Did Grammarly help their employees to escape the draft [0] and moved jobs out of Ukraine? If so, is that moral?

[0] - https://mezha.media/en/2022/06/02/how-grammarly-works-since-...

Yes, punishing people that have nothing to do with the invasion is totally the moral way. Not as moral as preventing people fleeing the military draft from crossing the border, but close.

>Yes, punishing people that have nothing to do with the invasion is totally the moral way

So companies now have a moral responsibility to provide their services to everyone across the world even if they may lose money in the process or get fined for violating sanctions? That's a very interesting moral framework you got there.

So do I get you right, once a country has some person or company on the sanctions list, companies should better cease operating in that country to not get fined for violating sanctions?

No, that's a facile assertion. It's not even about "sanctions". Companies should cease operating in a country where the legal and practical risks of doing business in the country outweigh any potential profit. Russia isn't exactly rolling in the dough right now, and most goods sold in Russia now require a license to transfer[1]. Add to that the risk of the Russian government simply stealing your business away from you, and you have quite the effective deterrent.

American companies unloading their Russian assets like offices are advised by the American Bar Association to destroy everything that's not nailed down so that they do not have licensing concerns. [2]

[1] https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/country-gu... [2] https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...

Edit: I can't reply to you, but [3] here's an example of how Russia legalized the theft of intellectual property.

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/09/russia-al...

Hmm. So, how can Russia steal the business of Grammarly or Figma?

A company does not need a reason to stop servicing a country. They just can.

And users can stop trusting such company and using its products.

(It is notable, how quickly you abandoned your arguments about the risk of sanctions and moralily)

>(It is notable, how quickly you abandoned your arguments about the risk of sanctions and moralily)

Huh? I never made a statement about sanctions and morality. In fact I explicitly said it is not a moral question and questioned your statement that it is a moral question versus a standard business decision.

>And users can stop trusting such company and using its products.

Of course. Freedom of association is great.

It's not about punishing those people, but about not supporting the government which is currently invading another country. You can't stop supporting the government without "punishing" the people, and it's not acceptable to keep supporting the government.

Ultimately the people who are being punished are responsible for stopping the punishment by removing their government.

> Ultimately the people who are being punished are responsible for stopping the punishment by removing their government.

Yes, all of Ukraine with an actual army, drones, rockets, tanks, artillery and zillions of cash from NATO countries struggles to contain Putin's gang, and Russian people must remove him from power barehanded, while the EU help comes mostly in a form of sanctions, visa bans and cancellations of service by such companies as Grammarly.

If you don't want nuclear fallout, then yes, that is literally what has to happen.

Not to mention there are very very few cases of a foreign forceful power changes in a country working out well for the people of that country. I'd argue it's utterly immoral based on historical examples to invade a country to change it's government no matter the type of government. To say a million dead people is better than not accessing Grammarly is such a baffling statement to me.

Can you please share with me some realistic tactical advice how can a bunch of unarmed civilians overthrow the government guarded by ~5 million armed, organized and well paid thugs who are currently on Putin's payroll?

That's undoable if the population supports the government, as it is currently in Russia - and doable without much violence when government and its institutions lose legitimacy in the eyes of its population. The USSR was vastly more powerful than Russia, yet it crumbled in a very short time when people simply stopped recognizing its government as legitimate. Town governments declared self-governance and stopped following orders from the central government, and local police, KGB and army chiefs stood by and ignored orders that come from Moscow, until new legitimate leaders emerged from the people and they quietly switched sides. Why aren't we seeing anything like this in Russia? Because 3/4 still support Putin and the war. To most Russians, it's a legitimate government doing the right thing. And hence comes the responsibility.

> That's undoable if the population supports the government, as it is currently in Russia

So what exactly is your source for this information? Polls by organization that Kremlin allows to work in Russia? Did it occur to you that they are as trustworthy as so-called referendums in Ukraine regions where 97% 'voted' to secede from Ukraine and become part of Russia?

> The USSR was vastly more powerful than Russia, yet it crumbled in a very short time when people simply stopped recognizing its government as legitimate

No, not really. The USSR was broke and was extremely lucky to have a decent human being as a leader, Gorbachev, as a leader, who didn't want any bloodshed. Had some hardline monster like Andropov lived longer, everyone here world be marching in lockstep, North Korea style.

And Putin's government is not even broke, it's actually swimming in money. Sure, the war is expensive, but he is far from being unable to pay the people who guard his regime. And I struggle to find an example in history of a popular revolution overthrowing a non-broke regime.

> Town governments declared self-governance ...

To put it mildly, you have a rather distant understanding of how it all happened.

Can you explain why you want "some realistic tactical advice how can a bunch of unarmed civilians overthrow the government guarded by ~5 million armed, organized and well paid thugs who are currently on Putin's payroll"? Is this the only way that Putin could be overthrown that you can think of?

A few messages above you said,

> Ultimately the people who are being punished are responsible for stopping the punishment by removing their government.

I'm one of the punished people. Sure, I don't want the nuclear fallout. So please, share with me your wisdom on how should I, a responsible person, act to remove Putin from power?

> Is this the only way that Putin could be overthrown that you can think of?

Apparently, you were able to think of several ways how Putin could be overthrown, I'll be happy to hear them all.

It's sad you can't think of any way except literally violently overthrowing him! But I'm happy to share my ideas.

The most important thing is to build support against him. Putin isn't in power because he pays everyone so well, but because he has enough support that nobody can easily overthrow him without themselves suffering for it afterwards. But just look a couple of weeks back - Wagner has at most 50k people, and they could have succeeded. They probably would have if the russian public was outspoken against Putin, because other supporters would have joined. It's all about the key supporters, and ultimately about public support. But what can you do to strengthen suport against him?

- Spread non-russian news to people

- Tell them about the horrors the russian military is inflicting on Ukraine

- Tell people about Putins close supporters who seem to be building support against him

- Tell people about the terrible effect the war has on those drafted

Any problems?

>Putin isn't in power because he pays everyone so well

Oh he absolutely is. The wages in key riot police/FSB/Rosgvardia units have grown at a rate of ~5x or more compared to the rest of the population, they have early and lavish pensions and lots of other benefits.

And because he rules with terror and everyone vocal against him end up jailed or dead. KGB know their business well.

> But what can you do to strengthen suport against him? ...

After ~1 week public activity, you'll be apprehended by the KGB. So you'll naturally try to 'spread the information' on foreign websites, but they get blocked really fast, in a day or less. You'll start trying to use foreign VPN services, but you can't, because they are all commercial and you can't pay them with your Russian visa/mastercard because of the ban they imposed on Russians. Nice?

In the real life, not your fantasies, lots of people were very actively spreading the news about the evils of the Putin's regime. They are either dead, jailed or have fled the country.

Btw, while we're at it, Wagner never tried a coup, but you're right, they had some (very slim) chance to succeed: they had lots of weapons, including tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, etc. Anti-putin protesters don't have any of that.

> Any problems?

Yes, quite a few, actually.

> The most important thing is to build support against him.

Ok assuming you have support against him. How exactly do you deal with 5 million well-payed armed guards?

Aren't the two of you saying the same things?

I don't think so. GP is saying that "punishing" Russian citizens by not doing business with them is immoral. I'm saying that doing business with Russian entities is immoral.

People are the country. And draft dodgers are not even necessarily against the war or the regime. They just don’t wanna be cannon fodder, which is understandable, but also doesn’t mean they should be granted asylum.

A country is its people. Unfortunate as it is, you cannot support - or harm - one without the other.

There are plenty of Russians who do not support the invasion, why punish them? Especially when they've been loyal users for a long time?

It is no different when a government uses trade sanctions. All citizens are harmed, whether they are patriots, rebels, neutral or ignorant.

It would be much less fair you to try to judge individuals, and it would not be effective if it only affected a few citizens.

Despite any political dispute, which is not belongs here, Grammarly obviously denied Russian users because they are actually Ukrainian company.

Worth to mention that on the other hand there was some betrayals within Ukrainians who sold a heavy weapons (e.g. tank engine) to Russians even after the war started, luckily there are just a few of them.

If youre in Russia and you oppose your own government, but can't leave, you should be punished?