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To those condemning Yandex for the war in Ukraine, please keep in mind that they're a Russian company forced to comply with their country laws, as every other c

To those condemning Yandex for the war in Ukraine, please keep in mind that they're a Russian company forced to comply with their country laws, as every other company out there. Until we know for sure that their management is really aligned with their government agenda, whatever they say, or don't say, now has zero credibility because it could be extorted from above. During the 2nd gulf war against Iraq, when the death toll began to rise, the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone, and news sources complied, including those against the war; this happens everywhere every time. What doesn't happen everywhere and every time is a rogue nation attacking their neighbors and killing civilians using laughable pretexts while the real goal is to take control of a very resourceful and industrialized area (Donbas) to be used to help the already poor Russian economy. The enemy is the Russian government and the rich oligarchy behind it, not Russian people that could be either lied and manipulated by ruthless politicians (been there, done that; does Covid19 ring a bell?) or merely intimidated.

dotdi 5y ago
True, but on the other hand, people outside of Russia can decide for themselves how to react to and treat companies from unfriendly countries. You mention oligarchs - how can it be ruled out that Yandex is directly or indirectly, fully or partly owned, and even directed, by them?
- app4soft 5y ago
  > people outside of Russia can decide for themselves how to react to and treat companies from unfriendly countries. Since 2019 Yandex and the FSB (Federal Security Bureau of Russia, ex-KGB) had reached an agreement where the company would provide the required data without handing over the encryption keys.[0] Learn more about Russian war crimes & ongoing invasion of Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... N.B. I'm Ukrainian living in Ukraine. Here is my statement for HN:[1] + Verified Ways to Help Ukraine: https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/02/27/verified-ways-to-help-the-ukrainian-army/ https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/02/27/verified-ways-to-help... + My Patreon: https://patreon.com/app4soft https://patreon.com/app4soft [ Please, DONATE me just right now ] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex#Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex#Security [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395897
  - cies 5y ago
    How can I help specifically the people of the Donbas?
    - Nerwesta 5y ago
      Now ? I think it's too late, your question sounds bizarre, Russia is indeed helping them. But I guess there are quite a few pro-separatists NGOs out there. Not the ones aligned with Kiev though, so they are leaning pro-Russia.
      - cies 5y ago
        I also saw some news that Russia send them supplies. I feel they are the most oppressed people in this conflict.
- myth_drannon 5y ago
  Well the CEO of Yandex resigned in protest and fled to Israel.
  - samhw 5y ago
    I have no dog in this hunt, but I just looked this up, and there's no indication he 'resigned in protest'. Their company news site says that he resigned after being sanctioned by the EU.[0] It appears heavily implied that he was forced to resign as a result of the sanctions – either directly (I'm not familiar with how EU sanctions work) or in that it made his position untenable. [0] https://yandex.com/company/press_center/press_releases/2022/2022-03-15 https://yandex.com/company/press_center/press_releases/2022/... Edit: This report appears to bear out that the sanctions forced him to resign pretty-much-directly, as the company does business in Europe, and the sanctions prevent him from doing business in Europe: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/yandex-deputy-ceo-resigns-after-being-sanctioned-company-considers-selling-assets-to-vk/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/yandex-deputy-ceo...
    - myth_drannon 5y ago
      I was talking about the CEO Elena Bunina, not deputy CEO - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/yandex-ceo-relocates-to-israel-cannot-work-for-a-country-at-war-1.10722163 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/yandex-ceo-rel...
      - samhw 5y ago
        Ah, fair enough, I’m sorry - for some reason only the deputy CEO’s firing came up when I searched about the CEO, so I assumed that was what you had meant. My bad. Please disregard my comment!
  - lotusmars 5y ago
    No support to the fact that she resigned in protest. Please don't spread this whitewashing of Yandex. Many Russian executives stepped down so not to be hit by sanctions. She was already scheduled to be replaced by Khudaverdyan and then invasion started.
ushakov 5y ago
yeah, unlike others, they can’t just leave Russia for good essentially they’re being held hostage, either they comply or the government will “nationalize” them and appoint managers who will
- postingposts 5y ago
  If you have an open mind and a big heart you will start to find that most people have become ideologues, and will find these conditions acceptable. “Well they supported the thing I didn’t on Facebook, death time.” I’m shocked at the level of callousness some are displaying.
Barrin92 5y ago
The Russian people and the Russian government are largely in agreement and the oligarchs are out of power. If you can bet on one thing it is that oligarchs like international business and do not like wars and having their yachts seized. That was the Russia of the 90s. I've got family and friends in Russia, most of them highly educated and with access to international news and all. War support is pretty strong through all social strata. (also backed by independent pollsters like levada, if you want to look at data).
- codedokode 5y ago
  > also backed by independent pollsters like levada Do they publish how many of respondents refused to talk? I saw information that majority of people refuse to answer questions about war. So it might be that the results are based mostly on opinions of people who agree to talk.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    Levada does, yes. They compare response/refusal/coop rates now and before the war and find it to be largely unchanged. https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/Final%20Russia%20Brief%20V3.pdf https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2022-0...
    - gdy 5y ago
      But the composition might have changed. Now anti-Putin people are more likely to refuse to participate in a poll out of fear while pro-Putin people are mobilized by mass media and eager to voice their support.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    > Do they publish how many of respondents refused to talk? I saw information that majority of people refuse to answer questions about war. I believe an ordinary person against the war yet unwilling to get jailed for this opinion won't just refuse to talk, they would say they totally support their government although they actually totally hate it and wish it to collapse ASAP and the top officials to die in torment. Imagine you traveled to China or DPRK and some weird local emerged to ask how do you like the policies of their "great leader"? Would you take the risk of being sincere? I bet most people would say "fantastic!" and hurry away.
codedokode 5y ago
It's not that simple. Yandex has a frontpage that is viewed by tens of millions of users daily and is equivalent to TV. And Yandex since long ago has been intentionally filtering news that are shown there, for example, keeping silent about anti-Putin protests etc. So Yandex has been helping to spread propaganda for many years. Please don't portray Yandex as a victim of strict martial laws (although oficially there is no war, only a "special operation". Calling it a war is an offence).
- postingposts 5y ago
  Since you say it’s “not that simple”, do you truly believe it’s out of the reach of the Russian govt. to punish this company or the members of it for stepping out of line? They’re a large company in tech but how about their resources for personnel security, or what if they’ve been ordered to do so legally? Let’s go beyond that. Let’s say that Yandex has been spreading propaganda on purpose for multiple years. That’s every other search engine too. Especially Google! If Russia or China wins a conflict, or begins one economically, do the employees of Google deserve to be punished for their work during this time? When you use logic and apply the same logic to the situation in reverse, it’s quite apparent that you have a bias, and that bias isn’t serving you well.
  - lotusmars 5y ago
    > That’s every other search engine too. Please leave your "look at the West" whataboutism out of it. In the end it's your problem how you solve it. We in Russia had our media crushed, filtered by Yandex and most journalists fled the country or were murdered. Your whataboutism is just trying to diminish our struggle.
    - postingposts 5y ago
      Can you address my points instead of trying to assign some sort of ideological slant to them? Not only is it much stronger for your argument but it’s more honest discourse. Nothing you have said in your post is unique to the geography, at all. If that makes you feel less special, good; there is nothing special about being from one geographical location or another, and nothing special about a murder in Africa vs. a murder in South America. Murder is murder, you don’t have a worse kind. If there is something to discuss, it’s not from an angle of ideological context-macht.
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
> The enemy is the Russian government and the rich oligarchy behind it, not Russian people I think we're all getting real tired of this line. This is, what, the 3rd time that place has collapsed in the last 100 years? This is a pattern. And I think it's time to start holding the Russian people accountable for it.
- Jach 5y ago
  The Eternal Russian? Similar thinking was part of WW2 propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb2YenLG_rQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb2YenLG_rQ (Fun fact: script written by Dr. Seuss.)
- Nerwesta 5y ago
  Sure, hold accountable people that didn't choose where were they born and obviously weren't alive to witness the pattern you're trying to state right now.
  - lotusmars 5y ago
    No, Nuremberg is a legit framework for this.
throw93232 5y ago
Should we perhaps put similar disclaimer in front of every other link? There is some other big coubtry that starts new war every decade... And "Russian people that could be either lied and manipulated" is very condescending.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  They're all of the above plus brainwashed and with a very common revanchism sentiment. Basically it's not hard to sell Nazis in Ukraine and "brotherly nation, that needs our help" narrative in Russia. The foundations are there, you just have to tap into them. I literally was brought up on the idea that Ukraine is just the "border", not a real place. Kyiv is just another Russian city... and Ukrainians are just "polonized Russians". At 14 I was literally going to forums and argued against anyone claiming Ukrainian identity being separate. Thankfully I grew out of that imperialist crap.
seniorivn 5y ago
Every organization that's willingly complied with a government committing crimes against humanity(including US government) shares responsibility for those crimes, and longer you do that more responsible you are. Yandex has created a news aggregation service that worked flawlessly and has been most internet users news site go to in 2011, but after massive protests yandex was "forced" to turn that service into a blatant propaganda machine. And yet Yandex decided to fully support Russian government and keep being russian, focus their attention on different kinds of russian market, and almost didn't try to expand on foreign markets(that would free them from government grip)
- mc32 5y ago
  We're all subject to propaganda from vested interests --sometimes that propaganda aligns with our values, other times not. But all these services provide propaganda --not in the advertising sense, but in the psychological manipulative sense.
  - lotusmars 5y ago
    Honestly don't care about "it's all propaganda" rhethoric. Yandex abused its dominant market position and silenced our protests and filtered sources alternative to Kremlin. Yandex News is the largest Russian media by a mile. They've done all the could (including firing editors who were out of line) to make it align with Kremlin.
    - mc32 5y ago
      This same applies to all major tech companies. If you stray form the narrative, they abuse their dominant position to silence opposition. Now, of course, being a democracy and not being run aby a single party, we don't send people off to "work camps", but people losing their jobs for off-handed comments is not unusual. Oh, you made a joke that was acceptable 10 years ago and now it's not seen as okay? Go repent, sinner! Also, because there is an active war, in your case, the repercussions are amplified, but we'd likely see similar things if we were in an active war instead and only received opinions would be allowed. Even as it is, if someone inexplicably swallows Russian propaganda and critiques the other side, these people get sent to their online purgatory.
zackees 5y ago
Please keep your personal politics off hacker news. Your one sided opinion mirrors the western propaganda position and i can literally turn everywhere to hear it. I have followed this entire debacle since the US did its coup in Ukraine in 2014 and actually understand things like the broken Minsk agreement and the 14k Donbas civilians that have been slaughtered by Azov battalion since 2014. The assertion that Russia is doing this to capture land to enrich itself is pure fiction. This is the Russian cuban missle crisis. I don’t agree with Russia invading Ukraine but on the other I understand it. The fault on this lies with the US and NATO and their creeping desire to place nukes closer and closer to Russia. The US’s illegal bio weapons labs in the country are also a big problem.
- cies 5y ago
- Nerwesta 5y ago
  >14k Donbas civilians that have been slaughtered by Azov battalion since 2014. It seems you didn't read the datas very well, it's ~14k in total in Donbas from both sides, not only civilians. And surely not by Azov.
  - xtian 5y ago
    According to the OSCE, the majority of ceasefire violations occurred against the separatist-controlled areas, which also contain the vast majority of the civilian population.
    - megous 5y ago
      Citation needed. You should also clarify what is "ceasefire violation against the separatist-controlled area", because that doesn't sound like OSCE SMM terminology. If you read SMM reports, they classify location of violations, and type. So if violation is in non government controlled territory, it can be anything from training, outgoing explosions, impact explosions, ... So you can have a ceasefire violation in NGCA that is a shell impact there, or fire from there, or just training. Most violations are undeteremined.
Nerwesta 5y ago
>to be used to help the already poor Russian economy. I really would like a citation here.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
  You want a citation that the Russian economy is poor?
  - Nerwesta 5y ago
    Oh yes please, I mean if it was that obvious I guess you would tell me any metric to push your assessment.
    - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
      Have at it https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+Russian+economy+poor https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+Russian+economy+poor
      - Nerwesta 5y ago
        No I asked a metric or something substancial to back up this claim, here is another one since I can smell British humour here : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+earth+flat https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+earth+flat
        VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
        I just gave you a full internet worth of sources that says the Russian economy is in the dumps. Find me one that says everything is A-OK. Preferably not from Kremlin News Bureau.
        Nerwesta 5y ago
        You gave me a duckduckgo link, thinking I was your Old Uncle. Thanks Bob, I know how to search the web. That's problematic for you because there is still no metric you can provide to back up your claim, I don't know it should be trivial to find one no ? The burden of the proof is on yours, I've never ever stated the Russian economy was "A-OK". I'm equally surprised by your first comment, and the fact you pull this out of nowhere with that much of a confidence.
mk3 5y ago
The Russian company forced to comply with Russia part says it all. They are aiding regime, don't see them prioritizing real results over propaganda in serps. And who owns yandex yet another rich guy with ties from government. At the moment tbh everything from Russia is a poison pill including open source software.
- cies 5y ago
  >The Russian company forced to comply with Russia part says it all. How is this less true from US companies forced to comply with the US govt? > everything from Russia is a poison pill including open source software. based on what?
cies 5y ago
> To those condemning Yandex for the war in Ukraine Think about western oil companies and several wars in the middle east. Those companies actually lobbied for conflict in some cases. > the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone, and news sources complied And there a democracy died. (again) > What doesn't happen everywhere and every time is a rogue nation attacking their neighbors and killing civilians using laughable pretexts while the real goal is to take control of a very resourceful and industrialized area (Donbas) to be used to help the already poor Russian economy. This is one side of the story. The Ukrainian side. There is another side to that, in which the pro-Russian part of the Ukrainian population was silenced. Before Maidan 2014 the biggest party was pro-Russian (30%) and after Maidan they were forbidden to exist. The people of the Donbas have been terrorized by Ukrainian military. Ukrainians who have nazi training camps for children (there is a whole documentary about them from The Guardian on YT). > The enemy is the Russian government and the rich oligarchy behind it Same with the Iraq wars, Libya, Vietnam, Afganistan and the US. Let call out all oppressors. But then the Kiev government since 2014 also needs to be called out for the atrocities on the Donbas.
- xtian 5y ago
- woodruffw 5y ago
  What's the point of this comment? You don't have to like or support the US or deny its atrocities to observe the atrocities currently being committed in Ukraine. > Ukrainians who have nazi training camps for children (there is a whole documentary about them from The Guardian on YT). I think it would behoove you to actually link to this. It's hard to tell from context whether you're claiming that the Ukrainian government is engaging in neo-Nazi education (this would be extraordinary) or whether some neo-Nazis in Ukraine are doing so (this would be upsetting, but not particularly surprising for Eastern Europe in general).
  - xtian 5y ago
    The Guardian video is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBXmbkwiSw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBXmbkwiSw The paramilitary group which organized the camp was officially integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. One of its members recently joined Zelensky in addressing the Greek parliament: https://greekreporter.com/2022/04/07/greek-azov-fighter-zelensky-speech-greek-parliament https://greekreporter.com/2022/04/07/greek-azov-fighter-zele...
hedora 5y ago
The current situation sucks for Yandex, but we're in a war of economic attrition with Russia. Full stop.
lbrito 5y ago
>What doesn't happen everywhere and every time is a rogue nation attacking their neighbors and killing civilians using laughable pretexts while the real goal is to take control of a very resourceful and industrialized area I can think of one very powerful country doing exactly that for over half a century. Hope we're all collectively raging against anything coming from that country. My comment does not imply in pro russianism in any way. They are the aggressors. I hate that I have to write this disclaimer.
- hnarn 5y ago
  The reason you have to write that disclaimer is that you're by definition being a "useful idiot" by repeating the favorite argument of the Russian regime: whataboutism/tu quoque. What the US has done in the past or is doing right now is completely irrelevant when judging Russia's actions in Ukraine.
- gtirloni 5y ago
  That's simple whataboutism. What's your point?
  - lbrito 5y ago
    Respectfully disagree. Whataboutism is when you try to relativize something by citing an equally bad example from some other side. I'm explicitly not relativizing anything. A whataboutist comment would be "the US does the same [so what Russia is doing is fine", which is the opposite of what I implied: "the US does the same [equally bad thing, we should condemn both]". The war is an unjustified aggression. It is great that Ukraine has been getting international sympathy and support. It would be great if we all had a similar response in the many other comparable cases that unfortunately happened in the past.
    - gtirloni 5y ago
      It's an equal deflection from the main point that adds very little to the discussion. You could have equally said "The war is an unjustified aggression BUT the USA has been doing that for a long time too so..." and the message would have been the same. You just phrased it differently.
turbo_bean 5y ago
Good thing all these people were condemning Google when US was invading here, there and elsewhere.
- hnarn 5y ago
  Please take your whataboutism elsewhere.
  - Nerwesta 5y ago
    Pointing hypocrisy in that particular case.
  - alm1 5y ago
    this is not whataboutism, it's actually guilty-by-associationism displayed on both sides. Should we blame children whose elderly parents support the war for taking care of their parents, instead of disowning them? Should we blame employees of Google for allowing employees of Lockheed Martin use Google maps during the Syria invasion? Should we blame employees of Yandex for paying taxes and working for a company which did not cease operations in Russia? Where do you draw the line of association?
    - JAlexoid 5y ago
      Yandex is owned by one of Putin's pocket oligarchs and all of the management has been replaced by staunch loyalists, long time ago. This isn't "guilt by association". Yandex is part of the Russian government structure. I'm sorry that you don't know that.
      - the-lazy-guy 5y ago
        Would you mind saying what oligarch owns the company? It is a publically traded company. https://ir.yandex/shareholder-structure https://ir.yandex/shareholder-structure Arkady Volozh is a rare case of a (very) rich man in Russia who actually created his wealth by creating a company from scratch. None of the upper management are loyalists which is exhibited by amount of people who left the company since the start of the war, including from top ranks. Quite a few in top management stay. Not because it's all rosy, but because they have obligations for supporting people working for them and people and business who rely on them. This won't stop the war but will make more lives miserable. You might say, that supporting Russian people and Russian companies is unethical. As a Russian I disagree. I totally condemn what Russian government is doing but I don't think you understand how Russian society is structured currently if you think that killing non-government business will change anything in governments course. (This saddens me a lot) Disclaimer: I worked at Yandex till 2018 when I moved to another country. And I still maintain contact with a lot of wonderful people working there.
acidioxide 5y ago
- jaquer_1 5y ago
- purerandomness 5y ago
  RIA Novosti is a state propaganda outlet. There is no "mainstream media" left in Russia after they closed Echo Moscow and TVRain (Doschd).
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    RIA Novosti is mainstream. Mainstream doesn't mean a particular political affiliation or even objectivity. It just means the most widely referred to. Dozhd and Echo Moskvy were never "mainstream", quite the opposite.
  - acidioxide 5y ago
    By mainstream media I mean media that is popular - people are reading it. Thoughts described there are so extreme there must be acceptance for such rhetoric.
    - purerandomness 5y ago
      Of course it's accepted by big parts of the population. Propaganda actually works, that's why dictatorships keep using that playbook. The point is that it's pointless to try to quantify how many fell victim to propaganda. There is no meaningful way to assess it, since all metrics you'll try to use are under control of a totalitarian state that controls every single statistic.
mardifoufs 5y ago
I mean honestly no one really bought it up before your comment. No one was condemning anything, there was a single question revolving around the current status of yandex but nothing condemning it (A part from dead comments I guess). Most of the discussion was technical before this entire comment thread
some_random 5y ago
It's been more than a month since the war started, it's become very clear that the war is popular in Russia and pretending that XYZ company could maybe be the sole exception isn't worth considering. Also, the comparison between the Russian government arresting people for holding up blank pieces of paper and the US government asking media to not broadcast coffins is laughable.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  Any time you blame people for their government, you're implying that you are okay with the same treatment from others. Are you, if you're an American, down with being blamed for the war in Iraq over nonexistent WMDs, or the coups we have instigated around the world? (Substitute your country's wrongdoings as needed.) If so, keep doing what you're doing.
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    Americans are - in fact - responsible for a lot. Like people fleeing the Northern Triangle are absolutely someone that US has a moral obligation to help. Arguably helping people in Cuba, Venezuela or Taiwan - is less of a moral imperative. Because those issues aren't American responsibility anymore.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      The US is still attacking Cuba and Venezuela.
  - a-b 5y ago
    Americans doing plenty of real things to keep their government in check. There is no excuse.
    - daemoens 5y ago
      Can you list some?
causality0 5y ago
During the 2nd gulf war against Iraq, when the death toll began to rise, the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone, and news sources complied, including those against the war This is wildly misleading. It was during the first gulf war, and it wasn't a ban on the reporting of returning coffins, it was a ban on photographers entering the grounds of Dover Air Force Base where the coffins were received.
- squarefoot 5y ago
  By reporting I actually meant showing images, sorry my bad. However I'm pretty sure it was during the 2nd gulf war, not the 1st.
  - causality0 5y ago
    By reporting I actually meant showing images Inaccurate. If they obtained images by some other way, such as leaked from an airman who was there or taken with a long range lens there was nothing barring them from publishing them. However I'm pretty sure it was during the 2nd gulf war, not the 1st. Bro you're in front of a computer. If you doubted me it would take you ten seconds to verify that the photographer ban was imposed in 1991.
JAlexoid 5y ago
> Until we know for sure that their management is really aligned with their government agenda, whatever they say, or don't say, now has zero credibility because it could be extorted from above. Em... We know, actually. Simply because the current management is assigned to manage Yandex by Kremlin. It's the same case with VKontakte and MailRu. We have Telegram, because Kremlin pushed Durov out of the company. So before you deflect - maybe ask Russian people that know what was happening in Russia for the last 20 years.
- lotusmars 5y ago
  It's wild how Western commenters say "we don't know for sure" when it was all public, they just didn't pay attention. VKontakte is a great example because was literally a hostile takeover from Durov to Kremlin's oligarch Usmanov. They even accused Durov of "running over a policeman" as a threat to his arrest. Other Russian media were consolidated as well mainly around Gazprom structures and holdings controlled by Sergey Chemezov, Putin's long time friend from his East Germany work and an ex-KGB general.
pyuser583 5y ago
The US military never forbade reporting on bodies returning home. My local paper regularly covered the returning of bodies and funerals of service members. The military didn’t give the press inside access to the process of returning bodies, unless they agreed not to photograph. The fact that the military wasn’t allowing members of the press access to events that members of the general public were forbidden from is not censorship. Heck, the press actually were allowed special access, but only on the condition they not photograph. Freedom of the press is not the same as privileged access for the press. And the policy began in the first gulf war, but the second.
- nix23 5y ago
  >The US military never forbade reporting on bodies returning home. >>U.S. lifts photo ban on military coffins >>In a reversal of an 18-year-old military policy that critics said was hiding the ultimate cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, https://web.archive.org/web/20220302035710/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/americas/27iht-photos.1.20479953.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220302035710/https://www.nytim...
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    You claimed the press wasn’t allowed to report on military coffins returning home: > During the 2nd gulf war against Iraq, when the death toll began to rise, the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone This is demonstrably false: https://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/01/212729.php https://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/01/212729.php You then provided an article that said the US had reversed its policy of “not allowing photographs” of military coffins. Which is a very different thing from not reporting on them. The rule against photographs only applied military bases, which already have very strict rules about photography. Your initial claim was that there reporters were forbidden to report on bodies returning home. You made this claim to draw a parallel with Russian censorship. The Russians arent merely making access to military bases conditional on not taking photographs - they’re engaging in political censorship. Again, it’s very, very, very common to restrict photography on military bases, even by members of the press.
petard 5y ago
I think killing civilians using laughable pretext (weapons of mass destruction anyone?) with the goal of taking over or ensuring control over resources is not particular a Russian thing. Like invading an oil-rich country over the pretext of weapons of mass destruction.
kgeist 5y ago
I've met a member of the YDB team at a conference in Moscow, a nice polite guy. I doubt they have any say in the company on the compliance of the company with the Russian law (let alone on Putin's antics), they are engineers, not lawyers or political activists. In my experience, there's a higher percentage of, say, Navalny supporters among Russian programmers than among the general population. Russia's most popular engineering blog, Habr (kind of like Reddit for engineers), is generally distrusting of the government, comments that openly support the government are usually downvoted. One of the trending topics there is relocation outside of Russia. Hate against Russian programmers, in my opinion, is completely misdirected. The project is open source, using it does not sponsor Putin's war machine. I think collaboration is a better strategy in the long term as opposed to isolation and bullying which can turn the last sane Russians away from the West, playing into Putin's hands. We should judge people by their actions, not by their association with a particular ethnic group.
mda 5y ago
The Russian government is overwhelmingly supported by Russian people. So apparently Russian people supporting the government is also enemy of this fantasyland that is called Russia. I lost all my hope for a sane Russia.

dotdi 5y ago

True, but on the other hand, people outside of Russia can decide for themselves how to react to and treat companies from unfriendly countries. You mention oligarchs - how can it be ruled out that Yandex is directly or indirectly, fully or partly owned, and even directed, by them?

app4soft 5y ago
> people outside of Russia can decide for themselves how to react to and treat companies from unfriendly countries. Since 2019 Yandex and the FSB (Federal Security Bureau of Russia, ex-KGB) had reached an agreement where the company would provide the required data without handing over the encryption keys.[0] Learn more about Russian war crimes & ongoing invasion of Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai... N.B. I'm Ukrainian living in Ukraine. Here is my statement for HN:[1] + Verified Ways to Help Ukraine: https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/02/27/verified-ways-to-help-the-ukrainian-army/ https://euromaidanpress.com/2022/02/27/verified-ways-to-help... + My Patreon: https://patreon.com/app4soft https://patreon.com/app4soft [ Please, DONATE me just right now ] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex#Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex#Security [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395897 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395897
- cies 5y ago
  How can I help specifically the people of the Donbas?
  - Nerwesta 5y ago
    Now ? I think it's too late, your question sounds bizarre, Russia is indeed helping them. But I guess there are quite a few pro-separatists NGOs out there. Not the ones aligned with Kiev though, so they are leaning pro-Russia.
    - cies 5y ago
      I also saw some news that Russia send them supplies. I feel they are the most oppressed people in this conflict.
myth_drannon 5y ago
Well the CEO of Yandex resigned in protest and fled to Israel.
- samhw 5y ago
  I have no dog in this hunt, but I just looked this up, and there's no indication he 'resigned in protest'. Their company news site says that he resigned after being sanctioned by the EU.[0] It appears heavily implied that he was forced to resign as a result of the sanctions – either directly (I'm not familiar with how EU sanctions work) or in that it made his position untenable. [0] https://yandex.com/company/press_center/press_releases/2022/2022-03-15 https://yandex.com/company/press_center/press_releases/2022/... Edit: This report appears to bear out that the sanctions forced him to resign pretty-much-directly, as the company does business in Europe, and the sanctions prevent him from doing business in Europe: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/yandex-deputy-ceo-resigns-after-being-sanctioned-company-considers-selling-assets-to-vk/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/yandex-deputy-ceo...
  - myth_drannon 5y ago
    I was talking about the CEO Elena Bunina, not deputy CEO - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/yandex-ceo-relocates-to-israel-cannot-work-for-a-country-at-war-1.10722163 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/yandex-ceo-rel...
    - samhw 5y ago
      Ah, fair enough, I’m sorry - for some reason only the deputy CEO’s firing came up when I searched about the CEO, so I assumed that was what you had meant. My bad. Please disregard my comment!
- lotusmars 5y ago
  No support to the fact that she resigned in protest. Please don't spread this whitewashing of Yandex. Many Russian executives stepped down so not to be hit by sanctions. She was already scheduled to be replaced by Khudaverdyan and then invasion started.

ushakov 5y ago

yeah, unlike others, they can’t just leave Russia for good essentially they’re being held hostage, either they comply or the government will “nationalize” them and appoint managers who will

postingposts 5y ago
If you have an open mind and a big heart you will start to find that most people have become ideologues, and will find these conditions acceptable. “Well they supported the thing I didn’t on Facebook, death time.” I’m shocked at the level of callousness some are displaying.

Barrin92 5y ago

The Russian people and the Russian government are largely in agreement and the oligarchs are out of power. If you can bet on one thing it is that oligarchs like international business and do not like wars and having their yachts seized. That was the Russia of the 90s. I've got family and friends in Russia, most of them highly educated and with access to international news and all. War support is pretty strong through all social strata. (also backed by independent pollsters like levada, if you want to look at data).

codedokode 5y ago
> also backed by independent pollsters like levada Do they publish how many of respondents refused to talk? I saw information that majority of people refuse to answer questions about war. So it might be that the results are based mostly on opinions of people who agree to talk.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  Levada does, yes. They compare response/refusal/coop rates now and before the war and find it to be largely unchanged. https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2022-04/Final%20Russia%20Brief%20V3.pdf https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2022-0...
  - gdy 5y ago
    But the composition might have changed. Now anti-Putin people are more likely to refuse to participate in a poll out of fear while pro-Putin people are mobilized by mass media and eager to voice their support.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  > Do they publish how many of respondents refused to talk? I saw information that majority of people refuse to answer questions about war. I believe an ordinary person against the war yet unwilling to get jailed for this opinion won't just refuse to talk, they would say they totally support their government although they actually totally hate it and wish it to collapse ASAP and the top officials to die in torment. Imagine you traveled to China or DPRK and some weird local emerged to ask how do you like the policies of their "great leader"? Would you take the risk of being sincere? I bet most people would say "fantastic!" and hurry away.

codedokode 5y ago

It's not that simple. Yandex has a frontpage that is viewed by tens of millions of users daily and is equivalent to TV. And Yandex since long ago has been intentionally filtering news that are shown there, for example, keeping silent about anti-Putin protests etc. So Yandex has been helping to spread propaganda for many years. Please don't portray Yandex as a victim of strict martial laws (although oficially there is no war, only a "special operation". Calling it a war is an offence).

postingposts 5y ago
Since you say it’s “not that simple”, do you truly believe it’s out of the reach of the Russian govt. to punish this company or the members of it for stepping out of line? They’re a large company in tech but how about their resources for personnel security, or what if they’ve been ordered to do so legally? Let’s go beyond that. Let’s say that Yandex has been spreading propaganda on purpose for multiple years. That’s every other search engine too. Especially Google! If Russia or China wins a conflict, or begins one economically, do the employees of Google deserve to be punished for their work during this time? When you use logic and apply the same logic to the situation in reverse, it’s quite apparent that you have a bias, and that bias isn’t serving you well.
- lotusmars 5y ago
  > That’s every other search engine too. Please leave your "look at the West" whataboutism out of it. In the end it's your problem how you solve it. We in Russia had our media crushed, filtered by Yandex and most journalists fled the country or were murdered. Your whataboutism is just trying to diminish our struggle.
  - postingposts 5y ago
    Can you address my points instead of trying to assign some sort of ideological slant to them? Not only is it much stronger for your argument but it’s more honest discourse. Nothing you have said in your post is unique to the geography, at all. If that makes you feel less special, good; there is nothing special about being from one geographical location or another, and nothing special about a murder in Africa vs. a murder in South America. Murder is murder, you don’t have a worse kind. If there is something to discuss, it’s not from an angle of ideological context-macht.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

> The enemy is the Russian government and the rich oligarchy behind it, not Russian people I think we're all getting real tired of this line. This is, what, the 3rd time that place has collapsed in the last 100 years? This is a pattern. And I think it's time to start holding the Russian people accountable for it.

Jach 5y ago
The Eternal Russian? Similar thinking was part of WW2 propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb2YenLG_rQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb2YenLG_rQ (Fun fact: script written by Dr. Seuss.)
Nerwesta 5y ago
Sure, hold accountable people that didn't choose where were they born and obviously weren't alive to witness the pattern you're trying to state right now.
- lotusmars 5y ago
  No, Nuremberg is a legit framework for this.

throw93232 5y ago

Should we perhaps put similar disclaimer in front of every other link? There is some other big coubtry that starts new war every decade... And "Russian people that could be either lied and manipulated" is very condescending.

JAlexoid 5y ago
They're all of the above plus brainwashed and with a very common revanchism sentiment. Basically it's not hard to sell Nazis in Ukraine and "brotherly nation, that needs our help" narrative in Russia. The foundations are there, you just have to tap into them. I literally was brought up on the idea that Ukraine is just the "border", not a real place. Kyiv is just another Russian city... and Ukrainians are just "polonized Russians". At 14 I was literally going to forums and argued against anyone claiming Ukrainian identity being separate. Thankfully I grew out of that imperialist crap.

seniorivn 5y ago

Every organization that's willingly complied with a government committing crimes against humanity(including US government) shares responsibility for those crimes, and longer you do that more responsible you are. Yandex has created a news aggregation service that worked flawlessly and has been most internet users news site go to in 2011, but after massive protests yandex was "forced" to turn that service into a blatant propaganda machine. And yet Yandex decided to fully support Russian government and keep being russian, focus their attention on different kinds of russian market, and almost didn't try to expand on foreign markets(that would free them from government grip)

mc32 5y ago
We're all subject to propaganda from vested interests --sometimes that propaganda aligns with our values, other times not. But all these services provide propaganda --not in the advertising sense, but in the psychological manipulative sense.
- lotusmars 5y ago
  Honestly don't care about "it's all propaganda" rhethoric. Yandex abused its dominant market position and silenced our protests and filtered sources alternative to Kremlin. Yandex News is the largest Russian media by a mile. They've done all the could (including firing editors who were out of line) to make it align with Kremlin.
  - mc32 5y ago
    This same applies to all major tech companies. If you stray form the narrative, they abuse their dominant position to silence opposition. Now, of course, being a democracy and not being run aby a single party, we don't send people off to "work camps", but people losing their jobs for off-handed comments is not unusual. Oh, you made a joke that was acceptable 10 years ago and now it's not seen as okay? Go repent, sinner! Also, because there is an active war, in your case, the repercussions are amplified, but we'd likely see similar things if we were in an active war instead and only received opinions would be allowed. Even as it is, if someone inexplicably swallows Russian propaganda and critiques the other side, these people get sent to their online purgatory.

zackees 5y ago

Please keep your personal politics off hacker news. Your one sided opinion mirrors the western propaganda position and i can literally turn everywhere to hear it. I have followed this entire debacle since the US did its coup in Ukraine in 2014 and actually understand things like the broken Minsk agreement and the 14k Donbas civilians that have been slaughtered by Azov battalion since 2014. The assertion that Russia is doing this to capture land to enrich itself is pure fiction. This is the Russian cuban missle crisis. I don’t agree with Russia invading Ukraine but on the other I understand it. The fault on this lies with the US and NATO and their creeping desire to place nukes closer and closer to Russia. The US’s illegal bio weapons labs in the country are also a big problem.

cies 5y ago
Nerwesta 5y ago
>14k Donbas civilians that have been slaughtered by Azov battalion since 2014. It seems you didn't read the datas very well, it's ~14k in total in Donbas from both sides, not only civilians. And surely not by Azov.
- xtian 5y ago
  According to the OSCE, the majority of ceasefire violations occurred against the separatist-controlled areas, which also contain the vast majority of the civilian population.
  - megous 5y ago
    Citation needed. You should also clarify what is "ceasefire violation against the separatist-controlled area", because that doesn't sound like OSCE SMM terminology. If you read SMM reports, they classify location of violations, and type. So if violation is in non government controlled territory, it can be anything from training, outgoing explosions, impact explosions, ... So you can have a ceasefire violation in NGCA that is a shell impact there, or fire from there, or just training. Most violations are undeteremined.

Nerwesta 5y ago

>to be used to help the already poor Russian economy. I really would like a citation here.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
You want a citation that the Russian economy is poor?
- Nerwesta 5y ago
  Oh yes please, I mean if it was that obvious I guess you would tell me any metric to push your assessment.
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
    Have at it https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+Russian+economy+poor https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+Russian+economy+poor
    - Nerwesta 5y ago
      No I asked a metric or something substancial to back up this claim, here is another one since I can smell British humour here : https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+earth+flat https://duckduckgo.com/?q=is+the+earth+flat
      - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
        I just gave you a full internet worth of sources that says the Russian economy is in the dumps. Find me one that says everything is A-OK. Preferably not from Kremlin News Bureau.
        Nerwesta 5y ago
        You gave me a duckduckgo link, thinking I was your Old Uncle. Thanks Bob, I know how to search the web. That's problematic for you because there is still no metric you can provide to back up your claim, I don't know it should be trivial to find one no ? The burden of the proof is on yours, I've never ever stated the Russian economy was "A-OK". I'm equally surprised by your first comment, and the fact you pull this out of nowhere with that much of a confidence.

mk3 5y ago

The Russian company forced to comply with Russia part says it all. They are aiding regime, don't see them prioritizing real results over propaganda in serps. And who owns yandex yet another rich guy with ties from government. At the moment tbh everything from Russia is a poison pill including open source software.

cies 5y ago
>The Russian company forced to comply with Russia part says it all. How is this less true from US companies forced to comply with the US govt? > everything from Russia is a poison pill including open source software. based on what?

cies 5y ago

> To those condemning Yandex for the war in Ukraine Think about western oil companies and several wars in the middle east. Those companies actually lobbied for conflict in some cases. > the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone, and news sources complied And there a democracy died. (again) > What doesn't happen everywhere and every time is a rogue nation attacking their neighbors and killing civilians using laughable pretexts while the real goal is to take control of a very resourceful and industrialized area (Donbas) to be used to help the already poor Russian economy. This is one side of the story. The Ukrainian side. There is another side to that, in which the pro-Russian part of the Ukrainian population was silenced. Before Maidan 2014 the biggest party was pro-Russian (30%) and after Maidan they were forbidden to exist. The people of the Donbas have been terrorized by Ukrainian military. Ukrainians who have nazi training camps for children (there is a whole documentary about them from The Guardian on YT). > The enemy is the Russian government and the rich oligarchy behind it Same with the Iraq wars, Libya, Vietnam, Afganistan and the US. Let call out all oppressors. But then the Kiev government since 2014 also needs to be called out for the atrocities on the Donbas.

xtian 5y ago
woodruffw 5y ago
What's the point of this comment? You don't have to like or support the US or deny its atrocities to observe the atrocities currently being committed in Ukraine. > Ukrainians who have nazi training camps for children (there is a whole documentary about them from The Guardian on YT). I think it would behoove you to actually link to this. It's hard to tell from context whether you're claiming that the Ukrainian government is engaging in neo-Nazi education (this would be extraordinary) or whether some neo-Nazis in Ukraine are doing so (this would be upsetting, but not particularly surprising for Eastern Europe in general).
- xtian 5y ago
  The Guardian video is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBXmbkwiSw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jiBXmbkwiSw The paramilitary group which organized the camp was officially integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard. One of its members recently joined Zelensky in addressing the Greek parliament: https://greekreporter.com/2022/04/07/greek-azov-fighter-zelensky-speech-greek-parliament https://greekreporter.com/2022/04/07/greek-azov-fighter-zele...

hedora 5y ago

The current situation sucks for Yandex, but we're in a war of economic attrition with Russia. Full stop.

lbrito 5y ago

>What doesn't happen everywhere and every time is a rogue nation attacking their neighbors and killing civilians using laughable pretexts while the real goal is to take control of a very resourceful and industrialized area I can think of one very powerful country doing exactly that for over half a century. Hope we're all collectively raging against anything coming from that country. My comment does not imply in pro russianism in any way. They are the aggressors. I hate that I have to write this disclaimer.

hnarn 5y ago
The reason you have to write that disclaimer is that you're by definition being a "useful idiot" by repeating the favorite argument of the Russian regime: whataboutism/tu quoque. What the US has done in the past or is doing right now is completely irrelevant when judging Russia's actions in Ukraine.
gtirloni 5y ago
That's simple whataboutism. What's your point?
- lbrito 5y ago
  Respectfully disagree. Whataboutism is when you try to relativize something by citing an equally bad example from some other side. I'm explicitly not relativizing anything. A whataboutist comment would be "the US does the same [so what Russia is doing is fine", which is the opposite of what I implied: "the US does the same [equally bad thing, we should condemn both]". The war is an unjustified aggression. It is great that Ukraine has been getting international sympathy and support. It would be great if we all had a similar response in the many other comparable cases that unfortunately happened in the past.
  - gtirloni 5y ago
    It's an equal deflection from the main point that adds very little to the discussion. You could have equally said "The war is an unjustified aggression BUT the USA has been doing that for a long time too so..." and the message would have been the same. You just phrased it differently.

turbo_bean 5y ago

Good thing all these people were condemning Google when US was invading here, there and elsewhere.

hnarn 5y ago
Please take your whataboutism elsewhere.
- Nerwesta 5y ago
  Pointing hypocrisy in that particular case.
- alm1 5y ago
  this is not whataboutism, it's actually guilty-by-associationism displayed on both sides. Should we blame children whose elderly parents support the war for taking care of their parents, instead of disowning them? Should we blame employees of Google for allowing employees of Lockheed Martin use Google maps during the Syria invasion? Should we blame employees of Yandex for paying taxes and working for a company which did not cease operations in Russia? Where do you draw the line of association?
  - JAlexoid 5y ago
    Yandex is owned by one of Putin's pocket oligarchs and all of the management has been replaced by staunch loyalists, long time ago. This isn't "guilt by association". Yandex is part of the Russian government structure. I'm sorry that you don't know that.
    - the-lazy-guy 5y ago
      Would you mind saying what oligarch owns the company? It is a publically traded company. https://ir.yandex/shareholder-structure https://ir.yandex/shareholder-structure Arkady Volozh is a rare case of a (very) rich man in Russia who actually created his wealth by creating a company from scratch. None of the upper management are loyalists which is exhibited by amount of people who left the company since the start of the war, including from top ranks. Quite a few in top management stay. Not because it's all rosy, but because they have obligations for supporting people working for them and people and business who rely on them. This won't stop the war but will make more lives miserable. You might say, that supporting Russian people and Russian companies is unethical. As a Russian I disagree. I totally condemn what Russian government is doing but I don't think you understand how Russian society is structured currently if you think that killing non-government business will change anything in governments course. (This saddens me a lot) Disclaimer: I worked at Yandex till 2018 when I moved to another country. And I still maintain contact with a lot of wonderful people working there.

acidioxide 5y ago

jaquer_1 5y ago
purerandomness 5y ago
RIA Novosti is a state propaganda outlet. There is no "mainstream media" left in Russia after they closed Echo Moscow and TVRain (Doschd).
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  RIA Novosti is mainstream. Mainstream doesn't mean a particular political affiliation or even objectivity. It just means the most widely referred to. Dozhd and Echo Moskvy were never "mainstream", quite the opposite.
- acidioxide 5y ago
  By mainstream media I mean media that is popular - people are reading it. Thoughts described there are so extreme there must be acceptance for such rhetoric.
  - purerandomness 5y ago
    Of course it's accepted by big parts of the population. Propaganda actually works, that's why dictatorships keep using that playbook. The point is that it's pointless to try to quantify how many fell victim to propaganda. There is no meaningful way to assess it, since all metrics you'll try to use are under control of a totalitarian state that controls every single statistic.

mardifoufs 5y ago

I mean honestly no one really bought it up before your comment. No one was condemning anything, there was a single question revolving around the current status of yandex but nothing condemning it (A part from dead comments I guess). Most of the discussion was technical before this entire comment thread

some_random 5y ago

It's been more than a month since the war started, it's become very clear that the war is popular in Russia and pretending that XYZ company could maybe be the sole exception isn't worth considering. Also, the comparison between the Russian government arresting people for holding up blank pieces of paper and the US government asking media to not broadcast coffins is laughable.

JasonFruit 5y ago
Any time you blame people for their government, you're implying that you are okay with the same treatment from others. Are you, if you're an American, down with being blamed for the war in Iraq over nonexistent WMDs, or the coups we have instigated around the world? (Substitute your country's wrongdoings as needed.) If so, keep doing what you're doing.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Americans are - in fact - responsible for a lot. Like people fleeing the Northern Triangle are absolutely someone that US has a moral obligation to help. Arguably helping people in Cuba, Venezuela or Taiwan - is less of a moral imperative. Because those issues aren't American responsibility anymore.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    The US is still attacking Cuba and Venezuela.
- a-b 5y ago
  Americans doing plenty of real things to keep their government in check. There is no excuse.
  - daemoens 5y ago
    Can you list some?

causality0 5y ago

During the 2nd gulf war against Iraq, when the death toll began to rise, the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone, and news sources complied, including those against the war This is wildly misleading. It was during the first gulf war, and it wasn't a ban on the reporting of returning coffins, it was a ban on photographers entering the grounds of Dover Air Force Base where the coffins were received.

squarefoot 5y ago
By reporting I actually meant showing images, sorry my bad. However I'm pretty sure it was during the 2nd gulf war, not the 1st.
- causality0 5y ago
  By reporting I actually meant showing images Inaccurate. If they obtained images by some other way, such as leaked from an airman who was there or taken with a long range lens there was nothing barring them from publishing them. However I'm pretty sure it was during the 2nd gulf war, not the 1st. Bro you're in front of a computer. If you doubted me it would take you ten seconds to verify that the photographer ban was imposed in 1991.

JAlexoid 5y ago

> Until we know for sure that their management is really aligned with their government agenda, whatever they say, or don't say, now has zero credibility because it could be extorted from above. Em... We know, actually. Simply because the current management is assigned to manage Yandex by Kremlin. It's the same case with VKontakte and MailRu. We have Telegram, because Kremlin pushed Durov out of the company. So before you deflect - maybe ask Russian people that know what was happening in Russia for the last 20 years.

lotusmars 5y ago
It's wild how Western commenters say "we don't know for sure" when it was all public, they just didn't pay attention. VKontakte is a great example because was literally a hostile takeover from Durov to Kremlin's oligarch Usmanov. They even accused Durov of "running over a policeman" as a threat to his arrest. Other Russian media were consolidated as well mainly around Gazprom structures and holdings controlled by Sergey Chemezov, Putin's long time friend from his East Germany work and an ex-KGB general.

pyuser583 5y ago

The US military never forbade reporting on bodies returning home. My local paper regularly covered the returning of bodies and funerals of service members. The military didn’t give the press inside access to the process of returning bodies, unless they agreed not to photograph. The fact that the military wasn’t allowing members of the press access to events that members of the general public were forbidden from is not censorship. Heck, the press actually were allowed special access, but only on the condition they not photograph. Freedom of the press is not the same as privileged access for the press. And the policy began in the first gulf war, but the second.

nix23 5y ago
>The US military never forbade reporting on bodies returning home. >>U.S. lifts photo ban on military coffins >>In a reversal of an 18-year-old military policy that critics said was hiding the ultimate cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, https://web.archive.org/web/20220302035710/https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/world/americas/27iht-photos.1.20479953.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220302035710/https://www.nytim...
- pyuser583 5y ago
  You claimed the press wasn’t allowed to report on military coffins returning home: > During the 2nd gulf war against Iraq, when the death toll began to rise, the US government forbade the reporting of military personnel coffins returning from the war zone This is demonstrably false: https://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/01/212729.php https://la.indymedia.org/news/2008/01/212729.php You then provided an article that said the US had reversed its policy of “not allowing photographs” of military coffins. Which is a very different thing from not reporting on them. The rule against photographs only applied military bases, which already have very strict rules about photography. Your initial claim was that there reporters were forbidden to report on bodies returning home. You made this claim to draw a parallel with Russian censorship. The Russians arent merely making access to military bases conditional on not taking photographs - they’re engaging in political censorship. Again, it’s very, very, very common to restrict photography on military bases, even by members of the press.

petard 5y ago

I think killing civilians using laughable pretext (weapons of mass destruction anyone?) with the goal of taking over or ensuring control over resources is not particular a Russian thing. Like invading an oil-rich country over the pretext of weapons of mass destruction.

kgeist 5y ago

I've met a member of the YDB team at a conference in Moscow, a nice polite guy. I doubt they have any say in the company on the compliance of the company with the Russian law (let alone on Putin's antics), they are engineers, not lawyers or political activists. In my experience, there's a higher percentage of, say, Navalny supporters among Russian programmers than among the general population. Russia's most popular engineering blog, Habr (kind of like Reddit for engineers), is generally distrusting of the government, comments that openly support the government are usually downvoted. One of the trending topics there is relocation outside of Russia. Hate against Russian programmers, in my opinion, is completely misdirected. The project is open source, using it does not sponsor Putin's war machine. I think collaboration is a better strategy in the long term as opposed to isolation and bullying which can turn the last sane Russians away from the West, playing into Putin's hands. We should judge people by their actions, not by their association with a particular ethnic group.

mda 5y ago

The Russian government is overwhelmingly supported by Russian people. So apparently Russian people supporting the government is also enemy of this fantasyland that is called Russia. I lost all my hope for a sane Russia.