46 ms·

Twitter based map of Russian troop movements

677 points by jillesvangurp 5y ago

persedes 5y ago
Semi related, but wondering what role FAANG will play during the sanctions. A russian friend of mine told me google pay/apple pay were very common and preferred ways of payment in russia. Banning those in addition to exclusion from SWIFT would have pretty wide spread consequences for their citizens.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  A quick Google search indicates that Yandex has its own payment system: https://yoomoney.ru/?lang=en https://yoomoney.ru/?lang=en probably not equivalent to Apple Pay but it's something. This is probably a great opportunity for Russian and Chinese tech companies to gain market share as western companies are banned from operating in Russia.
  - persedes 5y ago
    Agreed, I was surprised how wide spread electronic payments were so there will be a big market up for grabs. Doing some quick googling, russia seems to be among the countries with the largest percentages of cashless transactions (~80%). What's interesting about his explanation was that the main motivation for people was trust, if I recall some places wouldn't even let you pay with cash because they did not trust it.
  - contingencies 5y ago
    Chinese mobile payment is all based on total knowledge of your identity and constant super-app supervision of your life. You can't separate it from messaging, government services, ID/passport and phone number, etc. I doubt very much that the Russians, governing from an ex-FSB mentality, would allow that type of Chinese 'tech' to operate.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  I hope they support a 10x upgrade to the Magnitsky act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act I wouldn’t be surprised if future historians point to this thorn in putin’s side as one of the main reasons for pissing him off enough to start a war. We have the technology to put a ton of pressure on the powerful elite trying to flex their way out of bearing responsibility for ruin they caused.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > We have the technology to put a ton of pressure on the powerful elite trying to flex their way out of bearing responsibility for ruin they caused. Not if they've made peace with giving up on jet-setting and simply being kings in their own country: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/politics/russia-biden-sanctions-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/politics/russia-biden-... > And perhaps most notably, Mr. Putin and his closest aides and partners in Moscow might not suffer much themselves from sanctions, analysts say.... > Some of the hard-line nationalist men around Mr. Putin were already on a Treasury Department sanctions list and accept that they and their families will no longer have substantial ties to the United States or Europe for the rest of their lives, said Alexander Gabuev, the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. > “They are the powerful everybodies in today’s Russia,” he said. “There is a lot of posh richness. They’re totally secluded. They’re the kings, and that can be secured in Russia only.” > Furthermore, because of their roles in state-owned enterprises and their business ties, they are “the very guys who are directly benefiting from the economy becoming more insulated, more detached from the outside world,” he added.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      When their children, and their Children’s children start complaining they can’t go to Ibiza, I wonder if that would bother them? Thankfully people die eventually.
- bjourne 5y ago
  I fear that they will overreact and ban what they see as Russian propaganda. E.g https://thegrayzone.com/2022/02/15/russian-un-ambassador-us-war-propaganda-grayzone/ https://thegrayzone.com/2022/02/15/russian-un-ambassador-us-... The Grayzone's youtube account may very well be suspended in the coming days. It is the totally wrong strategy for dealing with crackpots but the tech giants have not realized that yet.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Google / Apple Pay would no longer be allowed to operate there, like how iirc a lot of US businesses were not allowed to operate in Iran (I'm not sure what the current status of that is). People got in trouble for that, too.
- chasd00 5y ago
  if the tech companies "de-platform" Russia on their own does that count as a sanction? I wouldn't think so since it wouldn't have been ordered by a government. I wonder how Russia would react to that, cyber warfare against the company denying them service? edit: after thinking about it, the above seems like punishing the Russian people more than the Russian government which shouldn't be done IMO
  - kgeist 5y ago
    Banning ordinary Russians from using American services would remove the last place where Russians can express their opinions freely, playing into Putin's hands.
    - skrtskrt 5y ago
      Well sanctions generally affect the average citizen the hardest already. It's not like government or military leaders are the ones that can't get basic medical supplies or food in a sanctioned country.
    - gutitout 5y ago
      Why can’t they spin up a blog? Also, as an American, I don’t think those FAANG places are a safe space for “expressing opinions freely”. The boys (bots) will come.
      - kgeist 5y ago
        An independent blog is easily banned. In fact, most of them are already. Platforms like Facebook host millions of pages and use https so it's not possible to ban individual pages, only the whole thing. And they've been hesitant to ban whole social networks because of possible discontent
      - lghh 5y ago
        It's a lot easier to DDOS a blog than it is to DDOS facebook.
- kgeist 5y ago
  It's also likely that Putin will ban them himself as "symmetric response" against cutting SWIFT. Always at the expense of ordinary people.
arcastroe 5y ago
I've found Snapchat Maps to be an interesting "real-time" source of people's on the ground view of Kyiv and Kharkiv and other populated cities in Ukraine. Can see people's photos and videos from the last 48 hours and it helps paint a picture of the situation (to complement curated images from media sources).
danbruc 5y ago
This would probably benefit a lot from the possibility to scrub through a timeline and then only show all the markers within a few hours of the selected time so that one can actually see where there is ongoing activity.
- TheJoeMan 5y ago
  I actually had an idea for a similar site, with that plus the ability to show with the markers which cardinal direction is being recorded.
top_sigrid 5y ago
As on social media it is very hard to tell whether posted footage and information is genuine, recent and from the claimed places, crowdsourcing the collection of sources probably is a good idea. Hopefully this will help distinguishing legit from fake information.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  So far, most false info seems to be recognisable by a non-expert within a few minutes of research. For example, when I see a twitter video of army trucks going down a freeway geotagged, I can at least use satellite view on google maps to match up landmarks and confirm the location is accurate, and I can check the sun position and weather to get an idea if the date/time is accurate. Most 'fake news' stories seem to fail even these basic checks, although it would be pretty easy to fake these elements too.
  - HatchedLake721 5y ago
    This doesn’t stop tens of millions of people taking it in as truth.
  - BurningPenguin 5y ago
    I'd say actually checking them is already a basic expert move. Most people don't even know about geotags, and certain groups don't even care.
- 0x38B 5y ago
  Case in point: > For Eastern Ukraine specifically, this has included a supposed infiltration by Ukrainian saboteurs into Russia. [2] Geolocation of the footage (taken from the helmet of one of the Ukrainian soldiers that supposedly participated in the infiltration) debunked the story within an hour after it turned out that the supposed incursion into Russian territory was carried out from separatist-held territory. [3] Rather than showing the bodies of the five Ukrainian soldiers that were supposedly killed in the raid, Russia instead showed a destroyed BTR-70M armoured personnel carrier (APC) that was painted in an ill-conceived attempt to make it look like a Ukrainian vehicle. [4] Ironically, Ukraine doesn't even operate the BTR-70M, further showing the attention (or lack thereof) that goes into these false flag operations. Source: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/false-flag-shenanigans-russian.html https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/false-flag-shenanigans...
superdug 5y ago
It's a weird place to be where I can watch a war unfold on television and have live geotagged curated material laid out on a map on my computer. It's amazing and depressing at the same time.
- dereg 5y ago
  Indeed. The first time I felt this sensation was during the Japanese tsunamis, where we were fed a live, HD footage of the flooding from the vantage point of news helicopters. I pray that we’ll never have to use tools like these for anything other than leisure.
- paganel 5y ago
  The same happened with /r/syriancivilwar back in 2014-2015, in that case it was even more depressing because you also had some nutjobs like ISIS directly involved in said conflict, which meant massacres like this one [1] getting reported almost in real time, with images from the place where it had all happened and all that. The 2014 fight between Russia and Ukraine was also heavily documented in almost real time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Speicher_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Speicher_massacre
- trinovantes 5y ago
  Definitely surreal to watch war unfold in real time on twitter/tiktok
- LesZedCB 5y ago
  The phenomenon is at least as old as Baudrillard's work The Gulf War Did Not Take Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...
skywal_l 5y ago
That map is not up to date. They are already shelling Dnipro.
- xfitm3 5y ago
  Where do you get your information?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    I've been collecting sources in this thread: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193 https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193 Currently I've been watching four Telegram groups. Most are Russian propaganda / pro-war. But I still find it interesting to see everything. - https://t.me/s/uniannet https://t.me/s/uniannet - https://t.me/s/h_saltovka https://t.me/s/h_saltovka - https://t.me/s/istorijaoruzija https://t.me/s/istorijaoruzija - https://t.me/s/ukrpravda_news https://t.me/s/ukrpravda_news And https://meduza.io/en/live/2022/02/24/invasion https://meduza.io/en/live/2022/02/24/invasion is also good. (I use Chrome's auto-translate feature. Right click -> Translate to English. The Telegram app is actually less useful than the web viewer because of this.)
    - bryan_w 5y ago
      Now the recent telegram "advertising campaigns" make sense. I was wondering why there was so much effort to promote it over signal
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    https://nitter.net/TadeuszGiczan https://nitter.net/TadeuszGiczan
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    https://www.standard.co.uk/video/international-news/resident-of-eastern-ukraine-city-films-shelling-v348f1ad5 https://www.standard.co.uk/video/international-news/resident...
  - throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
glandium 5y ago
I see a few in Dombas, a few in Crimea, but other than that nothing in Ukraine and the most recent from 2 days ago. Is it like that for anyone else?
- majso 5y ago
  Yes, it seems to be not up to date
toxik 5y ago
Uh, this is missing bombings in several Ukrainian cities, not least Kiyv, Lviv, ~Donbas~ Donetsk.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Nit: Donbas is not a city, the city is Donetsk, and Donbas is the name of the region around it, from "Donetsk (coal) basin". Lviv is a city very close to the border with Poland, a NATO member.
  - toxik 5y ago
    No doubt the Russian strategy will be to establish a strong presence on the western side of the Dnieper.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - mytailorisrich 5y ago
    No military expert but it looks like they are following a pretty standard strategy of targeting and destroying air power throughout the country by bombing airports, radars, and air force facilities in general. How far will their ground troops then go? We shall see...
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  It maps troop movements, though. All of those initial bombings have happened from Russia, Crimea and Belarus. Apparently this phase won't last long because it can't (Russia according to analysts in the Guardian doesn't have many guided munitions in this range). So we will perhaps see this map change very quickly as troops move in.
_xnmw 5y ago
I'm in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine right now (SaaS founder born in Canada). Woke up to explosions at 5 AM this morning. At 12PM still some explosions, can feel the ground shaking, but the streets are mostly calm. Went out to buy some groceries, long lines, but everything still works. Police cars are out patrolling in full force, but no signs of unrest. Church bells tolling nonstop. TransferWise is limited to $200 USD transfers but it worked -- Apple Pay worked at the grocery store. Obviously internet and electricity is still up for now, but water pipes have been shut off in many of my friend's places.
- originalvichy 5y ago
  Good luck and stay safe.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  What was your impression of the grocery store? Were the shelves mostly bare, or pretty full? I heard most stores are mostly out of stock ("only expensive food is left") and that supplies are expected to last 15-25 days, but I was curious if that was accurate. Thanks for the tip about TransferWise -- I wasn't sure how to send money to people. My go-to is usually Venmo, but I haven't tried it internationally.
  - _xnmw 5y ago
    Got there at 11 AM, shelves were still half-full, but bread was gone and it was clear everything would be gone by the end of the day.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Good luck. My girlfriend is Ukrainian and has been working on her family's evacuation plan as well all morning. There's an interesting contrast between this comment and your previous one from yesterday, and she shares how you feel. She was taken aback by how this "came out of nowhere", even though it really didn't. Up until this morning, she didn't believe an invasion was possible.
  - 5y ago
nightgarden 5y ago
"My troops are merely passing by"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  Civilization in real world
baybal2 5y ago
- propagandist 5y ago
  People are wary of government messaging because of things like the Gulf of Tonkin and the WMD debacle. Unfortunately in this case, it was credible and the strategy of declassifying did seem to work but clearly Putin has made up his mind. One more thing: this is definitely not the place for "I told you so".
- egeozcan 5y ago
  > I believe I am no mad preacher, and have more authority to speak on this matter than most of Western "geopolitical think tanks" > I studied politics, sociology, military sciences, and history as my passion > Do not do "Mad preacher" labelling I cannot test your knowledge. For me you are just another account crying large-scale war. You present no evidence, other than a few observations, stories and a strong conviction of self-grandeur. I'm not saying you are lying, being super intelligent or just exaggerating, but many people won't "just trust you". You should understand that.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > I'm not saying you are lying, being super intelligent or just exaggerating, but many people won't "just trust you". You should understand that. I don't ask you to trust me. I ask HN readers to listen to their own countries' military experts. Your generals who spent half their life studying Russian, and Chinese militaries in Westpoint, Saint-Cur and Sandhurst didn't do that for nothing.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    The author would be more credible if they revealed their identity and showed some credentials, otherwise it's just another voice on the internet; it could be a subject matter expert, it could be an armchair expert, could be part of the Russian propaganda machine, or it could be a troll.
- noduerme 5y ago
noduerme 5y ago
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  It is only very stupid people who believe their enemies are stupid.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
      Sorry, my home was struck by Russian military this morning and I've had to flee, so I'm in no mood for your levity.
      - noduerme 5y ago
        I didn't mean to be light about it. I'm sorry. If I said what I really think, I would be banned here. It's a catastrophe that makes me furious. My grandparents are from Ukraine and my grandfather was almost killed for his views about Russia. I grew up in LA around the Russian mob so I have some understanding of how those thugs think. I wish I could say what I really want to say.
kroltan 5y ago
Off topic, but what is that circular border in south Kazakhstan? Map bug, or a mathematically inclined contested territory? I don't see it in Google Maps.
- kingofpandora 5y ago
  Baikonur.
- burmanm 5y ago
  It's Baikonur. Rented to Russia, and as you see from the map.. it's quite big area for a space port.
ck2 5y ago
You know a country is failing when the "leader" declares war for "reasons" to distract everyone from the society collapse otherwise. 100% like North Korea but with real dangerous power. Also handily reduces population of your own country to support. So many innocent people are going to die for absolutely no reason at all, imagine if US tried to take over Cuba or some other coastal island. At least we now know what's going to happen to China when they take over Taiwan, lots of "sanctions" but no action because who is going to stop them and cut off all their manufacturing/supply? With Russia there is nothing they have but natural gas and still nothing can be done except throw more bodies on the fire which won't happen. Speaking of which, why wouldn't China just take Taiwan right now? World doesn't seem to handle multiple problems at once very well and they also need a "distraction" from covid and economy problems.
- LexGray 5y ago
  There is some indication that if Trump gets in for 2024 he has an eye on Mexico. https://mexicodailypost.com/2022/02/24/donald-trump-praises-putin-over-ukraine-implying-the-us-should-have-invaded-mexico/ https://mexicodailypost.com/2022/02/24/donald-trump-praises-...
- adamhp 5y ago
  > imagine if US tried to take over Cuba or some other coastal island. I think it'd be a bit more like the US trying to take over Canada, but sure.
  - ck2 5y ago
    I had to check but wow I always thought Ukraine was size of Florida, apparently it is the size of Texas (and larger than California)
- belltaco 5y ago
  I think China is more long term calculation than short emotional like Putin. Hopefully.
  - ck2 5y ago
yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
This map is waaaaay out of date. There have been attacks all over the country today. Explosions in Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Mariupol, and more. Fucking everywhere. My friends and loved ones woke up to explosions. My employees woke up to explosions. Many can't leave because the roads are massively congested. Cash machines have stopped operating. The shops are running out of food. There are no flights. None. All the airports are under missile fire. They've raised the Russian flag over buildings. This is all out war. Evidently, sanctions do jack shit. --- You will all see videos of this, and so will your children's children. Here's one for a start. https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1496805801628995587 https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1496805801628995587 это просто пиздец.
- andrewshadura 5y ago
  Well said, пиздец it is.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > Evidently, sanctions do jack shit. The THREAT of sanctions hasn't had the desired effect, and if they are enacted, they will take a while before their effect can be felt by the people involved - weeks, months, I don't know. And if they maintain a good relationship with China they may be able to avoid it entirely - although China may then risk its relationship with the rest of the world, if it's found out they're funneling money to Russia.
  - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    What are you suggesting? That I should be patient and trust the system? The system has failed. People are dying. This is our Hitler. Diplomacy was never an option. Putin recorded his declaration of war before telling the world that diplomacy was still an option. He will only be stopped by swift and decisive military action from the entirety of the free world. Anything short of that, and the blood of Ukrainians is on the hands of the Western world too.
    - Markoff 5y ago
known 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
VictorPath 5y ago
- globalise83 5y ago
  I think you might be off by a whole continent.
  - mtmail 5y ago
    (VictorPath first talked about Syria, before editing it to Somalia. That's what globalise83 was referring to with different continent)
    - VictorPath 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, or post snarkily on inflammatory topics. Those are not effective ways to make your case, and they poison the community (such as it is). Also, please don't edit your comments in a way that misleads readers after the fact—especially when the misleading thing is making other comments look bad because their original context is gone. That's not a nice thing to do. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - YaBomm 5y ago
    > Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, it was a fair comment hey by the way, how many comments or posts do you make completely disappear each day? I have seen one so far
kgeist 5y ago
I am from Russia and I've been shaking for whole day for what Putin is doing. I couldn't even get myself to go to work today. I'm in complete shock. It's like one day waking up in Third Reich.
- izietto 5y ago
  What are the news about the conflict there? What are the reasons told by the media? It may be interesting having a direct source of the attacker news
  - kgeist 5y ago
    Innocent Russia protecting East Ukraine from Nazis in Kiev. It's so surreal.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Gotta protect East Ukraine from the Nazi-devout Jewish leader! In all seriousness I do feel for you. Protesting against this will do little and get you in trouble so you’re basically forced to watch. You’ll need to accept these are things out of your control for your own mental health. Hopefully diplomatic efforts resolve it quickly.
- yupper32 5y ago
  What I don't understand is how so many Russians seem surprised. Is the Russian propaganda that good? As someone from the west, this is whole development is not surprising at all. Even in the past week so many didn't believe it would happen. Meanwhile I've been watching the news the past week or two to see if they've invaded yet.
  - kgeist 5y ago
    Many thought he was just bluffing. There are reports that even some in his inner circle thought so.
not_kurt_godel 5y ago
There is an entire site dedicated to this purpose that has been running since 2014: https://liveuamap.com https://liveuamap.com
- notemaker 5y ago
  Error 520
  - not_kurt_godel 5y ago
    Yeah it's getting hammered. But still functional on most refreshes for me.
- siver_john 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing, I had been looking for this after seeing it on here the other day but I couldn't remember the name or anything at all.
- k0k0r0 5y ago
  There is also https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap which seems like a clone. Sonce I often get errors from liveumap, I use that instead. I didn't find any differences apart from less funtionality. But I didn't check that throughoutly, though.
raducu 5y ago
I was walking with my wife on a confined road when we saw people running and screaming "bear". I immediately noticed the danger because any bear would be comming down the sloap and there was verry little room to get out of the way. My wife took her phone and was trying to get closer. I had to drag her and she made fun of me. That is untill the mama bear with her cub came running down, then she started screaming and pannicking. I've never hit her in my life, but that moment I felt like punching her in the face, mostly to shut her up and make her move. She was not alone, a lot of people were doing the same. I was dumbstruck by how oblivious and heard-like people behave. I know I was blindsighted in the past by danger, mostly because of my young macho self. But my grandpa told me countless stories about survival and being prepared, and thankfully nowdays I try never to ignore my gut feeling. If your gut feeling tells you something's not right, LISTEN and ACT -- acting usually means move out of harms way, fast.
- dang 5y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453577 since it went so offtopic.
- temp8964 5y ago
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Bollocks. I've seen women be calm and composed and I've seen very large guys start blubbering incoherently.
    - temp8964 5y ago
      - jacquesm 5y ago
g45ylkjlk45y 5y ago
avastmick 5y ago
From a philosophical stance, this is history repeating for the same basic reason. 2022 AD and risk of war is still the same as it was in 1022 AD, or 22 AD. That reason is the accumulation of power (or by proxy, wealth) in a small set of individuals, or in this case one person. No realtime access to information changes this; it just makes the story of the horror unfold faster. Persisting with the concentration of power in individuals has shown throughout history to have dire consequence. We continue risking civilization on the mental health of those who already show significant issues with their obsessive clammer for power. The cult of the leader is toxic and, as far as I can see, illogical and lacking evidence for benefit. Where are the voices that seek a structured shift away from personality cult politics? The innovation we all need for the future are those voices.
- pphysch 5y ago
  Which single individual was responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003?
  - eyeeyesawayyy 5y ago
    IMO, the vice president at the time. Cheney pulled a similar move of cynically planning and instigating a war of aggression, which is why many people consider him to be a war criminal even within the US. He wasn't really the head of a cult of personality, though. He just took advantage of the gullible people who surrounded him.
    - awb 5y ago
      The Senate authorized the Iraq war. A far cry from one person.
      - eyeeyesawayyy 5y ago
        Yes, and Putin's cabinet authorized this war. It's always an oversimplification to attribute global events to an individual, but sometimes you can point to one person without whom an event could not have occurred.
pugworthy 5y ago
UX feedback: Change from blue and green to something else a bit more color-blind friendly. I'm moderate blue/green and couldn't tell them apart without some careful examination.
awb 5y ago
On mobile at least some of the links are plain text and aren’t clickable. I found an orange bubble in Donbas like that. Any one else have that issue?
ryanmarsh 5y ago
Internet doing the work of FO's everywhere
cphoover 5y ago
All of these tweets should be archived
lambda_dn 5y ago
nemacol 5y ago
Is there a service out there like MapHub but for making timelines? Thanks
cmarschner 5y ago
I‘m glad there is still cash. Imagine in a situation like this where the internet-based payment systems are seized, lines break down, there are power shoartages etc. People would invent a new form of cash.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
Do this for Russian troop movement: admirable use of the internet. Well done, you! Do the same thing for US troops: traitorous. Immediate bannination. Probable investigation by the FBI.
KingKaram 5y ago

677 points by jillesvangurp 5y ago

Semi related, but wondering what role FAANG will play during the sanctions. A russian friend of mine told me google pay/apple pay were very common and preferred ways of payment in russia. Banning those in addition to exclusion from SWIFT would have pretty wide spread consequences for their citizens.

exhilaration 5y ago
A quick Google search indicates that Yandex has its own payment system: https://yoomoney.ru/?lang=en https://yoomoney.ru/?lang=en probably not equivalent to Apple Pay but it's something. This is probably a great opportunity for Russian and Chinese tech companies to gain market share as western companies are banned from operating in Russia.
- persedes 5y ago
  Agreed, I was surprised how wide spread electronic payments were so there will be a big market up for grabs. Doing some quick googling, russia seems to be among the countries with the largest percentages of cashless transactions (~80%). What's interesting about his explanation was that the main motivation for people was trust, if I recall some places wouldn't even let you pay with cash because they did not trust it.
- contingencies 5y ago
  Chinese mobile payment is all based on total knowledge of your identity and constant super-app supervision of your life. You can't separate it from messaging, government services, ID/passport and phone number, etc. I doubt very much that the Russians, governing from an ex-FSB mentality, would allow that type of Chinese 'tech' to operate.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
I hope they support a 10x upgrade to the Magnitsky act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act I wouldn’t be surprised if future historians point to this thorn in putin’s side as one of the main reasons for pissing him off enough to start a war. We have the technology to put a ton of pressure on the powerful elite trying to flex their way out of bearing responsibility for ruin they caused.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > We have the technology to put a ton of pressure on the powerful elite trying to flex their way out of bearing responsibility for ruin they caused. Not if they've made peace with giving up on jet-setting and simply being kings in their own country: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/politics/russia-biden-sanctions-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/us/politics/russia-biden-... > And perhaps most notably, Mr. Putin and his closest aides and partners in Moscow might not suffer much themselves from sanctions, analysts say.... > Some of the hard-line nationalist men around Mr. Putin were already on a Treasury Department sanctions list and accept that they and their families will no longer have substantial ties to the United States or Europe for the rest of their lives, said Alexander Gabuev, the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. > “They are the powerful everybodies in today’s Russia,” he said. “There is a lot of posh richness. They’re totally secluded. They’re the kings, and that can be secured in Russia only.” > Furthermore, because of their roles in state-owned enterprises and their business ties, they are “the very guys who are directly benefiting from the economy becoming more insulated, more detached from the outside world,” he added.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    When their children, and their Children’s children start complaining they can’t go to Ibiza, I wonder if that would bother them? Thankfully people die eventually.
bjourne 5y ago
I fear that they will overreact and ban what they see as Russian propaganda. E.g https://thegrayzone.com/2022/02/15/russian-un-ambassador-us-war-propaganda-grayzone/ https://thegrayzone.com/2022/02/15/russian-un-ambassador-us-... The Grayzone's youtube account may very well be suspended in the coming days. It is the totally wrong strategy for dealing with crackpots but the tech giants have not realized that yet.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Google / Apple Pay would no longer be allowed to operate there, like how iirc a lot of US businesses were not allowed to operate in Iran (I'm not sure what the current status of that is). People got in trouble for that, too.
chasd00 5y ago
if the tech companies "de-platform" Russia on their own does that count as a sanction? I wouldn't think so since it wouldn't have been ordered by a government. I wonder how Russia would react to that, cyber warfare against the company denying them service? edit: after thinking about it, the above seems like punishing the Russian people more than the Russian government which shouldn't be done IMO
- kgeist 5y ago
  Banning ordinary Russians from using American services would remove the last place where Russians can express their opinions freely, playing into Putin's hands.
  - skrtskrt 5y ago
    Well sanctions generally affect the average citizen the hardest already. It's not like government or military leaders are the ones that can't get basic medical supplies or food in a sanctioned country.
  - gutitout 5y ago
    Why can’t they spin up a blog? Also, as an American, I don’t think those FAANG places are a safe space for “expressing opinions freely”. The boys (bots) will come.
    - kgeist 5y ago
      An independent blog is easily banned. In fact, most of them are already. Platforms like Facebook host millions of pages and use https so it's not possible to ban individual pages, only the whole thing. And they've been hesitant to ban whole social networks because of possible discontent
    - lghh 5y ago
      It's a lot easier to DDOS a blog than it is to DDOS facebook.
kgeist 5y ago
It's also likely that Putin will ban them himself as "symmetric response" against cutting SWIFT. Always at the expense of ordinary people.

arcastroe 5y ago

I've found Snapchat Maps to be an interesting "real-time" source of people's on the ground view of Kyiv and Kharkiv and other populated cities in Ukraine. Can see people's photos and videos from the last 48 hours and it helps paint a picture of the situation (to complement curated images from media sources).

danbruc 5y ago

This would probably benefit a lot from the possibility to scrub through a timeline and then only show all the markers within a few hours of the selected time so that one can actually see where there is ongoing activity.

TheJoeMan 5y ago
I actually had an idea for a similar site, with that plus the ability to show with the markers which cardinal direction is being recorded.

top_sigrid 5y ago

As on social media it is very hard to tell whether posted footage and information is genuine, recent and from the claimed places, crowdsourcing the collection of sources probably is a good idea. Hopefully this will help distinguishing legit from fake information.

londons_explore 5y ago
So far, most false info seems to be recognisable by a non-expert within a few minutes of research. For example, when I see a twitter video of army trucks going down a freeway geotagged, I can at least use satellite view on google maps to match up landmarks and confirm the location is accurate, and I can check the sun position and weather to get an idea if the date/time is accurate. Most 'fake news' stories seem to fail even these basic checks, although it would be pretty easy to fake these elements too.
- HatchedLake721 5y ago
  This doesn’t stop tens of millions of people taking it in as truth.
- BurningPenguin 5y ago
  I'd say actually checking them is already a basic expert move. Most people don't even know about geotags, and certain groups don't even care.
0x38B 5y ago
Case in point: > For Eastern Ukraine specifically, this has included a supposed infiltration by Ukrainian saboteurs into Russia. [2] Geolocation of the footage (taken from the helmet of one of the Ukrainian soldiers that supposedly participated in the infiltration) debunked the story within an hour after it turned out that the supposed incursion into Russian territory was carried out from separatist-held territory. [3] Rather than showing the bodies of the five Ukrainian soldiers that were supposedly killed in the raid, Russia instead showed a destroyed BTR-70M armoured personnel carrier (APC) that was painted in an ill-conceived attempt to make it look like a Ukrainian vehicle. [4] Ironically, Ukraine doesn't even operate the BTR-70M, further showing the attention (or lack thereof) that goes into these false flag operations. Source: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/false-flag-shenanigans-russian.html https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/false-flag-shenanigans...

superdug 5y ago

It's a weird place to be where I can watch a war unfold on television and have live geotagged curated material laid out on a map on my computer. It's amazing and depressing at the same time.

dereg 5y ago
Indeed. The first time I felt this sensation was during the Japanese tsunamis, where we were fed a live, HD footage of the flooding from the vantage point of news helicopters. I pray that we’ll never have to use tools like these for anything other than leisure.
paganel 5y ago
The same happened with /r/syriancivilwar back in 2014-2015, in that case it was even more depressing because you also had some nutjobs like ISIS directly involved in said conflict, which meant massacres like this one [1] getting reported almost in real time, with images from the place where it had all happened and all that. The 2014 fight between Russia and Ukraine was also heavily documented in almost real time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Speicher_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Speicher_massacre
trinovantes 5y ago
Definitely surreal to watch war unfold in real time on twitter/tiktok
LesZedCB 5y ago
The phenomenon is at least as old as Baudrillard's work The Gulf War Did Not Take Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...

skywal_l 5y ago

That map is not up to date. They are already shelling Dnipro.

xfitm3 5y ago
Where do you get your information?
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  I've been collecting sources in this thread: https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193 https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1496761074258952193 Currently I've been watching four Telegram groups. Most are Russian propaganda / pro-war. But I still find it interesting to see everything. - https://t.me/s/uniannet https://t.me/s/uniannet - https://t.me/s/h_saltovka https://t.me/s/h_saltovka - https://t.me/s/istorijaoruzija https://t.me/s/istorijaoruzija - https://t.me/s/ukrpravda_news https://t.me/s/ukrpravda_news And https://meduza.io/en/live/2022/02/24/invasion https://meduza.io/en/live/2022/02/24/invasion is also good. (I use Chrome's auto-translate feature. Right click -> Translate to English. The Telegram app is actually less useful than the web viewer because of this.)
  - bryan_w 5y ago
    Now the recent telegram "advertising campaigns" make sense. I was wondering why there was so much effort to promote it over signal
- foxfluff 5y ago
  https://nitter.net/TadeuszGiczan https://nitter.net/TadeuszGiczan
- skywal_l 5y ago
  https://www.standard.co.uk/video/international-news/resident-of-eastern-ukraine-city-films-shelling-v348f1ad5 https://www.standard.co.uk/video/international-news/resident...
- throwawaybutwhy 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

glandium 5y ago

I see a few in Dombas, a few in Crimea, but other than that nothing in Ukraine and the most recent from 2 days ago. Is it like that for anyone else?

majso 5y ago
Yes, it seems to be not up to date

toxik 5y ago

Uh, this is missing bombings in several Ukrainian cities, not least Kiyv, Lviv, ~Donbas~ Donetsk.

nine_k 5y ago
Nit: Donbas is not a city, the city is Donetsk, and Donbas is the name of the region around it, from "Donetsk (coal) basin". Lviv is a city very close to the border with Poland, a NATO member.
- toxik 5y ago
  No doubt the Russian strategy will be to establish a strong presence on the western side of the Dnieper.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  No military expert but it looks like they are following a pretty standard strategy of targeting and destroying air power throughout the country by bombing airports, radars, and air force facilities in general. How far will their ground troops then go? We shall see...
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
It maps troop movements, though. All of those initial bombings have happened from Russia, Crimea and Belarus. Apparently this phase won't last long because it can't (Russia according to analysts in the Guardian doesn't have many guided munitions in this range). So we will perhaps see this map change very quickly as troops move in.

_xnmw 5y ago

I'm in downtown Kharkiv, Ukraine right now (SaaS founder born in Canada). Woke up to explosions at 5 AM this morning. At 12PM still some explosions, can feel the ground shaking, but the streets are mostly calm. Went out to buy some groceries, long lines, but everything still works. Police cars are out patrolling in full force, but no signs of unrest. Church bells tolling nonstop. TransferWise is limited to $200 USD transfers but it worked -- Apple Pay worked at the grocery store. Obviously internet and electricity is still up for now, but water pipes have been shut off in many of my friend's places.

originalvichy 5y ago
Good luck and stay safe.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
What was your impression of the grocery store? Were the shelves mostly bare, or pretty full? I heard most stores are mostly out of stock ("only expensive food is left") and that supplies are expected to last 15-25 days, but I was curious if that was accurate. Thanks for the tip about TransferWise -- I wasn't sure how to send money to people. My go-to is usually Venmo, but I haven't tried it internationally.
- _xnmw 5y ago
  Got there at 11 AM, shelves were still half-full, but bread was gone and it was clear everything would be gone by the end of the day.
scrollaway 5y ago
Good luck. My girlfriend is Ukrainian and has been working on her family's evacuation plan as well all morning. There's an interesting contrast between this comment and your previous one from yesterday, and she shares how you feel. She was taken aback by how this "came out of nowhere", even though it really didn't. Up until this morning, she didn't believe an invasion was possible.
- 5y ago

nightgarden 5y ago

"My troops are merely passing by"

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nine_zeros 5y ago
Civilization in real world

baybal2 5y ago

propagandist 5y ago
People are wary of government messaging because of things like the Gulf of Tonkin and the WMD debacle. Unfortunately in this case, it was credible and the strategy of declassifying did seem to work but clearly Putin has made up his mind. One more thing: this is definitely not the place for "I told you so".
egeozcan 5y ago
> I believe I am no mad preacher, and have more authority to speak on this matter than most of Western "geopolitical think tanks" > I studied politics, sociology, military sciences, and history as my passion > Do not do "Mad preacher" labelling I cannot test your knowledge. For me you are just another account crying large-scale war. You present no evidence, other than a few observations, stories and a strong conviction of self-grandeur. I'm not saying you are lying, being super intelligent or just exaggerating, but many people won't "just trust you". You should understand that.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > I'm not saying you are lying, being super intelligent or just exaggerating, but many people won't "just trust you". You should understand that. I don't ask you to trust me. I ask HN readers to listen to their own countries' military experts. Your generals who spent half their life studying Russian, and Chinese militaries in Westpoint, Saint-Cur and Sandhurst didn't do that for nothing.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  The author would be more credible if they revealed their identity and showed some credentials, otherwise it's just another voice on the internet; it could be a subject matter expert, it could be an armchair expert, could be part of the Russian propaganda machine, or it could be a troll.
noduerme 5y ago

noduerme 5y ago

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
It is only very stupid people who believe their enemies are stupid.
- noduerme 5y ago
  - yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
    Sorry, my home was struck by Russian military this morning and I've had to flee, so I'm in no mood for your levity.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      I didn't mean to be light about it. I'm sorry. If I said what I really think, I would be banned here. It's a catastrophe that makes me furious. My grandparents are from Ukraine and my grandfather was almost killed for his views about Russia. I grew up in LA around the Russian mob so I have some understanding of how those thugs think. I wish I could say what I really want to say.

kroltan 5y ago

Off topic, but what is that circular border in south Kazakhstan? Map bug, or a mathematically inclined contested territory? I don't see it in Google Maps.

kingofpandora 5y ago
Baikonur.
burmanm 5y ago
It's Baikonur. Rented to Russia, and as you see from the map.. it's quite big area for a space port.

ck2 5y ago

You know a country is failing when the "leader" declares war for "reasons" to distract everyone from the society collapse otherwise. 100% like North Korea but with real dangerous power. Also handily reduces population of your own country to support. So many innocent people are going to die for absolutely no reason at all, imagine if US tried to take over Cuba or some other coastal island. At least we now know what's going to happen to China when they take over Taiwan, lots of "sanctions" but no action because who is going to stop them and cut off all their manufacturing/supply? With Russia there is nothing they have but natural gas and still nothing can be done except throw more bodies on the fire which won't happen. Speaking of which, why wouldn't China just take Taiwan right now? World doesn't seem to handle multiple problems at once very well and they also need a "distraction" from covid and economy problems.

LexGray 5y ago
There is some indication that if Trump gets in for 2024 he has an eye on Mexico. https://mexicodailypost.com/2022/02/24/donald-trump-praises-putin-over-ukraine-implying-the-us-should-have-invaded-mexico/ https://mexicodailypost.com/2022/02/24/donald-trump-praises-...
adamhp 5y ago
> imagine if US tried to take over Cuba or some other coastal island. I think it'd be a bit more like the US trying to take over Canada, but sure.
- ck2 5y ago
  I had to check but wow I always thought Ukraine was size of Florida, apparently it is the size of Texas (and larger than California)
belltaco 5y ago
I think China is more long term calculation than short emotional like Putin. Hopefully.
- ck2 5y ago

yakshaving_jgt 5y ago

This map is waaaaay out of date. There have been attacks all over the country today. Explosions in Odessa, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Mariupol, and more. Fucking everywhere. My friends and loved ones woke up to explosions. My employees woke up to explosions. Many can't leave because the roads are massively congested. Cash machines have stopped operating. The shops are running out of food. There are no flights. None. All the airports are under missile fire. They've raised the Russian flag over buildings. This is all out war. Evidently, sanctions do jack shit. --- You will all see videos of this, and so will your children's children. Here's one for a start. https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1496805801628995587 https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1496805801628995587 это просто пиздец.

andrewshadura 5y ago
Well said, пиздец it is.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> Evidently, sanctions do jack shit. The THREAT of sanctions hasn't had the desired effect, and if they are enacted, they will take a while before their effect can be felt by the people involved - weeks, months, I don't know. And if they maintain a good relationship with China they may be able to avoid it entirely - although China may then risk its relationship with the rest of the world, if it's found out they're funneling money to Russia.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago
  What are you suggesting? That I should be patient and trust the system? The system has failed. People are dying. This is our Hitler. Diplomacy was never an option. Putin recorded his declaration of war before telling the world that diplomacy was still an option. He will only be stopped by swift and decisive military action from the entirety of the free world. Anything short of that, and the blood of Ukrainians is on the hands of the Western world too.
  - Markoff 5y ago

known 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

VictorPath 5y ago

globalise83 5y ago
I think you might be off by a whole continent.
- mtmail 5y ago
  (VictorPath first talked about Syria, before editing it to Somalia. That's what globalise83 was referring to with different continent)
  - VictorPath 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, or post snarkily on inflammatory topics. Those are not effective ways to make your case, and they poison the community (such as it is). Also, please don't edit your comments in a way that misleads readers after the fact—especially when the misleading thing is making other comments look bad because their original context is gone. That's not a nice thing to do. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- YaBomm 5y ago
  > Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, it was a fair comment hey by the way, how many comments or posts do you make completely disappear each day? I have seen one so far

kgeist 5y ago

I am from Russia and I've been shaking for whole day for what Putin is doing. I couldn't even get myself to go to work today. I'm in complete shock. It's like one day waking up in Third Reich.

izietto 5y ago
What are the news about the conflict there? What are the reasons told by the media? It may be interesting having a direct source of the attacker news
- kgeist 5y ago
  Innocent Russia protecting East Ukraine from Nazis in Kiev. It's so surreal.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Gotta protect East Ukraine from the Nazi-devout Jewish leader! In all seriousness I do feel for you. Protesting against this will do little and get you in trouble so you’re basically forced to watch. You’ll need to accept these are things out of your control for your own mental health. Hopefully diplomatic efforts resolve it quickly.
yupper32 5y ago
What I don't understand is how so many Russians seem surprised. Is the Russian propaganda that good? As someone from the west, this is whole development is not surprising at all. Even in the past week so many didn't believe it would happen. Meanwhile I've been watching the news the past week or two to see if they've invaded yet.
- kgeist 5y ago
  Many thought he was just bluffing. There are reports that even some in his inner circle thought so.

not_kurt_godel 5y ago

There is an entire site dedicated to this purpose that has been running since 2014: https://liveuamap.com https://liveuamap.com

notemaker 5y ago
Error 520
- not_kurt_godel 5y ago
  Yeah it's getting hammered. But still functional on most refreshes for me.
siver_john 5y ago
Thank you for sharing, I had been looking for this after seeing it on here the other day but I couldn't remember the name or anything at all.
k0k0r0 5y ago
There is also https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap https://ukrstream.tv/en/liveuamap which seems like a clone. Sonce I often get errors from liveumap, I use that instead. I didn't find any differences apart from less funtionality. But I didn't check that throughoutly, though.

raducu 5y ago

I was walking with my wife on a confined road when we saw people running and screaming "bear". I immediately noticed the danger because any bear would be comming down the sloap and there was verry little room to get out of the way. My wife took her phone and was trying to get closer. I had to drag her and she made fun of me. That is untill the mama bear with her cub came running down, then she started screaming and pannicking. I've never hit her in my life, but that moment I felt like punching her in the face, mostly to shut her up and make her move. She was not alone, a lot of people were doing the same. I was dumbstruck by how oblivious and heard-like people behave. I know I was blindsighted in the past by danger, mostly because of my young macho self. But my grandpa told me countless stories about survival and being prepared, and thankfully nowdays I try never to ignore my gut feeling. If your gut feeling tells you something's not right, LISTEN and ACT -- acting usually means move out of harms way, fast.

dang 5y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30453577 since it went so offtopic.
temp8964 5y ago
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Bollocks. I've seen women be calm and composed and I've seen very large guys start blubbering incoherently.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    - jacquesm 5y ago

g45ylkjlk45y 5y ago

avastmick 5y ago

From a philosophical stance, this is history repeating for the same basic reason. 2022 AD and risk of war is still the same as it was in 1022 AD, or 22 AD. That reason is the accumulation of power (or by proxy, wealth) in a small set of individuals, or in this case one person. No realtime access to information changes this; it just makes the story of the horror unfold faster. Persisting with the concentration of power in individuals has shown throughout history to have dire consequence. We continue risking civilization on the mental health of those who already show significant issues with their obsessive clammer for power. The cult of the leader is toxic and, as far as I can see, illogical and lacking evidence for benefit. Where are the voices that seek a structured shift away from personality cult politics? The innovation we all need for the future are those voices.

pphysch 5y ago
Which single individual was responsible for the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003?
- eyeeyesawayyy 5y ago
  IMO, the vice president at the time. Cheney pulled a similar move of cynically planning and instigating a war of aggression, which is why many people consider him to be a war criminal even within the US. He wasn't really the head of a cult of personality, though. He just took advantage of the gullible people who surrounded him.
  - awb 5y ago
    The Senate authorized the Iraq war. A far cry from one person.
    - eyeeyesawayyy 5y ago
      Yes, and Putin's cabinet authorized this war. It's always an oversimplification to attribute global events to an individual, but sometimes you can point to one person without whom an event could not have occurred.

pugworthy 5y ago

UX feedback: Change from blue and green to something else a bit more color-blind friendly. I'm moderate blue/green and couldn't tell them apart without some careful examination.

awb 5y ago

On mobile at least some of the links are plain text and aren’t clickable. I found an orange bubble in Donbas like that. Any one else have that issue?

ryanmarsh 5y ago

Internet doing the work of FO's everywhere

cphoover 5y ago

All of these tweets should be archived

lambda_dn 5y ago

nemacol 5y ago

Is there a service out there like MapHub but for making timelines? Thanks

cmarschner 5y ago

I‘m glad there is still cash. Imagine in a situation like this where the internet-based payment systems are seized, lines break down, there are power shoartages etc. People would invent a new form of cash.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

Do this for Russian troop movement: admirable use of the internet. Well done, you! Do the same thing for US troops: traitorous. Immediate bannination. Probable investigation by the FBI.

KingKaram 5y ago