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I grew up in Denmark and went to a school and gymnasium with many Middle Eastern kids. Many were 1990s Iraqi Arab and Kurdish refugees. Many spent their holiday

by dtquad 2y ago

I grew up in Denmark and went to a school and gymnasium with many Middle Eastern kids. Many were 1990s Iraqi Arab and Kurdish refugees. Many spent their holidays back home in Iraq during 2005-2011 and one family actually moved back to Iraq. In my young head it didn't compute with the weekly sectarian violence and suicide attacks. Now when following the war in Ukraine I finally understand how war can be incredibly localized in specific regions of a country with long-range attacks targeting only high-value infrastructure targets.

anelson 2y ago
It is true that war can rage in a country and people not on the frontline can live reasonably normal lives. I returned to Kyiv in August of last year, and lived for over a year during some of the worst air attacks on the country. It’s not so much that there is no danger or the war is far away. I woke up many times to explosions in the distance and air raid alarms in the capital are a daily occurrence. Attacks are absolutely not limited to critical infrastructure. Even if Russia didn’t deliberately target civilian populations (and they definitely do), air defenses don’t vaporize enemy ordnance so it’s going to fall down somewhere, and when attacks are happening in cities then it’s likely that it will land on something populated. It’s more that the odds of being killed or wounded as a civilian in the capital are higher than in a peaceful country but low enough that the mind just gets used to it and you go on with life. I finally left Ukraine a few weeks ago, for fear of how bad the winter will be with the infrastructure bombing. My wife and I moved to Budapest. Believe it or not, we miss Kyiv and want to move back in the spring, war notwithstanding. Having said all that, I was in Baghdad in 2006 and I do not understand why any Iraqi family would move back there during that time, unless they were Kurdish and moved to the northern Kurdish territory.
- vladgur 2y ago
  That a pretty intense career trajectory - curious to hear your story. Kiev was wonderful in the peace time, but what made you stay during war, given your ability to move around freely
  - anelson 2y ago
    That’s a long story. Mostly just a series of unexpected turns and a search for meaning in my professional life. As for why I stayed, it’s hard to believe but even today, modulo the air raids, my life in Kyiv is just better than the life I led before in Miami, and vastly better than my life now in Budapest. I fell in love with that city when I started traveling there on business in the 2010s, and decided to move there to build my next company in 2018. The people, infrastructure, services, startup culture, healthcare, etc are all much better than a country with Ukraines history and geographical fate would suggest. That’s down to the Ukrainian people who have by force of will achieved some remarkable things with very little. The war is already destroying some of what they have achieved, and depending on how it ends may destroy it all. But as I said, even now in a brutal and relentless war, life goes on. I should also point out that as recently as last month I heard a lot of American accented English from obvious tourists on the streets in Kyiv. I was at a trendy restaurant with a Ukrainian colleague and nearly every other table had at least one foreigner. Some are there to cash in on the wartime opportunities with drones and other offensive and defensive technologies, some are deniable operators doing god knows what, but my sense is that a fair number are just tourists. Go figure.
ben_w 2y ago
> In my young head it didn't compute with the weekly sectarian violence and suicide attacks. I had a similar confusion as a kid, but for me it was how Ireland and Northern Ireland were portrayed in the news — I was 14 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed.
bboozzoo 2y ago
It's quite surreal when a colleague apologizes as they won't attend the daily standup bc they need to leave to get to the bomb shelter. Or another one joins the standup while working in a bomb shelter and apologizes in case their laptop runs out of juice as they're getting electricity from a generator. While you're sitting there in your cozy office in one of the neighboring countries, and your biggest worry is that you've run out coffee beans.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  This is deep. Thank you to share. Is it not possible to invite these staff to your country to live and work?
  - vindex10 2y ago
    Men are not allowed to cross the border, also everyone has family and relatives, it is not straightforward to just take everyone with you to another place and be able to support all of them also financially.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
heraldgeezer 2y ago
[flagged]
fullspectrumdev 2y ago
I spend a lot of time there. The long range “precision” attacks by Russia often just end up randomly killing civilians. Eg: missile strikes on Kyiv blowing up a children’s hospital, or the September strikes on Lviv blowing up a random apartment building and wiping out almost an entire family. You can easily go “what are the chances” even when shahads are flying over your head and the sky is lit up with tracer fire from mobile air defense units after some exposure.
touisteur 2y ago
I don't know about Iraq, but residential buildings are routinely bombed on Ukraine, big cities, not sure one can draw parallels here. Spending nights and even being schooled in bomb shelters will take its toll, but from meeting many Ukrainian refugees, many will make light of it, very often wary of complaining while their friends, family, countrypeople, still in-country are still waking up to sirens and explosions. The Ukranian utilities people are relentless, resourceful heroes, keeping power on, under the conditions they're facing.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  > residential buildings are routinely bombed on Ukraine What do you gain from bombing residential buildings?
  - brohee 2y ago
    Russia made it clear that if those "misguided Russians" insist on staying misguided they will have to genocide them.
  - tucnak 2y ago
    Terror
  - m12k 2y ago
    Some percentage of those are missing their actual targets due to GPS jamming (others, just straight up terror bombardment). Also, part of the purpose is to create dilemmas for an air defense with limited resources - save the ammo factory or the children's hospital.
    - protomolecule 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        779 strikes on Ukrainian health facilities is a very frequent accident. https://www.attacksonhealthukraine.org/ https://www.attacksonhealthukraine.org/
vindex10 2y ago
They are not only targeting high value infrastructure. People in regular apartment buildings die every day from the cruise missiles and Shahed drones.

by dtquad 2y ago

anelson 2y ago

It is true that war can rage in a country and people not on the frontline can live reasonably normal lives. I returned to Kyiv in August of last year, and lived for over a year during some of the worst air attacks on the country. It’s not so much that there is no danger or the war is far away. I woke up many times to explosions in the distance and air raid alarms in the capital are a daily occurrence. Attacks are absolutely not limited to critical infrastructure. Even if Russia didn’t deliberately target civilian populations (and they definitely do), air defenses don’t vaporize enemy ordnance so it’s going to fall down somewhere, and when attacks are happening in cities then it’s likely that it will land on something populated. It’s more that the odds of being killed or wounded as a civilian in the capital are higher than in a peaceful country but low enough that the mind just gets used to it and you go on with life. I finally left Ukraine a few weeks ago, for fear of how bad the winter will be with the infrastructure bombing. My wife and I moved to Budapest. Believe it or not, we miss Kyiv and want to move back in the spring, war notwithstanding. Having said all that, I was in Baghdad in 2006 and I do not understand why any Iraqi family would move back there during that time, unless they were Kurdish and moved to the northern Kurdish territory.

vladgur 2y ago
That a pretty intense career trajectory - curious to hear your story. Kiev was wonderful in the peace time, but what made you stay during war, given your ability to move around freely
- anelson 2y ago
  That’s a long story. Mostly just a series of unexpected turns and a search for meaning in my professional life. As for why I stayed, it’s hard to believe but even today, modulo the air raids, my life in Kyiv is just better than the life I led before in Miami, and vastly better than my life now in Budapest. I fell in love with that city when I started traveling there on business in the 2010s, and decided to move there to build my next company in 2018. The people, infrastructure, services, startup culture, healthcare, etc are all much better than a country with Ukraines history and geographical fate would suggest. That’s down to the Ukrainian people who have by force of will achieved some remarkable things with very little. The war is already destroying some of what they have achieved, and depending on how it ends may destroy it all. But as I said, even now in a brutal and relentless war, life goes on. I should also point out that as recently as last month I heard a lot of American accented English from obvious tourists on the streets in Kyiv. I was at a trendy restaurant with a Ukrainian colleague and nearly every other table had at least one foreigner. Some are there to cash in on the wartime opportunities with drones and other offensive and defensive technologies, some are deniable operators doing god knows what, but my sense is that a fair number are just tourists. Go figure.

ben_w 2y ago

> In my young head it didn't compute with the weekly sectarian violence and suicide attacks. I had a similar confusion as a kid, but for me it was how Ireland and Northern Ireland were portrayed in the news — I was 14 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed.

bboozzoo 2y ago

It's quite surreal when a colleague apologizes as they won't attend the daily standup bc they need to leave to get to the bomb shelter. Or another one joins the standup while working in a bomb shelter and apologizes in case their laptop runs out of juice as they're getting electricity from a generator. While you're sitting there in your cozy office in one of the neighboring countries, and your biggest worry is that you've run out coffee beans.

throwaway2037 2y ago
This is deep. Thank you to share. Is it not possible to invite these staff to your country to live and work?
- vindex10 2y ago
  Men are not allowed to cross the border, also everyone has family and relatives, it is not straightforward to just take everyone with you to another place and be able to support all of them also financially.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

heraldgeezer 2y ago

[flagged]

fullspectrumdev 2y ago

I spend a lot of time there. The long range “precision” attacks by Russia often just end up randomly killing civilians. Eg: missile strikes on Kyiv blowing up a children’s hospital, or the September strikes on Lviv blowing up a random apartment building and wiping out almost an entire family. You can easily go “what are the chances” even when shahads are flying over your head and the sky is lit up with tracer fire from mobile air defense units after some exposure.

touisteur 2y ago

I don't know about Iraq, but residential buildings are routinely bombed on Ukraine, big cities, not sure one can draw parallels here. Spending nights and even being schooled in bomb shelters will take its toll, but from meeting many Ukrainian refugees, many will make light of it, very often wary of complaining while their friends, family, countrypeople, still in-country are still waking up to sirens and explosions. The Ukranian utilities people are relentless, resourceful heroes, keeping power on, under the conditions they're facing.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
> residential buildings are routinely bombed on Ukraine What do you gain from bombing residential buildings?
- brohee 2y ago
  Russia made it clear that if those "misguided Russians" insist on staying misguided they will have to genocide them.
- tucnak 2y ago
  Terror
- m12k 2y ago
  Some percentage of those are missing their actual targets due to GPS jamming (others, just straight up terror bombardment). Also, part of the purpose is to create dilemmas for an air defense with limited resources - save the ammo factory or the children's hospital.
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      779 strikes on Ukrainian health facilities is a very frequent accident. https://www.attacksonhealthukraine.org/ https://www.attacksonhealthukraine.org/

vindex10 2y ago

They are not only targeting high value infrastructure. People in regular apartment buildings die every day from the cruise missiles and Shahed drones.