to shut down the heat here if that's what it took to get the EU completely disconnected from Russian gas. It would be very annoying but we'd live, my grandparents went through far worse than that. And I've been trying to figure out how I can really help Ukrainian refugees.
It is not that large. I remember an estimate of some strategist that you need 5x more firepower to win a battle in urban environment (cannot find the link, sorry). Even if Russia sends 20-30% of its entire army and national guard to Ukraine, this would mean only a parity with highly motivated defenders. Russia certainly has better equipment and air support, but it may still take a lot of time and casualties will be high.
Very frustrating all this. Just one of Putin's entourage showing some courage would deal with this.
>"Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering"
When you talk like this about whole nation I am not even sure what to call it. Well actually I do but I did not yet have enough of HN.
But, how do you see Putin getting pushed out of power, other than by the Russian people? If it is required that the Russian people push him out, is it not logical that they must be motivated, with the assumption that sanctions would not be required if they were already motivated enough?
I'm trying to understand all of this, and I appreciate your opinion/perspective.
If you think that you can sanction / starve Russia to the point that simple people will organize, revolt and depose Putin I think you live on a different planet.
The only force that can really depose him are some competing elites assuming they have backing from enforcement agencies / military. I am not sure how you can sanction / bribe those into action.
Personally I think the West had quite a few years to sort things out between Russia and Ukraine. I think it was possible. I do not have any real proof but I suspect that instead of trying to find some meaningful compromise they were playing hard ball and are now reaping a "reward". What to do now - I have no frigging clue as the situation is out of control.
As for the subject of "suffering" - purposely starving the whole nation and keeping people hostage I think is what scumbags do / advocate.
The russians by and large know very well not to trust the government. But who will work best in their interest instead, will NATO? Would the US trust Europe to fix their two-party "democracy" and lack of healthcare?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China
"The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005."
The number of protests in Hong Kong has plummeted in the last two years. Even annual events have been cancelled because of the new laws that can land people in jail for even being near a protest site, or a historically/politically significant location at the wrong time.
So you don't appear to be making much of an argument at all, as even a cursory glance in the history books of the last year will reveal your false balance to be as empty as your accusation of its absurdity.
> Amazing. All social media is heavily monitored and censored everywhere. We can argue degrees but it's all censored.
Well, similarly we could argue is a real difference between firecrackers and thousand pounds bombs.
Nope. On WhatsApp, no message I've ever sent has been censored. I haven't heard of anyone being censored on whatsapp. (the example being wechat which i believe is equivalent).
> Like that chinese tennis player right. Or jack ma? Disappeared and then reappeared. Like magic.
You aren't making the point you think you are. You are confirming that they were disappeared for a LONG time by the gov't.
Just because you haven't been censored doesn't mean everyone isn't censored.
https://reclaimthenet.org/whatsapp-kashmir-deactivated/
Facebook owns WhatsApp. You really think there is no censorship on WhatsApp.
> You aren't making the point you think you are. You are confirming that they were disappeared for a LONG time by the gov't.
I am making an exact point. Oh my god, a tennis player and jack ma didn't make themselves available to western press for a bit. That's so crazy. Because we all know that these chinese people belong to western journalists. Right?
People complaining about censorship in a highly censored website. That's rich. Crazy how so many "people" care about china's freedom all of a sudden.
That's the best propaganda you can come up with? "make themselves available...for a bit"?
That's disingenuous.
He was interviewed by state police for 10 hours the next Saturday.
In the west we can say "my government is bad" and give examples of a number of terrible and true and shameful things. In Russia or China they cannot even admit truth.
One tactic that we see from China and Russia is to criticise the chaotic nature of protests in the West and (again) to emphasise the hypocrisy on how the West deals with protests of the Left vs Right. The thing is that there IS a lot of truth here. But the key thing is that these protests occur nonetheless. In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!