My eastern relatives are all brainwashed by putin's pr. They only read news that come from their fb feed, and they all point to tacc/rt/sputnik/etc. I have already had so many arguments and now have asked them to not speak to me about it and just "inform themselves". They don't trust western media so I asked them to read Indian/Israeli/other neutral press

They posted on HN. Means they must read it. HN was surfacing news about the buildup for months. They knew.

No, they did not. Nobody did actually expect invasion in Russia. Neither civilians, nor army. Putins orders came as a total surprise, he was not expected to cross the border. At worst everybody was thinking about new escalation in Donbas. The military buildup was considered a strategic negotiation game.

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., in the weeks leading up to the invasion, our Government was holding routine press conferences showing exactly where Russian forces were gathering and the threatening posture they comprised as they encircled Ukraine from three sides. Combine that with Putin’s and his foreign minister’s unrealistic demands, and the writing was on the wall. If the Russian people didn’t get the same information, that would certainly explain their surprise.

The same information was available in Russia, just different conclusions were made. Every political analyst focusing on Russian foreign policy is throwing away now years of their publications and research, because they based them on a wrong assumption (the one that Biden administration did not have - that Putin is rational).