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If you speak Russian, call Russia and tell them what is happening in Ukraine
- zyphr 5y agoThis is great! We should start to call other countries about what is happening in Yemen right now.
- surfmike 5y agoWe could definitely use some people calling us to tell us about it :/
- BrBone 5y agoIf you speak English, call USA/EU and tell them what is happening in Russia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XLwHzZo_mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XLwHzZo_mo
- w_t_payne 5y agoAlso, try to reach out to fellow technology professionals inside Russia and help them to find a way to get out.
- ed_balls 5y agoOne possibility is to evacuate through Armenia or drive to Finland.
- forlorn 5y agoI don't think there is much one can do on their own. Even our relatives can't help because most countries closed their borders and aerospace and tech firms are not inclined to hire Russians right now. I for one could not get any kind of ways to evacuate.
- throwaway290 5y agoCountries did not close borders to regular citizens. Unless your insist on flying a Russian airline, you can leave and apply for residence or even asylum (if you are against the war, you are under threat of political prosecution).
- sega_sai 5y agonot exactly true. In retaliation to prohibiting Russian airlines in their airspace, Russia in turn prohibited the airlines of other countries in Russia. So right now you can fly to some Soviet republics, Turkey, Israel, South Korea and that's it I think.
- throwaway290 5y agoIf you are looking to evacuate, possibly seek asylum a layover flight won't kill you.
- sega_sai 5y agoI know that in last days all the tickets for flights to Turkey, Armenia etc were taken...
- konart 5y agoIf only I was 25 and didn't have pregnant wife who doesn't want to leave... And now there is no way for me to even go abroad but still send money back home.
- native_samples 5y agoWith all the airline shutdowns, payment system sanctions and COVID lockdowns (which are still in effect on the Russian border), the west has done a great job of locking Russians inside Russia, where they have three choices: 1. Protest against Putin and go to prison, in the hope that if Putin is gone the west will drop all sanctions (not very likely). 2. Keep head down. 3. Support the government. Given that the rest of the world is trying as hard as possible to fuck Russia and random ordinary Russians in every way, I suspect a lot of them will conclude it's us vs them and pick (3). Really a bad set of strategies, in my view. It would be ironic and sad if WW3 was triggered by virtue signalling.
- GoodJokes 5y ago[dead]
- 99_00 5y ago
- late2part 5y agohttps://blog.feedspot.com/ukraine_blogs/ https://blog.feedspot.com/ukraine_blogs/ https://ukraineworld.org/ https://ukraineworld.org/ https://ukraineworld.org/podcasts/ep-74 https://ukraineworld.org/podcasts/ep-74 Ep. № 74: 11 days of war: Russia tortures civilians, Ukraine begs to close the skies March 6, 2022 Russia continues to torture civilians and shell humanitarian corridors, breaking earlier commitments to let civilians to evacuate from war-torn cities. Ukraine is begging NATO to close the skies over the country or at least to provide more air defense systems. There is a humanitarian disaster in the Kyiv suburbs. We continue our “Explaining Ukraine” podcast by sharing our analysis of the Russian invasion and Ukrainian resistance. Hosts: Volodymyr Yermolenko, analytics director at Internews Ukraine, and Tetyana Ogarkova, in charge of international outreach at the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre. The “Explaining Ukraine” podcast is a product by UkraineWorld.org. Support us at patreon.com/ukraineworld
- at-fates-hands 5y agoWhat they're doing is quite medieval. They're encircling cities, cutting them off, then shelling them into oblivion, cutting off food and resources. Literally a modern day Roman siege.
- gruez 5y ago>What they're doing is quite medieval. They're encircling cities, cutting them off, then shelling them into oblivion, cutting off food and resources. Yeah, that's how sieges work. The concept might have been around for ages, but so has warfare and we don't call them (eg. us invasion of iraq) "quite medieval". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege#Modern_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege#Modern_warfare
- lnsru 5y agoThat’s how Red Army denazified Berlin back then.
- mrfusion 5y ago
- josephwegner 5y agoI would probably advise against doing this. There have been rumors of Russian police looking through citizen's phones for indications that they are engaging with western viewpoints on the "special operation". And the penalty for such activities is quite high right now. A random phone call from a U.S. citizen might look suspicious, and I don't imagine Russian police are giving much benefit of the doubt right now.
- avh02 5y agojust make sure to tell them to delete the call from their call history.
- ffhhj 5y agoThat would make it seem more suspicious! Phone company logs, remember?
- avh02 5y agoOn the spot, at a checkpoint? I mean it's obviously possible but is it likely to happen on random inspection? (Serious question, I don't know in Russia, definitely not in other places)
- ffhhj 5y agoWhy wouldn't a police-state have a way to check phone logs from the phone network they control? Police in most countries can query number plates on the spot, it would be similar for phone calls if their laws admit it.
- quinncom 5y agoApparently it's happening: Police officers in Moscow are stopping people, demanding to see their phones, and refusing to release them if they refuse. https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-police-are-demanding-to-read-peoples-text-messages-reporter-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-police-are-demanding...
- VictorPath 5y ago
- dmix 5y agoI'd assume that the majority of foreign calls are wiretapped and automatically converted to text for keyword searches. Russia gets to go directly into the server/networking rooms to install their black boxes. So self-censor certain keywords... as you normally would on the internet.
- codedokode 5y agoAll phone calls and text messages in Russia must be recorded and stored for at least 6 months according to the law. Also, about 1 month worth of Internet traffic is also recorded.
- dmix 5y agoInteresting, they are at least honest about it... I've always wondered how good nation states are at converting the speech to text. In my experience working with stuff like Twilio it can be a challenge to do it at scale when trying to identify individual speakers then generating a screenplay like output.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 5y agoI assume they are at least as good at is as Zoom is, and Zoom transcripts are frighteningly good.
- elliekelly 5y agoText to speech doesn’t have any mechanism for “recording” the tone of the speaker. Something that will be perfectly “acceptable” in a transcript can be said in such a way that it’s meaning to the listener is the complete opposite of it’s meaning to the reader.
- bombcar 5y ago
- throwaway290 5y agoThose who know, already know. If they do not know or knowingly support the war, your call will not magically change their mind. If you are a citizen of a European country, call your government and ask to help Ukraine instead. Drop humanitarian supplies, people experience food shortages. Send in troops, the more losses Russia suffers the harder it is for the government to maintain the pretense of normalcy. No one likes fighting a losing war.
- tananaev 5y agoI feel very skeptical that a stranger can quickly change someone's mind over a phone call. Most people expect some kind of scam or sales pitching when a stranger is calling them. I called a lot of my friends in Russia and they are mostly aware of what's going on. But they all live in big cities. The problem is large rural population and smaller towns, which is majority of the population in Russia. They still seem to support Putin no matter what.
- tpoacher 5y agoWhat a silly plan. Consider the reverse situation. You are a US citizen, and your phone randomly rings. On the other line, there is a guy speaking English with a heavy russian accent: "Hello. I call from Russia. This website I find ask me to call and inform you of real happenings in Ukraine. Your media full of lies. Trust me. Look. I have pen." Yeah I can totally see Americans taking up arms against their government after a couple of spam calls like this.
- tpoacher 5y agoPS. For anyone not getting the 'I have pen' quote, it's a reference to this internet classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o8XMlL8rqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o8XMlL8rqY :)
- trainsarebetter 5y agoHa nikolie… sounds a lot like nikola ;)
- m00dy 5y agoI didn't know about it :) thanks
- pyronik19 5y ago"Trust me I'm a fact-checker" is the US equivalent.
- bmitc 5y agoI wonder if there's a correlation to how often "it's no problem" is uttered to how likely it actually is a problem. I never relax when someone tries to assure me with the "it's no problem" tactic. I was once contacted by a person claiming to be from Dell about a technical support request I was supposedly on for a company I no longer worked for. After informing the person I didn't work for the company they were referring to, I was informed it was "no problem", and they continued on whatever they were talking about.
- antattack 5y agoIt might be a good plan if one wanted to create 'noise' for FSB so these random calls overwhelm their surveillance capabilities.
- dncornholio 5y agoI'm sorry for mentioning this but so far the content on HN about Ukraine has been of very low quality. Today only a 'call Russia' and a 'Putin is actually smart' post. I hoped to find many interesting developments, but HN has been awfully quiet on this war (for good reasons probably), but the content that has been posted has been mediocre IMHO.
- fouc 5y agoI mean it really depends on what gets upvoted so you'd have to monitor the new submissions and upvote the relevant ones.
- xdennis 5y agoSorry to hear that the content this war is producing isn't entertaining enough for you.
- dncornholio 5y agoExcuse me? It's happening in my own continent. Being entertained is something I have a lot trouble with the past 2 weeks.
- kcb 5y agoEvery post on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is coopted by the same narratives. Whataboutism, US centric idea that everything in the world is because of the US, CNN brought up for no reason, someone trying to explain how literally everything is propaganda. It's boring.
- decremental 5y agoNo one thought about or cared about Ukraine a month ago. Now it's everyone's greatest cause of their lives. Meanwhile, I'm certain there are many atrocities the ruling class isn't forcing your focus on that you don't care about at all. All of this feigned outrage is so fake.
- gruez 5y agoI don't agree with the characterization that it was "feigned" (which implies the person is intentionally doing it), but I do agree that it's a meme that blew up in popularity, and people suddenly felt the need to do something, anything. I mean, we had namecheap canceling russian accounts, of all things. I definitely wouldn't have imagined that happening a few years ago (eg. for xinjiang/hong kong/syria).
- avgcorrection 5y agoIt’s happening in Europe, close to the Western world. So it’s understandable that Westerners care. I’ve seen a few comments about how outrageous it is that people in places like India and Africa are not up in arms about this conflict (I’m just taking their word for it). Not so strange though if you consider their proximity and compare that (lack of) reaction to how few Westerns care about conflicts like the one in Yemen.
- czzr 5y agoWell yes, few cared - also, there wasn’t large scale bombing and 2 million refugees a month ago.
- xdennis 5y agoEven if what you say is true (and it's not), it's better to see feigned outrage rather than sincere indifference to human suffering.
- avgDev 5y agoIt isn't fake. US and other western nations are extremely close Ukrainians, and Ukrainians are very close to other European nations like Poland. Since, many Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Czech, Lithuanians, Slovakians live in the US. They protest and spread the word. Plus, there are protests in individual countries. There always will be some issues in the society, but what is happening in Ukraine is giving people WW2 vibes and Poles can relate. It is a matter of time until Russia will crumble though.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- asats 5y agoIf you want to help the protest movements in Russia, support the russian opposition, NGO's that provide help to people arrested during demonstrations (13750 as of today) https://ovdinfo.org/ https://ovdinfo.org/ , and independent journalists who are currently escaping the country to continue their work abroad in relative safety. Calling random people, messing with the russian internet, targeting the russian opposition/journalists escaping the country who just had all their cards turned off because of the visa/masterkard decisions is simply counterproductive.
- onemoresoop 5y agoWhile I agree that helping the opposition is be the best move think of the rhetoric Kremlin would spin up: they'd claim the west is interfering with their internal affairs and should the opposition ever win any elections they'd quickly arrest them for plotting a coup.
- asats 5y agoThey already claim that ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law ), the opposition is already not allowed to participate in the elections and obviously cannot win them when they are not even allowed to run and the main opposition leaders are already in prison (Navalny) or killed (Nemtsov). Do you guys really have zero idea what country Russia is? Russians have been protesting since 2011 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932013_Russian_prot... ) and been methodically and systematically repressed for over a decade already.
- gremlinsinc 5y agoI think another good move is help tank Russian economy faster, the faster it all implodes the more 'time' Russians have and more 'encouragement' to blame their leaders. Examples of things you could do: Form a convoy and block access points to Coke, Starbucks, and McDonald's warehouses/convoys in your country as a protest - continue this until they pull out of Russia. This will cause a lot of lost jobs, wages, and lost business for Russia. Rinse and repeat until every western business has left. Work on ways to move Chinese businesses (as many support Russia) over here or to EU countries, not the business itself but the industry or product that is needed or shipped from Asia, i.e. help find ways to end our dependency on autocratic societies. They want to support each other then we need to block them, and make it hurt for anybody else who does.
- rini17 5y agoI am from Czechoslovakia, trying to imagine what would happen in 1980s if people then were getting unexpected political calls from unknown foreigners. They would mostly assume it is a secret service provocation and react accordingly. Yes that's hard to believe for westerners that your own state would do such nasty stuff to you, but it was commonplace then. Shortwave radio station that is possible to tune to in Moscow and beyond, where they can listen to people they have known before, would have much bigger impact. Like Radio Free Europe did.
- jszymborski 5y agoMaybe robocalls reminding people of the shortwave frequencies and how to listen? That might be less suspicious and would not implicate anyone since it's clearly just a random advertisement (but of course, you can come up for grounds of arresting anyone looking at a Coke-Cola can the wrong way).
- pyronik19 5y ago>Yes that's hard to believe for westerners that your own state would do such nasty stuff to you, but it was commonplace then. We are just about there ourselves. FBI labeling political opposition of domestic terrorist is kicking it off, replete with false flag operations and political prisoners.
- mullen 5y ago> Shortwave radio station that is possible to tune to in Moscow and beyond, where they can listen to people they have known before, would have much bigger impact. Like Radio Free Europe did. This is what should be done. Random people calling on the phone and trying to "tell you what's really happening" is not going to work, especially in a place like Russia. Shortwave radio is perfect for this. The great thing about Shortwave radio is that radios are cheap, low powered and easy to hide. The infrastructure is already out there and due to the Cold War, Russians are already familiar with it.
- mzs 5y agoI'm from Poland. Only one person in my family had a home phone until the '90s and that was a party line for multiple homes.
- w_t_payne 5y agoIt's helpful to think of this as akin to a DDOS-like attack on the Russian internal security infrastructure. They've only got so much bandwidth - money, personnel and time - to deal with all of the myriad security issues which keep popping up. The more people we can reach out to, the more 'leads' the security services will have to investigate, then the less effective they will be at propping up Putin's empire of fear. Putin holds power because everyone is so afraid. As soon as the security services stop being effective, and people learn that they don't need to be afraid any longer ... then the only thing keeping him in power will begin to evaporate.
- alkonaut 5y agoWhy aren't russians telling eachother? At least a fraction of russians read and trust trustworthy (international) news sources, but if their peers won't believe them, why would they believe me if I called them? Russia isn't North Korea. Yes there has been a tightening lately and all easily accessible media has been propaganda for a long time. But that doesn't mean any Russian can't - with some effort - consume a wide selection of news. And that's their damn responsibility to do so. For example, if you are a soldier asked to go fight in a country, it's your responsibility to read news from other countries before you leave. Otherwise, how can you be sure you know whether the orders are even legal? We need to stop giving a pass to russians because they have an authoritarian leadership and strict media control. It's very easy to say this from an armchair in a liberal democracy but I'm still going to say it: Russians have a responsibility to protest the regime now, carrying the personal risk despite perhaps having little to no personal responsibility. Else they have the blood of Ukrainians on their hands. And the same applies to anyone else in an armchair whose armchair is in room temperature because of russian oil or gas.
- neolefty 5y agoI would guess that cognitive biases are in play, in part. People want to believe that their country is doing something good, and that their suffering is for a good cause. So if a news source reinforces that (such as "Special Operation to liberate Ukraine from Nazis"), it's easier to listen to than a narrative that runs counter ("Destroying both countries to appease a tyrant's ego"). That's not the only factor, but here in the US it's certainly a big part of the appeal of misleading news sources.
- NoGravitas 5y ago> Russians have a responsibility to protest the regime now, carrying the personal risk despite perhaps having little to no personal responsibility. Else they have the blood of Ukrainians on their hands. Back in 2003, Americans had a responsibility to protest the Bush regime. And hundreds of thousands of us did, but it didn't do a damn bit of good. We still have the blood of over one million Iraqis on our hands. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is illegal and unjustified, but what moral grounds do Americans have to say anything about it?
- geoka9 5y agoThere are plenty of Russians on Youtube commenting under pleas posted by Ukrainians asking them to help stop the war. And there are plenty of videos taken by people on the ground in Ukraine that show what's going on. But due to the way Youtube works, the Russian users are not very likely to come across those videos. Consider interacting with them by replying with links to the videos. If somebody from Youtube is reading this, I understand that you need to curb spammers who post a lot. But if you could somehow help with this effort, it might actually help change the public opinion in Russia.
- dav_Oz 5y agoAnd how do I know what is happening there? I'm partial toward the people who got invaded but I cannot even verify the stories and sources to a reliable degree. Simply because I lack the resources. Having a clear bias (support for one side) makes it cognitively even worse. So I have two choices: 1. Risking telling "noble" lies because in the grand scheme of things Russia (bad actor) has invaded Ukraine (good actor) so even if I'm wrong in some things my intentions are good. 2. Calling Russians and trying also to hear their side of the story and with an open mind figure out together how to bring this war to an quick end. I believe the vast majority of Russians and Ukrainians have good intentions and want peace. But borrowing from the proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" one has to have a way of self-correcting i.e. hearing the other side. So call Russians and tell them your side of the story but don't pretend to know "better".
- onemoresoop 5y ago> And how do I know what is happening there? The amount of footage is overwhelming. Just watch as much as you can from both sides and try to draw your own conclusions. The Russian side has a stale message, it blocks real footage and only works by abundant repetition. They downplay the whole situation to their own peoples claiming the other side is using actors and staging footage. Here is where you can use your own judgement.
- nirui 5y agoPhone call is sort term, high effort, and maybe even annoying to those pro-Russians. Just a thought: I been viewing the evidences of Russian war crimes (photograph, video) that people posted on Twitter since the very beginning of the invasion. A lot's of them are real and fact-checked. Maybe it could be a good idea to setup some sort of online and physical memorial to show the timelines of how each single innocent people lost their life in the invasion, completely neutrally and uncensored, only tell the story, no decoration. My rational is this: it is just impossible to convert the entire Russian population to be peace-loving, let's just face it, it won't happen as long as the regime needs brainless tools. But for the curious ones who really wants to understand, the memorial can plant the seed in their head. Every 0.0000001% counts.
- junon 5y agoRussia has completely blocked the outside world. So no, that wouldn't work.
- tada131 5y agoBlocked when?
- azangru 5y agoDuring the first several days. When the outside world pulled Russian news channels off air and, possibly, blocked them on social media (I don't remember if that's what Facebook did); and started DDoSing its servers.
- nirui 5y agoNot important. The world will be watching the memorial as well, one of it will wake up, the Russians population or the world.
- mzs 5y agoWe could mail photos to Russians and air drop them in Ukraine where Russian forces are.
- thriftwy 5y agoBut I don't really see the message the caller is supposed to relay once they dial in. You are supposed to relay stories about bombed hospitals and shelled houses that you've either picked up from the media a day ago, or just from the web site's caption text. Are you ready to answer the question "what were you doing in the last 8 years"? Are you ready to even understand it? What about Alley of Angels, are you ready to talk about it? I would expect there would be some "weaponized" facts at a minimum, or you may be losing in that artillery duel quite fast. Because Russian TV and state media does supply a lot of weaponized facts of its own. Consider telling your counterparty that Russia prevents civilians from getting out from besieged cities, and they respond "I've just saw on the TV that Ukrainian far-right batallions are not letting their civilians out to use them as human shield". How are you going to reason from that point? I'm honestly interested because I don't know whose truth is there.
- philliphaydon 5y agoThere’s a site for texting. https://1920.in https://1920.in Donno if it helps tho. Saw a tweet about it and lots of people were saying they were sending texts and getting replies.
- miked85 5y agoThis is ridiculous, nevermind the fact that you are assuming you are getting accurate information if you are not in Russia. There is massive disinformation coming from both sides.
- drno123 5y agoWhen US invaded Iraq (because of false claims about weapons of mass destruction), people did not call random numbers in America. And ordinary Americans did not do anything to stop their government from invading another country on false premises.
- mzs 5y agoExcuse me I was outside with a sign protesting even before the invasion when the votes were being counted in FL then I volunteered for the campaign for a primary challenger after and I certainly had numerous calls from my relatives in Germany where we talked about Iraq.
- fourseventy 5y agolol exactly. People in the USA seem to have selective amnesia about the time America invaded a sovereign nation based on false premises.
- saurik 5y agoSo are you saying maybe people should have called random numbers in the United States?
- elliekelly 5y agoI posted a few days ago about how seeing Canadians protest against the war in Iraq made me question the premise of the US invasion. It’s not the same as a phone call and I didn’t have any say in the matter because I was only a teenager but I do think the perspective of an “outsider” can sometimes shake you out of blind acceptance or at least put some cracks in the foundation. I suspect a “trusted” outsider would be a lot more persuasive, though. A phone call from a random Belarusian or Kazakhstani would probably carry a lot more weight than a random Westerner.
- q1w2 5y agoIraq was a dictatorship with a murderer at the head. Ukraine is a democracy. HUGE difference.
- 5y ago
- therusskiy 5y agoWhat do you guys think about making an SMS bot?
- thway15269037 5y agoDo you really claim to be against disinformation and then spread it like this? Like, really? What is this thing doing on HN?
- efitz 5y agoThis and all the cancel type activists seem like an extraordinary case of “do-something-itis”. How does it impact Ukrainians if a cat competition bans the breed “Russian Blue”[1]? As others on this thread have pointed out, an anonymous call from a foreign stranger is extremely unlikely to change minds on a political issue (we can’t even change the political opinions of family members at Thanksgiving Dinner). Seems like a waste of effort. Doing something meaningful is HARD. You can’t just make a phone call or a tweet or TikTok or put a Ukrainian flag emoji in your social media profile. Acting out like pouring out Russian vodka may actually be harming people who support your cause; maybe the CEO of the vodka company is a Putin opponent. Maybe the vodka isn’t even from Russia [2](most isn’t). You don’t know. You can’t know how your virtue signaling is going to harm people, but I promise you it’s not going accomplish your stated goals (prove me wrong with a counter-example showing how this stopped a war). At best, it will make already like minded people like you more. You have to obtain political power which is mostly done by organizing other like minded people and/or donations to influencable people with power. You have to amass enough power to make the change you want effected. Then you have to wield that power effectively, and hope that your opponents aren’t more successful in their opposing activities. There’s no short cut. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chinas-social-media-obsesses-russian-cats-being-banned-from-competitions-2022-3 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chinas-social-media-obses... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/officials-pour-out-vodka-protest-war-dont-use-russian-brands-1686000 https://www.newsweek.com/officials-pour-out-vodka-protest-wa...
- citboin 5y agoSomeone needs to automate this
- Zvez 5y agoJust to add up to comments explaining why it won't work. I'm from Kazakhstan, but I'm more or less indistinguishable from Russian. Russians in Kazakhstan basically consume the same media Russia citizens do. So I can't even persuade my own relatives there that it is obvious we are bad guys right not. Not some random people, but my own mother believes TV more than me. Because it is easier to believe, it is almost impossible for us (anyone probably) that we became evil. And you can't change that by spam calls, you probably make it worse. People who can accept other opinions still have access to other sources, it is not (yet) N. Korea. We need more protests and (sadly) more sanctions, preferably against individuals. And truth, not anti-propaganda. More coverage of current situation in cities, and less 'russian ship go f* yourself'
- m_rcin 5y agoThat's sad. BBC has an article about people in even more extreme situation. 'My city's being shelled, but mum won’t believe me'. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60600487