Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

stefan92 said:
They might well have done so, and why not? Russia and Ukraine are neighboring countries and the Russian propaganda always liked to paint a picture that they are quite close to each other (or at least should be). So if some of these guys aren't aware of the tensions they might well think that the exercise was simply extented to Ukraine - why not, a lot of them were in Belarus anyway and it wasn't a war there, so where is the difference for an uneducated young Russian soldier?
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This is a pretty important point. When I was 18 I barely knew left from right in terms of a wider social perception. It’s not hard to believe 18 year old war conscripts with a lack of education are similarly easily misled. (Think of how many idiots you know in real life)

At the very least all indications seem to be very few of them knew they were entering a combat zone. The Russian military is hierarchical, this is the result of creating a too heavy system.
 
clarkydaz said:
Hi mate, forgive the igorance but what is the belief among Russian society in general now? Are the younger generation (social media etc) more aware of how Russia appear to the outside world?
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It's pretty much impossible to have a clear picture on the matter at the moment as there are no independent organisations to measure true public opinion. The younger generation hardly believes anything that Putin is saying (and most of the protesters that come out to the streets are extremely young — high-schoolers & students mostly) — what's more intriguing is how 35-40+ are feeling about the matter and I've seen very different opinions. But basically if you use internet as a place to get your news you're unlikely to remain in the pro-Russian bubble that's metaphorically leaking from all sides.

I wonder how sanctions would affect people's opinion — not even in a few weeks but in a few months/half a year. Sadly, I don't think that any public resurgence of a required scale would be able to form (and outmuscle the police) to make Putin change his mind on this war itself.

There's a petition against the war that was created a couple of days ago and already has more than 1 million signatures though. And many public figures had openly stated their distain with what's been happening.
 
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stefan92 said:
They might well have done so, and why not? Russia and Ukraine are neighboring countries and the Russian propaganda always liked to paint a picture that they are quite close to each other (or at least should be). So if some of these guys aren't aware of the tensions they might well think that the exercise was simply extented to Ukraine - why not, a lot of them were in Belarus anyway and it wasn't a war there, so where is the difference for an uneducated young Russian soldier?
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No. Ukraine has been Putin's propaganda's boogeyman for more than 8 years now, it's leaders vilified etc. — no one affected by propaganda would believe in peaceful exercises in collaboration with Ukraine.
 
do.ob said:
Assuming for the sake of argument that this segregation reports are true: why would the Ukrainians be against all those people leaving their country, especially once they have already made it to the border? Is it possible that Poland/EU told them they only take Ukrainians and EU nationals?
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They don't like black people, they don't want to help them, and they don't want to see their lives saved.

The entire point is to put them through misery at best. And danger at worst.
 
harms said:
It's pretty much impossible to have a clear picture on the matter at the moment as there are no independent organisations to measure true public opinion. The younger generation hardly believes anything that Putin is saying (and most of the protesters that come out to the streets are extremely young — high-schoolers & students mostly) — what's more intriguing is how 35-40+ are feeling about the matter and I've seen very different opinions. But basically if you use internet as a place to get your news you're unlikely to remain in the pro-Russian bubble that's metaphorically leaking from all sides.

I wonder how sanctions would affect people's opinion — not even in a few weeks but in a few months/half a year. Sadly, I don't think that any public resurgence of a required scale would be able to form (and outmuscle the police) to make Putin change his mind on this war itself.
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Thanks, you assume younger people having a window to the world with the internet have the tools to think objectively. thats a big divide between older generations
 
spiriticon said:
Russia is very quickly turning into North Korea, both in economic and political standing.

You can't ban websites like wikipedia or youtube forever unless you never want your citizens to use those sites ever again.
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Yeah was thinking the same, assuming these sanctions stay in place it’s going to be life changing for your average Russian. They’re going to be locked out of modern times. No sport, no entertainment, no technology, no holidays… the list goes on.
 
So there is a ban on calling Putin “Putin”? He’s obviously not on the same scale but I don’t get the reason for the automatic name change.
 
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Paxi said:
When Russians overthrow Ukrainian government, I don’t think they’ll care about Nord Stream 2 apart from the 14 billion or so lost or however much it cost.
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Nordstream 2 alone was supposed to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year directly to Germany I assume that would have been a fat piece of business even on an international level, not to mention the increased dependance on Russia as a strategic factor.
 
MoskvaRed said:
So there is a ban on calling Putin “Рutlеr”? He’s obviously not on the same scale but I don’t get the reason for the automatic name change.
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I think people are free to call the cnut whatever they want.
 
calodo2003 said:
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This is getting insane now. Are we witnessing the world turning their back on Russia?
Post Putin I can see whoever runs this back just sweep into office (if they allow fair elections)
Maybe that’s the plan? I know people say why would Russia stop now when already sanctioned but all those sanctions become an incredible leverage to have in the near future.
 
Apple should have enforced 100% price hike on Apple products which would go to funding Ukrainian government in the fight against Russia and a pamphlet inside the box explaining why they had done that. Good luck explaining that one away Putin.
 
Paxi said:
When Russians overthrow Ukrainian government, I don’t think they’ll care about Nord Stream 2 apart from the 14 billion or so lost or however much it cost.
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If anything, it'll strengthen Russia's resolve to control the land based pipeline going through Ukraine.

Cutting off NS2 has made the invasion even more crucial to Putin, especially given the state of the economy.

At this point, it's annex or bust.
 
Russia is completely, totally and utterly fecked.

The only question is how many people Putin is taking down with him.
 
TMDaines said:
Is there a border in the world that doesn’t prioritise people based on passport and what checks need to be made? People who have no visa-free access to the EU are going to be processed differently.

Obviously with the humanitarian and wartime situation, further distinction will be made between women, children, the elderly and others. If you are an overseas student or worker between the age of 18-40 who ordinarily has no visa access to the EU, you aren’t going to be a priority for processing and you are going to be asked to join a separate, far slower queue, subject to more checks. Now if the border guards are discriminating within that group based on race or skin colour, then that is wrong.

It astounds me that people expect that everyone reaching the border will be in one long line, first come first serve, treated the same regardless of their passport. The world doesn’t work like that – and I say that as someone who thinks the elimination of borders and the Schengen Zone is one of the great European success stories.
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That's a load of trite. This is a humanitarian crisis and it has been called as such by all. Ukraine is literally in a state of emergency and they're being bombed in their main cities indiscriminately. Now is definitely not the time for bureaucracy and 'types of visas'...on top of that. If Ukraine has foreign nationals on student or work visas, they should really be getting them out and to safety ASAP. In an ideal world they'd be working with these countries embassies in Moldova and Poland to ensure them safe passage...as it happens in literally every other country in the world in a time of crisis. I get that you're close to this conflict, and I think that's obscuring your rationality on the matter as well.

The fact that Ukraine is turning people of colour away from the border is racist and pretty disgusting, and I'm pretty tired of having to read you scrambling for excuses on the matter time and time again. It also seems that Poland is doing something similar and that also is disgusting. I've posted another member's story below - I'd encourage you to read it.

Ladron de redcafe said:
It's absolutely disgusting. A friend of mine tried to cross the Polish border on the 25th and was stopped about 2 km before the border, near a rest stop. He and a group that he was with weren't allowed to proceed to the border. They waited in the same position for 3 hours and then went back, walking.

Some of these stories are much worse than what he went through. But it's the same type of sickening behaviour.
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@TMDaines there's also plenty of material online should you wish to educate yourself on the matter -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60555650

Isaac, a Nigerian man trying to get into Poland, said border staff told him they were "not tending to Africans".
"We've been chased back, we've been hit with police armed with sticks," he told the BBC.
South African foreign office official Clayson Monyela also said students had been "badly treated" at the border.
There have also been numerous reports of Ukrainian security officials preventing Africans from catching buses and trains going to the border.
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Some students have alleged that they were harassed at the border with Poland by Ukrainian guards. They say the guards beat them with rods and even pulled the hair of female students and stopped them from crossing over.
A video circulating on social media shows a guard kicking a man's suitcase, although it is unclear if the man was of Indian origin.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-60552271

atkar83 said:
They were warned by the government to leave weeks ago, apparently. If they didn't, the government is going to prioritize their own citizens over everyone else. That's normal. It would happen everywhere. There are lots of Indian students that should have left when the warnings started but didn't or probably couldn't, and it sucks. But it's normal procedure. I'm sure a black Ukrainian national was probably prioritized over a white international student
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Source? This is the first I've heard of it - what evidence do you have?
 
do.ob said:
Nordstream 2 alone was supposed to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year directly to Germany I assume that would have been a fat piece of business even on an international level, not to mention the increased dependance on Russia as a strategic factor.
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But they were building it because they had issues with Ukraine. Once the government is overthrown they can do what they like in Ukraine.
 
Frosty said:
I was about to ask the same thing. Surely it is a good thing to get innocents out of the country quickly?
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Some of the borders are massive bottlenecks. Unless you just open the border (which will never happen unless there is a safety issue because of the obvious national security issues), the capacity of the border will be massively outstripped by the demand.

Most who are travelling west want to go the quickest, most direct route, which is Medyka-Shehyni to then travel west down the main Polish roads to Krakow, etc. Medyka-Shehyni is used to a reasonable trickle of tourists and workers who cross the border daily. I regularly had delays when I used to go there and Ukrainians could routinely wait a couple of hours to cross during the day before they had visa-free access. The border normally can only process four-six people at a time on foot and then cars separately. You now have 100,000s of people wanting to cross there in a matter of days.

Some will be EU citizens wanting to “return home” to the Schengen Zone, some will be Ukrainian citizens who have visa free access, some will be citizens of third countries like the UK who also have visa-free access, others will be from third-countries that don’t routinely have visa-free access and they may have to enter as refugees or claim asylum. All these different groups of people have different checks and will take a different amount of time to process. Of course there will be prioritisation.

Even Ukrainian friends of ours from Lviv who have fled in the last 24 hours to go to Warsaw have gone via Slovakia, because the Polish borders just have too many people wanting to cross right now.

I’m not gonna deny anyone’s lived experience, and I’m sure there will have been racist behaviour, but most of what is being derided as racism on social media is the function of national borders. No borders treat everyone equally irrespective of their passport.
 
Dante said:
If anything, it'll strengthen Russia's resolve to control the land based pipeline going through Ukraine.

Cutting off NS2 has made the invasion even more crucial to Putin, especially given the state of the economy.

At this point, it's annex or bust.
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Yes that’s what I was getting at.
 
The few Russian stocks left in London (Polymeral, Evraz) are down about 75%. At some point they have to open the Russian exchange again.
 
Dante said:
If anything, it'll strengthen Russia's resolve to control the land based pipeline going through Ukraine.

Cutting off NS2 has made the invasion even more crucial to Putin, especially given the state of the economy.

At this point, it's annex or bust.
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No. A pipeline is worthless when there is no customer at the end of it. And that's what's happening, he isn't losing control over the pipeline, he is losing Germany as a customer.
 
That pipeline is a drop in the ocean now. Every day we move closer to a worldwide embago of everything to do with Russa.
 
So the Russians aren't opening their stock markets?
I'm assuming that's because they know it'll just tank and lower morale/confidence amongst the population?
 
do.ob said:
We don't know what's going on precisely though, whether they are really turning away every single non-white person. As I said: I could see this coming from Poland or the EU and I could see why the Ukrainians would want to keep nationals of uninvolved countries in their country. Even if both would be quite cynical. But I have a hard time believing that everyone is just doing it for the sake of being racist.
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I was just basing it off the idea that it was true. Hopefully it isn't because the situation is shite enough as it is.
 
stefan92 said:
No. A pipeline is worthless when there is no customer at the end of it. And that's what's happening, he isn't losing control over the pipeline, he is losing Germany as a customer.
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There will always be a customer for oil and gas.

But on the topic of fuel, how are the Russians running out of fuel over and over - seems like a pretty basic thing if you're going to invade a country??
 
GeorgieBoy said:
So the Russians aren't opening their stock markets?
I'm assuming that's because they know it'll just tank and lower morale/confidence amongst the population?
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First they said it was closed on Monday, then both Mon and Tue, and now its closed all week.
 
The Corinthian said:
Now is definitely not the time for bureaucracy and 'types of visas'...on top of that. If Ukraine has foreign nationals on student or work visas, they should really be getting them out and to safety ASAP. In an ideal world they'd be working with these countries embassies in Moldova and Poland to ensure them safe passage...as it happens in literally every other country in the world in a time of crisis.
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How do you suppose Ukraine just gets everyone out? The whole country is at war and the infrastructure is on its knees.

It’s up to the individual embassies of citizens to make arrangements with the EU and Moldova to to take their citizens and assist their exit from Ukraine. It’s no good Ukraine allowing people to leave its border, unless people will subsequently be able to leave no man’s land and enter the EU or Moldova.
 
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