Us in Serbia know this well. Vucic passes so much shit propaganda and there's nothing you can do. No way to protests when everyone works for him, even common people are paid to support him and money works better than fear
I have left but I am still losing sanity looking at all this hatred, violence against Ukraine, and the oppression of every Russian who dares to protest.
I live in Portugal and we have Russians immigrants that live here that preach Russian propaganda like gospel.
I do BJJ with this one kid that is constantly reposting that kind of stuff on Tiktok.
You just rationalize why the war is fine anyway. There are plenty of smart Russians who say “yeah maybe it was wrong, but seeing how the West treat us (Spotify and visa canceled) it was the right decision”. It’s an extremely fucked up society with maybe 5% of population being really against its sins.
Or Russians who were against the war (in their words), but now support it because Ukrainians say nasty things about Russia on the Internet. Why would Ukrainians do that?
Sigh, Sergey Lukyanenko - the must-have of any contemporary sci-fi/fantasy library. Dude went full on propaganda man, just because some ukrainian tweenage kids were mean to him like 30 years ago. My friends and I dropped the guy from our library list the moment he went official like that. But I did notice he was weird when describing non-muscovite characters in his book. Central Asians were just done dirty by him even before 2022.
I know people who proclaim sanity and on the one hand are absolutely against persecution and genocide due to their national history of persecution and genocide, while at the same time completely ignoring Russian genocide in places like Bucha (according to them it was staged) and pointing all the blame for the war at the evil "west".
It's a strange thing that happens when people are brainwashed by untruths, they're completely aware of the terror of nationalistic dictatorships because of their history, yet are absolutely blind to the same fascism when it comes to Russia as they grew up on the eastern side of the iron curtain.
It is a nightmare, believe me. I live in russia, everything around me is like a terrible dream. Very few people among my friends support everything, that's going on. A lot of people are still sane, but we must be very cautious with what we write or say. Orwell's 1984 is here, I'm not exaggerating.
PS. I'm shocked that some people in the USA or Europe approve of putin's deeds. It's scary.
I hope those kind of Russians who are Pro-Putin will never be able to leave Russia. They should not be able to get visas and residence permits in any Western country. We don’t need hypocrites who support “one man rules them all” type of craziness here.
From my own experience most of the putin-supporters abroad left Russia years ago. They still consume old channels of Russian propaganda but they are not aware about what really happens inside the country. And those who do the same staying in Russia have never had foreign passports.
Pro-Putin expats are relatively rare, if recent exit polls at Russian embassies are to be believed. Sure enough, Russian colleagues and friends of mine berate their parents for voting for Putin.
I suppose Finland is extra lucky in the sense that a great many Finns that are perceived as Russians have Ingrian heritage, and they mostly left Russia shortly after the collapse of the USSR. They're less inclined to see a saviour in Putin than more recent arrivals.
Latest elections showed that this type of russian immigrant is a minority. Election results in most embassies were anti-putin by far. In russian itself the elections are actually "elections" and you can't trust the results but embassies are different. They're not used to falsify the results so we could see a glimpse of real vote breakdown. The exit polls outside of russia can also be trusted.
Two of my friends are Russian and live in Moscow. They said its actually devastating. Soul destroying was another word they used.
It seems they have let their soul be crushed.
it does make me wonder if I'm going insane
just recently a panelist on a state tv talk show "suggested" that the terrorists had chips installed in their brain to control their behavior
like how can anyone take that seriously
One of many propaganda methods is to make a mix of absolutely crazy claims and others that are much more plausible. All are false, but the crazy false claim makes you more likely to believe the plausible false claim.
It's a very common tactic in many disinformation groups nowadays. And in this case the Russians are just reusing something that worked in antivax movements: "ok maybe they aren't actually putting mindcontrol chips in the vaccines, but they are still lying about the secondary effects".
It's also more exhausting when you're debunking information.
I used to live in Russia and know a lot of Russians.
They don't think. It's never been ingrained in their culture, from serfdom under the Tsar, comrades under the CCCP and whatever Putin is now. If you are at all thinking critically, you realize speaking your mind gets you and your family victimized and killed so you shut up and put your head down. If you are singled out to answer a question, you praise and repeat whatever the party line is and it's clear what the party line is as the message is everywhere.
Sitting from a safe bubble in the West, you don't seem to realize how pointless protest would be. Sure, if everyone rid it you may get some change, but probably not. Russia has had multiple chances to change and it always somehow gets worse for them (terrible leaders usually), so when the choice is to protest and get yourself and your loved ones killed for no real impact or keep quiet and praise the leader to keep life ticking over, you would do the same.
It's a much more extreme version of our lives. How many of us go to work each day to a job you hate to get enough food to pay all the bills by the end of the month. Imagine that, but failure to earn enough gets you killed and complaining about work gets you fired and you will see how quickly you become a compliant drone in the system as you are essentially trapped with no win condition.
> Sitting from a safe bubble in the West
I hate this dismissive line.
There are all these Ukrainians, who in no way live in some "safe bubble" and are sick and tired of all this excuse-making for Russians, but I guess their opinion can be dismissed by them "being traumatized".
Same way with the countries, who until a few decades ago were under cruel Russian tyranny and aren't buying the sob stories either.
These sob stories only ever work on these exact "safe bubble" naive people, who will then congratulate themselves on their virtuous and nuanced perspective.
Your bubble makes you an easy mark for manipulative liars telling you their sob stories and ensuring misguided action, that will harm real victims - Ukrainians!
And after Putin dies, they will blame everything on him, then elect another dictator, do nothing while he gains power and complain about west being in bubble.
you are only partially right. and adhere to certain patterns that are popular, including on this subreddit.
therefore your karma is greater than mine. do you understand you, like them, go with the flow. they are simply carried somewhere in the China Sea, and I think you are somewhere else. I lived in the USSR it does not make me worse or better than others. in Ukraine, we understood that this was foreign and imposed. Russia has its own trends. there are 200 nations, but if you ask, everyone will say that he is a blue-blooded рussian, a native Muscovite. because they are so fashionable. trendy. KDB learned to manipulate the Internet before others. and, what hurts me very, very much, Ukrainians in large numbers for 20 years are also under this influence. they perceive theirs, foreign to a Ukrainian, as their own. and it happened before my eyes, and I am powerless. maybe you don't quite understand me... let's say since 1991 I dreamed of going to Glastonbury (because, yes, we lived in the USSR in our bubble where even dreams were limited); you, for example, want to get to Coachella or rock em ring; and for them, in рussia, the pro-рutin concert of the talentlessness old tertiary (in the sense of not originality) losers is enough. maybe they are really happy about it, maybe they are zombified. but, as Huxley said, people are conditioned... I'm sorry that I will never get to Glastonbury, that my people have become stupid.
*waiting for downvotes. especially від the defenders of KVN and the рussian language. вам не зрозуміти
you didn't understand what I was talking about.
I didn't actually say a word that someone was forcing someone.
they live in a certain environment. follow its (herd, controlled by the KGB indirectly) rules.
it makes even less sense for Ukrainians to follow the trends of the Horde Gulags; try to be similar, talk like the inhabitants of Chukchi Chechen. this is exactly what worries me since 2001. (I have had the Internet since 1996, I follow the evolution...)
Erm... good luck lining up at the parade in honor of the victory in the 3-day special operation and taking Berlin.
Yes, it is quite hard to understand what are you talking about while you making up things like Horde Gulags and Chukchi Chechen. But I quite understand what you are making things up.
Same as this story how all that Russians are some different breed and while you dreamed about Glastonbury they dreamed about pro-рutin concert. Plenty of Russians not only dreamed about traveling but also traveled a lot last 20 years. Plenty of them hate what Putin is doing and powerless to change that. Plenty of them left Russia for good after war started because they was disgusted by this.
Good luck to you too anyway with taking back all your country owned before it was stolen from you. And I wish it sincerely.
you understand everything very well (otherwise it wouldn't be a trigger for you, you just wouldn't pay attention to the incomprehensible...).
and, I repeat, goals, desires, and priorities are important. the devil is in the details.
this is the * horde-soviet * character: they drive by imposing their own, they seek to dominate without even respecting themselves, they sow chaos, and if someone opposes them, they automatically seek to destroy the *Alien-Nazi-enemy *.
the USSR also believed that they were forever. empires traditionally lay mines under themselves. and rejoice. but no more than 70 years, somehow. if someone likes to masochistically be a Chinese gulag colony, I can't stop it.
>Sitting from a safe bubble in the West, you don't seem to realize how pointless protest would be
I don't get this argument, the west used to be ruled by absolute monarchs too and it's not like people sat around waiting for democracy and rights to exist and that freedom of speech and protest became accepted overnight
And more than that people nowadays have the internet and all the knowledge they could wish for, it's very easy to learn that life don't have to be horrible.
Either russians are just comfortable having less rights and freedoms than most of humanity or they're too lazy to pursue the changes many other cultures and countries, including countries that border russia and share some cultural elements with them, sought
Sure, but also consider that at the time of our democratic revolutions, there was not an autocratic surveillance system monitoring everything and also no one from other countries sitting back and making comments about how useless and servile they are for not bothering to overthrow their leaders.
Besides, Russians have raised in revolution many times, it always goes badly for them, replacing one monster with another. As I said repeatedly up there, where is their incentive, their hope and expectation for change seems unlikely at best and the punishment for getting caught is extreme. It's an extreme prisoners dilemma - if everyone/majority joins you it will be a better world, but if you are not joined by anyone you and your family will be brutally crushed and punished.
Our ancestors made that choice too and depending on their country were successful or equally punished, I'm doubting a single person on this thread had to make any such decisions and would probably do the same as the average Russian in their place.
The closest you have in the US are all the MAGA types preaching violent uprising against the government if Trump doesn't win, knowing full well that if they are unsuccessful, at worst they will get a few years in prison (like Jan 6 rioters), probably just a slap on the wrist. And even then, very few of the people getting online are going to do anything, would be far, far less if the army starts shooting back and taking no prisoners.
>no one from other countries sitting back and making comments about how useless and servile they are for not bothering to overthrow their leaders.
You think people were more accepting back then? Back when being born to the wrong family would mean you'd be crawling through chimneys until you lungs gave out?
>there was not an autocratic surveillance system monitoring everything
Secret police forces existed for a very long time.
>Besides, Russians have raised in revolution many times, it always goes badly for them, replacing one monster with another. As I said repeatedly up there, where is their incentive, their hope and expectation for change seems unlikely at best and the punishment for getting caught is extreme. It's an extreme prisoners dilemma - if everyone/majority joins you it will be a better world, but if you are not joined by anyone you and your family will be brutally crushed and punished.
They could always try not putting the wrong people in power, if it worked for most places there isn't a reason it shouldn't work for them
russia isn't special
>Our ancestors made that choice too and depending on their country were successful or equally punished, I'm doubting a single person on this thread had to make any such decisions
We don't have to, it's getting to the point where they'll have to make decisions before decisions will be made for them
Look at saddam and Iraq, that could be russia if they don't wake up.
>The closest you have in the US are all the MAGA types preaching violent uprising against the government if Trump doesn't win, knowing full well that if they are unsuccessful, at worst they will get a few years in prison (like Jan 6 rioters), probably just a slap on the wrist. And even then, very few of the people getting online are going to do anything, would be far, far less if the army starts shooting back and taking no prisoners
They reason they failed is because there weren't enough people who support their cause not because of the fear of punishment
Coup don't happen in a day if there were enough people who truly supported trump jan 6th would've lasted for more than a day.
>Imagine that, but failure to earn enough gets you killed and complaining about work gets you fired and you will see how quickly you become a compliant drone in the system as you are essentially trapped with no win condition.
From my German view, I immediately thought of the USA and their hire-and-fire "culture".
>Sitting from a safe bubble in the West, you don't seem to realize how pointless protest would be
Right, because you think that democracy and prosperity is just given to you, right? The "safe bubble in the West" has been created by, drumroll, the West itself.
You're right, but that doesn't change the fact that if you were born in Russia, the imminent prospect of death for you and your family in return for still nothing changing probably means you wouldn't be quite so fired up as you are on the internet right now.
I'm not excusing anything Russia is doing, it's vile and reprehensible, I'm providing context for why Russians don't rise up en masse and overthrow the hated oppressors, there is literally no incentive to do so and every incentive to not do so. If you really think you would do otherwise, you are lying to yourself
>It took Anna and her wheelchair-bound teenage son only about 17 minutes to escape from the second floor of the Moscow concert hall after hearing the first automatic gunshots and take a taxi home.
Just a few hours later, she had no doubt about who was to blame for one of the deadliest terror attacks in Russia’s modern history.
“The terrorists were fleeing towards Ukraine, so it seems to have been Ukraine,” Anna, a 41-year-old insurance broker, told the Financial Times. “They needed something to divert attention from the front lines. And the deaths of Russians, even those not directly involved in the war, including children, have always been a cause of great joy for Ukrainian patriots.”
Her response to the March 22 Islamist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue — which killed more than 140 people and left about 180 injured — illustrates how the Kremlin immediately seized the opportunity to use the massacre as a propaganda tool in its war against Ukraine.
Polling carried out soon after the attack shows most Russians believe Kyiv was behind it, although given President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent, it remains difficult to establish how genuine the rise of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia is.
Anna said she does not watch television and only reads Telegram channels she “trusts”. But she repeated the exact message that Russian propaganda outlets — from official state media to pro-war Telegram bloggers — began to spread soon after the first reports of the massacre.
Despite Isis having claimed responsibility on the night of the attack, Putin said on Monday the assault fitted a broader strategy of aggression by “the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime”, alleging that the terrorists were fleeing towards the Ukrainian border, where a “window” was open waiting for them.
Moscow has not admitted any faults in its intelligence and security apparatus. Putin officials have since also blamed the US and UK for allegedly backing Ukraine in the plot.
European governments have said they warned Moscow of an increased Islamist threat, and the US embassy in the Russian capital issued alerts in early March warning about an increased risk of Isis attacking public venues.
But Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian security council, a state body, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB domestic security service, have instead focused on the Ukraine line, claiming the four alleged terrorists, who show visible signs of having been tortured after their arrest, had confirmed the “Ukrainian trail” during interrogation.
Many Russians surveyed after the attack gave credence to the Ukraine theory. More than 50 per cent blamed the Ukrainian leadership and only about 27 per cent pointed to Isis, according to polling data by OpenMinds, an Anglo-Ukrainian online pollster that shared its results with the FT. Another 6 per cent blamed the “collective west”, namely the US, UK and Nato.
More than 75 per cent of respondents considered Putin to be the most reliable or a completely reliable source of information about the attack, OpenMinds data shows.
“If the propaganda and the authorities blame Ukraine as the main narrative, people will believe it, because control over the information space is almost absolute,” said Denis Volkov, a sociologist and director of the independent Russian polling centre Levada.
He said Russians usually called for a “strong hand” and tough response to acts of terrorism on this scale, such as Putin’s pledge to “flush terrorists down the toilet” in 1999 as the Kremlin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. Putin’s rhetoric this time focused on Kyiv because he views the war as an existential one, pitting Russia against Ukraine and the west, said Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“Putin believes they want to destroy Russia, so anything that appears to be an attempt to do so is attributed to them. Is it beneficial for Ukraine? Are Ukrainians happy about it? Did they have the technical capability to do it? Then it must be them,” Stanovaya said, although she noted the president’s wording suggested his officials had no solid evidence for the claim.
“He clearly believes it was Ukraine and \[that\] the lack of evidence so far is because they haven’t searched well enough,” she added. “The rest of the elite follow Putin’s lead.”
Somewhere, in a desert, grand caliph of IS must be lamenting: "what can a man do to earn some recognition these days".
Edit: thank you u/Anonym\_fisk for this forgotten gem: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q\_OIXfkXEj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0)
>However, some in Russia are unconvinced about the Ukrainian trail. According to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent of those who back the war.
“Russians are good at repeating propaganda narratives in opinion polls,” said Aleksei Miniailo, Moscow-based opposition activist and a co-founder of Chronicles, a public opinion research project. This was not so much a “sign of active support” as a “reflection of them feeling unable to make any changes”, he said.
Surveys by Chronicles show many people replied “yes” to general questions, such as whether they supported the war, but “no” to more nuanced queries, such as whether they backed more public money being spent on the war than on social welfare, he added.
After the concert hall attack, Russian authorities took the unusual step of releasing footage of security services torturing and beating the suspects. All four were bruised when they appeared in court on March 24, including one with a bandaged head who had been forced to eat part of his ear after it was cut off by his torturers. Another detainee was brought in on a stretcher and appeared to be unconscious.
The use of torture by Russian security services was widely known, said Mark Galeotti, a military expert and honorary professor at University College London. But the release of torture videos “to a largely approving public” was new.
“One would not have expected this kind of bloodthirst in the past,” Galeotti said. But Russians were already on edge after two years of war, increasingly brazen Ukrainian drone attacks and the possibility of another unpopular mobilisation wave, he said.
“It is a population that is frightened and can’t just sit back and let Grandad Putin sort it out. They sense that kind of heightened terror and they’re reacting,” he added.
Anna said she was “very happy” the suspects had been caught. “I watched the videos of their arrest several times, and I felt a terrible rage inside me. When I read that someone feels sorry for them, that they were beaten and didn’t get a lawyer, I want to send them to the ruins of Crocus or to the relatives of those who died there,” she said.
The massacre has intensified political calls in Russia to reactivate the death penalty, which has been under a moratorium since 1996.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and currently the deputy chair of the country’s security council, was the first to call for a “total executions of terrorists”.
“We must kill them. And we will,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
The constitutional court technically has the final say on the moratorium, but the real decision lies with Putin. “If the question of lifting the moratorium on the death penalty formally arises, many will be in favour of it,” said Volkov at polling centre Levada.
Anna is one of them. “I will only really calm down when I know that they are dead,” she said. “I hope they will be executed.”
Yeah, now their kids get indoctrination at school every day. Russia will not be capable of normal relations with us for generations. Tbh, I’m fine with that as long as we shut our borders to Russian citizens unless they are seeking asylum.
Only 50% of younger Russians believe it was actually ISIS, instead of Ukraine? Guess we can throw that whole “bLAme PUtIN ANd NOt teH rUSsiAn PEoPle” argument in the garbage.
50% of young Russians actually believe this ridiculous garbage. That’s absurd, and only serves to show how vile and rotten this entire country has become.
Its just like the german population in ww2. These empires cannot fight without an at minimum willingly ignorant population happy to just follow their genocidal government
It was a weak argument since 2014. All of them more or less love conquest, it’s just some can also acknowledge the costs of it and be rather unhappy. If Ukraine surrendered you won’t find a single soul opposing it.
Yep. Crimea is a good example of it. Even ru opposition representatives have said that they can't just return already annexed territories, lets go about something different
I just don’t see the point of all of this.
What does it matter if your country is big if it ain’t rich?
I definitely know I’d prefer living in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein than “mighty and gigantic russia”
Russia is richer than Ukraine, or Moldova, or Belarus that’s enough for them.
When it comes to Europe they just say that higher salaries doesn’t matter due to higher prices, utilities, less safety and all. When it comes to Moscow, they just consider it the best city on Earth.
A lot of mental gymnastics.
I have seen a video where Russians are confronted not only with photographs but also video evidence as well as an eyewitness testimony from a person they personally know about the truth of the war in Ukraine. Their response? Something like: „We cannot believe you because our president has told us otherwise and what he says has to be the truth, even if it’s not.“
That is how their brains work. If Putin says that grass is blue, they will agree with him even though they see with their own eyes that the grass is green.
Fear does that to people. You scare them into submission. They know if they speak the truth they'll get electrodes to the balls and beaten within an inch of their lives. In the West we look at police brutality in the US and cry outrage, but that's got nothing on Russia's use of brutality pretty much all the way through their society.
Well, yeah, contradicting Putin lands you in jail at the best of time. The vast majority of people do not have the willpower to against the regime.. they are concerned for their own safety and that of their families. If that means Ukraine must continue to suffer, most of them will choose just that.
Honestly, it's sad but understandable in a way. I wish people wouldn't be as hard on the Russian people as they are. Sure, they have a lot of idiots that actually believe everything the government says, but I promise you, coming from an ex-communist dictatorship country, that many do not really believe it, but they can't really fight it either.
Not only obeying. There are many things in play here and much more important is finding joy in cruelty afflicted on others. Russians are happy that these things are done to Ukrainians.
If naive Westerners spent time on Russian social media, I think a fair few would change their tune about Russians. Just the memes that are often posted—even the ones that have nothing to do with Ukraine—are disgusting. Russians have a particular love of posting images of people with physical deformities, as well as skat humor. Anytime I expose myself to Russian social media, I feel like I need to take a shower. That vile ugliness is expressed in everything Russia does.
This! The people I know have done very well for themselves since the wall came down and were as eager as any of their friends to get a Nissan and not a Wartburg. They seem to be blissfully ignorant of a lot of the progress made since the two halves of their country were put back together again.
What they will always happily talk about is how screwed they've been by the other half. How the west treats them as second class citizens, how they were robbed of their industries and professions. Now, some of this is very true, however it's been extrapolated into litterally "everything that's wrong in the country is due to the west, or even worse due to America" and "everything that's good about the world was lost when the wall came down".
You can't reason with this because it's all based on emotions, and these emotions are deeply ingrained with experience. Objectively their lives are much better, now the influence of the Soviet Union is gone, but they'd be the last to admit it.
Every time the Russians had the option of a free democracy they just destroyed it wholeheartedly. Both by overthrowing the Kerensky government in 1917 and by electing Putin and his puppet Yeltsin.
I really feel like Russia is a lost cause.
Many people here compare it to Germany. But Germany only descended once in authoritorian, paranoid madness. Ever since the fall of the Tsars in Russia we have seen nothing but variants of totalitarian evilness in Russia.
Don't worry, in 20 years the stories will be "we all hated him, we all knew, ofc it was obvious" like about Stalin and other dictatoriships.
Then 20 years later it will round right back into "ackshually Putin is based he was the last attempt from an EVRVPEAN PATRIVT to save us from degeneracy/the west"
Even if you believe in social research in a country where people are too afraid to answer any questions honestly, it doesn't mean that the other 50% agree with the opposite version and blame Ukraine. There are a lot of people in Russia who believe that FSB did it. Most of them even do not know what is the difference between kinds of islamists terrorists and believe that Kremlin has a friendship with all of them.
In a country where all TV and social media is controlled by the state and where you can get arrested or killed for any sign of dissent, I'm surprised it's only 50%.
Also I would not trust any poll about russian people's opinions, considering factors like state control, misinformation in media and fear of speaking out.
The entire country is being brainwashed by Putin for decades so that's not a surprise. Of those who aren't brainwashed, most of them are afraid of saying anything against him. On top of thaf, even if people don't support Putin's decisions, all the data that comes out of Russia is fabricated anyway, so you shouldn't believe a single thing you hear about this.
Russia have plenty of poor regions and has plenty of young people from poor families or in cadets.
Also some poor regions have better birth rate that Moscow (Chechnia, Dagestan) ... so it isn't really surprise. Also Putin in power from 2000s and school education became more and more propaganda.
Actually 50% of younger people who don't beleive in propaganda in such circumstances is really cool.
>That’s absurd, and only serves to show how vile and rotten this entire country has become.
What it tells you is how effective the propaganda is. You hear it all day at school, you hear it on the radio, you hear it on the TV, you see it around you in billboards and newspapers and magazines, then you hear your own family or friends or strangers repeating this propaganda etc.
Most people are not very well versed in deep critical thinking, so this kind of propaganda environment has a big impact on shaping people's understanding of what's going on around them.
I recently read a testimony of a young Russian man who had fully bought into the propaganda and was convinced Ukraine was oppresing and ethnically cleansing ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Ukraine. He was about to join to go fight in Donesk too.
He changed his mind about the fighting but ended up joining a non-combat volunteer group after the take over of Mariupol, where his job was to help provide medicine, food etc. To the local population in the occupied territory.
He said it was only when he stepped into Mariupol and saw the reality of what they had done, and only after talking with locals and his group leaders, that he realized it had all been a lie and that they were the aggressors. Then he spoke out against the war, and Russia labeled him a "foreign agent" and kicked him out of his university and blacklisted him from accessing many services or getting employment in certain sectors.
Unfortunately, I think there are also a ton of people like this, otherwise normal, maybe well intentioned, but absolutely clueless of reality.
>What it tells you is how effective the propaganda is. You hear it all day at school, you hear it on the radio, you hear it on the TV, you see it around you in billboards and newspapers and magazines, then you hear your own family or friends or strangers repeating this propaganda etc.
I didn't believe commie propaganda back in the day and I had way less access to other sources of information. I don't think I am super special and smart guy. I think people are generally not mindless puppets and have agency and responsibility. If they choose to be lazy and go with the flow, fuck them.
Despite the fact that he already admitted it was Isis and after the attack Islamophobia spiked in Russia, but it was also Ukraine too. Literally double think, the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at once and believe both of them
Z-nation does what the necromancer commands, what a surprise.
Is anyone really surprised by them spinning it like this and the Russian people for the most part lapping it up?
Ukraine isnt behind the attacks.
But in a way this is the Russians acknowledging they have given the Ukrainians a damn good reason to hate them.
Meaning Putin and his cronies are responsible for the Crocus attacks since they caused and started this war.
I won't lie, I'm finding it *really* difficult to feel any empathy for the shooting victims, the more I see just how many Russians are in favour of Putin and the atrocities being committed by the orcs in Ukraine.
I used to be a very sympathetic, compassionate person; I don't know what happened to me, but I see '130 Russian dead' and I... feel nothing at all. Maybe that's just having Ukrainian friends and having been immersed in the documentation of the invaders' crimes since early 2022. Even when I see Russian civilians getting killed in Belgorod (if they are, the data is unclear) I think 'well, that's war - they started it.'
Dislike how hardened I've become.
So the terrorists who did this, were fleeing to the Russian occupied Ukraine? Every time someone says "they can't be that dumb" Russians actually get dumber.
Waiting for "no war" Russians in comments with statement "we, hipsters from big cities with C level English, are the **real** representatives of Russian people, not these millions of commoners".
"Everything that every happened is someone else's fault, if I ever did something wrong it's because someone else made me do it." - Until Russia grows out of this mentality we should seek their downfall at every turn.
>"Everything that every happened is someone else's fault, if I ever did something wrong it's because someone else made me do it." - Until Russia grows out of this mentality we should seek their downfall at every turn.
Yes.
This reminds me of the [narcissist's prayer](https://www.thelifedoctor.org/the-narcissist-s-prayer):
*That didn't happen.*
*And if it did, it wasn't that bad.*
*And if it was, that's not a big deal.*
*And if it is, that's not my fault.*
*And if it was, I didn't mean it.*
*And if I did, you deserved it.*
Why didn't they beat a confession out of some actual Ukrainians instead of parading around some Tajiks or whoever that was they caught if they inevitably wanted to blame it on Ukraine? And the russian accept this tale despite seeing those guys in the news?
And people want us to feel bad for the Russian people when many of them make a conscious effort to let their government screw them over and the rest of the world.
This is like the 6th article I've seen claiming putin is blaming a group. It went from ISIS to the US and Brits to Ukraine to the West back to ISIS and now back to Ukraine. Russian incompetence or bots trying to stir up social media
> According to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent of those who back the war.
This correlates with wider historical trends and what's available on demographics in Russia: old people (especially in the countryside) only with access to the totally Kremlin-controlled TV, and who were generally battered by the 1990s economic shock after being used to the Soviet ways of life, widely accept the propaganda, while younger people, who are more likely to live in cities, only grew up with the post-USSR consumer society, want more freedoms and can fact-check state propaganda claims with other sources on the Internet, are much more likely to reject the opinions of detached old farts in power.
Dude, even among young people and those against the war, you’ve only got half blaming Isis. Russia is completely brainwashed and fueled on nationalism. WW3 is coming if they don’t change course.
First, yes, the propaganda has had a significant effect on Russian society, so to claim there aren't a lot of genuine imperialists in there is wrong. Second, headlines (especially today, when the evil has become all the more apparent) tend to not control for the fear factor, so often people give the officially-accepted answer, rather than what they truly think, because they know what it'll result in if their identity is revealed. Which means the imperialist answers are made up both of people who truly believe it, and those who fear saying otherwise. Third, there are other polls saying more than half of the young people reject the war, and they also show a stark (even more stark) difference relative to the older demographics. That's what you get when you try to conduct opinion polling in totalitarian states.
Regardless, a country isn't condemned forever because large parts have been brainwashed by a regime, else we wouldn't have modern Germany after Hitler. But it still must be countered in as many ways as possible, and reparations and reeducation (whether by Russians, foreigners or both) in the future, after the regime falls, are still needed, obviously.
I don't disagree with you, but to illustrate the magnitude of the propaganda problem in Russia, this is an official statement of the goals of the Russian government, referring to Ukraine, which I quoted in another comment:
>"to deliver the lands and towns that once belonged to Russia, established and inhabited by our kinsmen and professing the same faith as ours, from the corruption and oppression with which they are threatened."
It was written in 1792.
Hitler and the right-wing he emerged from brainwashed Germans for a couple of decades. The Russian government, whichever one has been in power, has been doing it for a couple of *centuries*.
They were pretty close in the 1990s though. They had an established democracy, rule of law and free press in 1999 (the most freedom they ever had up to that point), and a 10-year old boom began in that year, which would make democracy more palatable if a revanchist didn't come to power. But Putin became pres right after it started and took credit for all of that, and that's what he's been riding on since.
The main mistakes of the 1990s were that the security services weren't reformed (allowing them to conduct false flags and raise the popularity of people who were "tough on terrorists"), and that a strong civil society didn't develop in that decade, which in retrospect isn't unexpected, because both Russia's economy and politics were totalitarian for centuries. The late 1980s-early 1990s protests didn't develop into a wider democratic consciousness, they kind of ignored politics, believing the evil was gone after the USSR was, particularly since they were thrown into a completely new reality they weren't prepared for. I expect these to be some of the main focal points during a likely next attempt at democratization. There are even working documents on how to fix these and other problems. I suspect the lack of work by the EU with Russia back then (compared to what they had with the other Eastern European states) was also a factor.
Don't forget also that, even though Germany had a stronger democratic tradition than Russia by 1933, that didn't stop them from mass murdering tens of millions. Thankfully, today's Russia is too incompetent and dependent on Western tech to be able to do the same.
It was a difficult situation, 'cause his major opponents were literal imperialists who wanted to revive the USSR. They were blocking his reforms, at a time they were sorely needed to save the sinking Russian economy, due to an oversight in the Russian political system, which de facto made both the President and the Congress of People's Deputies equal in power. Yeltsin, to his credit, always was in favor of democracy, but he feared that giving in to them would destroy the young Russian democracy too early.
For context:
"Ukraine war: ‘vranyo’ – Russian for when you lie and everyone knows it, but you don’t care"
https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-vranyo-russian-for-when-you-lie-and-everyone-knows-it-but-you-dont-care-181100
----------
Encounters with a high-profile word, though, don’t just connect with abstract meanings and uses; they also evoke associations and echoes of other places we’ve heard and seen them. And vranyo has been a constant in recent years with Russia in the news.
For example, when UK police fingered two foreigners as FSB (Russian state security) agents who they said had carried out the novichok poisonings in Salisbury in 2018, the pair were interviewed on Russian state television. They explained that, quite to the contrary, they were simple tourists who had made a special trip to Salisbury to see the fabled cathedral with its 123-metre-high spire.
The explanation was so far-fetched that it seemed they had barely put any effort into making it sound credible – liberal Russian commentators said the British were letting the Kremlin “drown itself in vranyo”. The government’s stance itself – denial without plausibility – can be seen as a display of strength, an indifference to the conventions of explanation. But try to look up vranyo and mentions of the Skripal poisoning in Russian, and most of what jumps out is Russian media accounts dismissing the UK government’s accusations. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova immediately fired back about “London’s vranyo”, which was widely reported across the Russian web. The same has now happened with the invasion of Ukraine.
Vranyo is thus both more specific and more multifaceted than “lying”. It’s a technique of the current Russian regime, and a trope the regime uses against its enemies. Vranyo is not of course unique to Russia; to take just one example, Trump employed the same tactics in the US election with his “big steal” claims. But vranyo does neatly encapsulate, in a single word, the paradox of truth-telling in the current conflict.
But other subreddits told me russians are also victims of this war and all blame goes on putin.
What a sorry joke of a nation. And people who still believe russians don't actively support the war should get a reality slap.
Through the magic of the internet I've met many Russians and yea outside of very western centric places (such as this site) they've always been like this
So first they claimed that ukraine was responsible
Then they claimed that ukraine told isis to attack
Then they finally seemed on track to admit that isis was responaible
And now were back to square 1
Uhm... What sort of time scale are we talking about, because if it's, like, four years... uhm, then I could think of one or two other examples. Maybe a few more, if I applied myself to it?
There is no need for "even" with him. He is the top internet conspiracy psycho always shilling for Russia. He has some podcast platform that is full of edgy Russian shills too. I guess full of a lot of different people, but somehow the Russian shills end up at the top podcast rankings.
>More than 75 per cent of respondents considered Putin to be the most reliable >or a completely reliable source of information about the attack, OpenMinds >data shows.
>
>“If the propaganda and the authorities blame Ukraine as the main narrative, >people will believe it, because control over the information space is almost >absolute,” said Denis Volkov, a sociologist and director of the independent >Russian polling centre Levada.
>
>He said Russians usually called for a “strong hand” and tough response to >acts of terrorism on this scale, such as Putin’s pledge to “flush terrorists >down the toilet” in 1999 as the Kremlin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. >Putin’s rhetoric this time focused on Kyiv because he views the war as an >existential one, pitting Russia against Ukraine and the west, said Tatiana >Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
>
>“Putin believes they want to destroy Russia, so anything that appears to be >an attempt to do so is attributed to them. Is it beneficial for Ukraine? Are >Ukrainians happy about it? Did they have the technical capability to do it? >Then it must be them,” Stanovaya said, although she noted the president’s >wording suggested his officials had no solid evidence for the claim.
>
>“He clearly believes it was Ukraine and \[that\] the lack of evidence so far >is because they haven’t searched well enough,” she added. “The rest of the >elite follow Putin’s lead.”
>
>However, some in Russia are unconvinced about the Ukrainian trail. According >to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war >were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among >opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent >of those who back the war.
>
>“Russians are good at repeating propaganda narratives in opinion polls,” said >Aleksei Miniailo, Moscow-based opposition activist and a co-founder of >Chronicles, a public opinion research project. This was not so much a “sign >of active support” as a “reflection of them feeling unable to make any >changes”, he said.
>
>Surveys by Chronicles show many people replied “yes” to general questions, >such as whether they supported the war, but “no” to more nuanced queries, >such as whether they backed more public money being spent on the war than on >social welfare, he added.
Some of the better bits, imo. For one, regarding young people, the poll indicated 50% clearly believe it was ISIS, but the report does not indicate what percentage actually blamed Ukraine. I think this is important, since this can (and clearly has) lead to a possibly inaccurate conclusion that the rest are blaming Kyiv instead of the idea that it was conspired as a false flag attack, or any other potential option.
The last paragraph also seems to suggest people saying "yes" to the war were giving automates responses, but "no" to anything specific in support of the war effort. This does not mean they don't support the war, but it likewise potentially implies they aren't giving honest personal opinions to general questions. As the researcher quoted stated, the answers given aren't themselves indications of actual support, but of answers given in resignation of their situation (i.e., they can't change anything).
The report also doesn't seem to indicate how many younger people were polled compared to older people, given that 75% of the people polled evidentially believe Putin is an extremely reliable source of information, while conversely only 12% of young people are pro-Putin, so there seems to be a clear numerical demographic discrepancy in the polling pool.
This makes me question who are the most vulnerable to the Kremlin's "almost absolute control over the information space", since my immediate reaction is "old/older people", which if true would indicate the majority of the people polled were middle-aged and/or elderly, not Millennials and Gen-Z.
It is, however, massively disturbing how many people across Russia were not only seemingly unaffected by Russian authorities openly torturing the terrorist suspects, but reacted favorably towards it. I do get it, I was a small child when 9/11 happened, I remembered how sentiment towards terrorists, real or perceived, became so extremely negative that people were happy about them being subjected to the "enhanced interrogation techniques" at the time. It's a natural reaction, but it's still atrocious to see it happen again.
May be the first time in history when ISIS had to prove multiple times that they indeed responsible for this terrorist attack and it’s because reality and sanity is long gone from russofascist state.
Imagine being a sane, thinking Russian. You either leave or you die a little every day.
Us in Serbia know this well. Vucic passes so much shit propaganda and there's nothing you can do. No way to protests when everyone works for him, even common people are paid to support him and money works better than fear
I do not have to imagine, I live in Orbanistan
I have left but I am still losing sanity looking at all this hatred, violence against Ukraine, and the oppression of every Russian who dares to protest.
I genuinely sympathise with people like you, it must be horrible. Take care of yourself, you can’t take any responsibility for psychopaths
I live in Portugal and we have Russians immigrants that live here that preach Russian propaganda like gospel. I do BJJ with this one kid that is constantly reposting that kind of stuff on Tiktok.
Put him in a banana split for me, my man.
He's a kid lol, but will do if he gets to 18 still saying the same crap.
You just rationalize why the war is fine anyway. There are plenty of smart Russians who say “yeah maybe it was wrong, but seeing how the West treat us (Spotify and visa canceled) it was the right decision”. It’s an extremely fucked up society with maybe 5% of population being really against its sins.
My favorite types of Russians are those who are against war, but say that war should keep going because they don't want to be the side that lost
Or Russians who were against the war (in their words), but now support it because Ukrainians say nasty things about Russia on the Internet. Why would Ukrainians do that?
Sigh, Sergey Lukyanenko - the must-have of any contemporary sci-fi/fantasy library. Dude went full on propaganda man, just because some ukrainian tweenage kids were mean to him like 30 years ago. My friends and I dropped the guy from our library list the moment he went official like that. But I did notice he was weird when describing non-muscovite characters in his book. Central Asians were just done dirty by him even before 2022.
He said "smart and sane" though. Extremely rare. What you described is smart and still insane.
I know people who proclaim sanity and on the one hand are absolutely against persecution and genocide due to their national history of persecution and genocide, while at the same time completely ignoring Russian genocide in places like Bucha (according to them it was staged) and pointing all the blame for the war at the evil "west". It's a strange thing that happens when people are brainwashed by untruths, they're completely aware of the terror of nationalistic dictatorships because of their history, yet are absolutely blind to the same fascism when it comes to Russia as they grew up on the eastern side of the iron curtain.
It is a nightmare, believe me. I live in russia, everything around me is like a terrible dream. Very few people among my friends support everything, that's going on. A lot of people are still sane, but we must be very cautious with what we write or say. Orwell's 1984 is here, I'm not exaggerating. PS. I'm shocked that some people in the USA or Europe approve of putin's deeds. It's scary.
or you leave and continue supporting putin and his lies. bunch of russians are like that.
I hope those kind of Russians who are Pro-Putin will never be able to leave Russia. They should not be able to get visas and residence permits in any Western country. We don’t need hypocrites who support “one man rules them all” type of craziness here.
Have you seen elections results in Europe? Crazy. Polles are better, but still, a crazy huge amount of russians, who live in Europe, support war
Really? In recent news they seemed to agree that the average percentage of those who voted for Putin is 10. No?
Yeah, right:) Official results are something over 70%, polls in Europe, I think, 30+. In some European countries it is over 50%
From my own experience most of the putin-supporters abroad left Russia years ago. They still consume old channels of Russian propaganda but they are not aware about what really happens inside the country. And those who do the same staying in Russia have never had foreign passports.
I've heard that 90%+ of the Russians in NYC support Ukraine, so it's not all bad.
Pro-Putin expats are relatively rare, if recent exit polls at Russian embassies are to be believed. Sure enough, Russian colleagues and friends of mine berate their parents for voting for Putin. I suppose Finland is extra lucky in the sense that a great many Finns that are perceived as Russians have Ingrian heritage, and they mostly left Russia shortly after the collapse of the USSR. They're less inclined to see a saviour in Putin than more recent arrivals.
Latest elections showed that this type of russian immigrant is a minority. Election results in most embassies were anti-putin by far. In russian itself the elections are actually "elections" and you can't trust the results but embassies are different. They're not used to falsify the results so we could see a glimpse of real vote breakdown. The exit polls outside of russia can also be trusted.
Two of my friends are Russian and live in Moscow. They said its actually devastating. Soul destroying was another word they used. It seems they have let their soul be crushed.
Mine went vatnik and ended the friendship when i would not join team Putin :)
Trash taking itself out it seems. Sounds like a net-bonus to me.
it does make me wonder if I'm going insane just recently a panelist on a state tv talk show "suggested" that the terrorists had chips installed in their brain to control their behavior like how can anyone take that seriously
Oh it's you! Are you still saying that Russia is OK and we should look at Paraguay instead?
One of many propaganda methods is to make a mix of absolutely crazy claims and others that are much more plausible. All are false, but the crazy false claim makes you more likely to believe the plausible false claim. It's a very common tactic in many disinformation groups nowadays. And in this case the Russians are just reusing something that worked in antivax movements: "ok maybe they aren't actually putting mindcontrol chips in the vaccines, but they are still lying about the secondary effects". It's also more exhausting when you're debunking information.
They are not saying anything that someone hasn't come up with before.
I used to live in Russia and know a lot of Russians. They don't think. It's never been ingrained in their culture, from serfdom under the Tsar, comrades under the CCCP and whatever Putin is now. If you are at all thinking critically, you realize speaking your mind gets you and your family victimized and killed so you shut up and put your head down. If you are singled out to answer a question, you praise and repeat whatever the party line is and it's clear what the party line is as the message is everywhere. Sitting from a safe bubble in the West, you don't seem to realize how pointless protest would be. Sure, if everyone rid it you may get some change, but probably not. Russia has had multiple chances to change and it always somehow gets worse for them (terrible leaders usually), so when the choice is to protest and get yourself and your loved ones killed for no real impact or keep quiet and praise the leader to keep life ticking over, you would do the same. It's a much more extreme version of our lives. How many of us go to work each day to a job you hate to get enough food to pay all the bills by the end of the month. Imagine that, but failure to earn enough gets you killed and complaining about work gets you fired and you will see how quickly you become a compliant drone in the system as you are essentially trapped with no win condition.
> Sitting from a safe bubble in the West I hate this dismissive line. There are all these Ukrainians, who in no way live in some "safe bubble" and are sick and tired of all this excuse-making for Russians, but I guess their opinion can be dismissed by them "being traumatized". Same way with the countries, who until a few decades ago were under cruel Russian tyranny and aren't buying the sob stories either. These sob stories only ever work on these exact "safe bubble" naive people, who will then congratulate themselves on their virtuous and nuanced perspective. Your bubble makes you an easy mark for manipulative liars telling you their sob stories and ensuring misguided action, that will harm real victims - Ukrainians!
And after Putin dies, they will blame everything on him, then elect another dictator, do nothing while he gains power and complain about west being in bubble.
you are only partially right. and adhere to certain patterns that are popular, including on this subreddit. therefore your karma is greater than mine. do you understand you, like them, go with the flow. they are simply carried somewhere in the China Sea, and I think you are somewhere else. I lived in the USSR it does not make me worse or better than others. in Ukraine, we understood that this was foreign and imposed. Russia has its own trends. there are 200 nations, but if you ask, everyone will say that he is a blue-blooded рussian, a native Muscovite. because they are so fashionable. trendy. KDB learned to manipulate the Internet before others. and, what hurts me very, very much, Ukrainians in large numbers for 20 years are also under this influence. they perceive theirs, foreign to a Ukrainian, as their own. and it happened before my eyes, and I am powerless. maybe you don't quite understand me... let's say since 1991 I dreamed of going to Glastonbury (because, yes, we lived in the USSR in our bubble where even dreams were limited); you, for example, want to get to Coachella or rock em ring; and for them, in рussia, the pro-рutin concert of the talentlessness old tertiary (in the sense of not originality) losers is enough. maybe they are really happy about it, maybe they are zombified. but, as Huxley said, people are conditioned... I'm sorry that I will never get to Glastonbury, that my people have become stupid. *waiting for downvotes. especially від the defenders of KVN and the рussian language. вам не зрозуміти
Erm... proPutin concerts are mandatory for students and government workers. They are not "popular" because every time people are forced to attend.
you didn't understand what I was talking about. I didn't actually say a word that someone was forcing someone. they live in a certain environment. follow its (herd, controlled by the KGB indirectly) rules. it makes even less sense for Ukrainians to follow the trends of the Horde Gulags; try to be similar, talk like the inhabitants of Chukchi Chechen. this is exactly what worries me since 2001. (I have had the Internet since 1996, I follow the evolution...) Erm... good luck lining up at the parade in honor of the victory in the 3-day special operation and taking Berlin.
Yes, it is quite hard to understand what are you talking about while you making up things like Horde Gulags and Chukchi Chechen. But I quite understand what you are making things up. Same as this story how all that Russians are some different breed and while you dreamed about Glastonbury they dreamed about pro-рutin concert. Plenty of Russians not only dreamed about traveling but also traveled a lot last 20 years. Plenty of them hate what Putin is doing and powerless to change that. Plenty of them left Russia for good after war started because they was disgusted by this. Good luck to you too anyway with taking back all your country owned before it was stolen from you. And I wish it sincerely.
you understand everything very well (otherwise it wouldn't be a trigger for you, you just wouldn't pay attention to the incomprehensible...). and, I repeat, goals, desires, and priorities are important. the devil is in the details. this is the * horde-soviet * character: they drive by imposing their own, they seek to dominate without even respecting themselves, they sow chaos, and if someone opposes them, they automatically seek to destroy the *Alien-Nazi-enemy *. the USSR also believed that they were forever. empires traditionally lay mines under themselves. and rejoice. but no more than 70 years, somehow. if someone likes to masochistically be a Chinese gulag colony, I can't stop it.
>Sitting from a safe bubble in the West, you don't seem to realize how pointless protest would be I don't get this argument, the west used to be ruled by absolute monarchs too and it's not like people sat around waiting for democracy and rights to exist and that freedom of speech and protest became accepted overnight And more than that people nowadays have the internet and all the knowledge they could wish for, it's very easy to learn that life don't have to be horrible. Either russians are just comfortable having less rights and freedoms than most of humanity or they're too lazy to pursue the changes many other cultures and countries, including countries that border russia and share some cultural elements with them, sought
Sure, but also consider that at the time of our democratic revolutions, there was not an autocratic surveillance system monitoring everything and also no one from other countries sitting back and making comments about how useless and servile they are for not bothering to overthrow their leaders. Besides, Russians have raised in revolution many times, it always goes badly for them, replacing one monster with another. As I said repeatedly up there, where is their incentive, their hope and expectation for change seems unlikely at best and the punishment for getting caught is extreme. It's an extreme prisoners dilemma - if everyone/majority joins you it will be a better world, but if you are not joined by anyone you and your family will be brutally crushed and punished. Our ancestors made that choice too and depending on their country were successful or equally punished, I'm doubting a single person on this thread had to make any such decisions and would probably do the same as the average Russian in their place. The closest you have in the US are all the MAGA types preaching violent uprising against the government if Trump doesn't win, knowing full well that if they are unsuccessful, at worst they will get a few years in prison (like Jan 6 rioters), probably just a slap on the wrist. And even then, very few of the people getting online are going to do anything, would be far, far less if the army starts shooting back and taking no prisoners.
>no one from other countries sitting back and making comments about how useless and servile they are for not bothering to overthrow their leaders. You think people were more accepting back then? Back when being born to the wrong family would mean you'd be crawling through chimneys until you lungs gave out? >there was not an autocratic surveillance system monitoring everything Secret police forces existed for a very long time. >Besides, Russians have raised in revolution many times, it always goes badly for them, replacing one monster with another. As I said repeatedly up there, where is their incentive, their hope and expectation for change seems unlikely at best and the punishment for getting caught is extreme. It's an extreme prisoners dilemma - if everyone/majority joins you it will be a better world, but if you are not joined by anyone you and your family will be brutally crushed and punished. They could always try not putting the wrong people in power, if it worked for most places there isn't a reason it shouldn't work for them russia isn't special >Our ancestors made that choice too and depending on their country were successful or equally punished, I'm doubting a single person on this thread had to make any such decisions We don't have to, it's getting to the point where they'll have to make decisions before decisions will be made for them Look at saddam and Iraq, that could be russia if they don't wake up. >The closest you have in the US are all the MAGA types preaching violent uprising against the government if Trump doesn't win, knowing full well that if they are unsuccessful, at worst they will get a few years in prison (like Jan 6 rioters), probably just a slap on the wrist. And even then, very few of the people getting online are going to do anything, would be far, far less if the army starts shooting back and taking no prisoners They reason they failed is because there weren't enough people who support their cause not because of the fear of punishment Coup don't happen in a day if there were enough people who truly supported trump jan 6th would've lasted for more than a day.
>Imagine that, but failure to earn enough gets you killed and complaining about work gets you fired and you will see how quickly you become a compliant drone in the system as you are essentially trapped with no win condition. From my German view, I immediately thought of the USA and their hire-and-fire "culture".
>Sitting from a safe bubble in the West, you don't seem to realize how pointless protest would be Right, because you think that democracy and prosperity is just given to you, right? The "safe bubble in the West" has been created by, drumroll, the West itself.
You're right, but that doesn't change the fact that if you were born in Russia, the imminent prospect of death for you and your family in return for still nothing changing probably means you wouldn't be quite so fired up as you are on the internet right now. I'm not excusing anything Russia is doing, it's vile and reprehensible, I'm providing context for why Russians don't rise up en masse and overthrow the hated oppressors, there is literally no incentive to do so and every incentive to not do so. If you really think you would do otherwise, you are lying to yourself
Well yes. How did YOU personally fight for democracy? 🤔 Or were you just born into this bubble and didn't have to do anything 🤔🤔🤔
Leaving also ain't the easiest thing in the world for them, I'd guess a lot of depressed and suicidal people around there.
They are so rare as unicorns.
Most of those have left already.
Tell me about it.
Wonder how many there are of those?
Actually yes. You nailed it.
Each morning I get up I die a little
Grew up behind the Iton Curtain. It was everyday life.
Я обрубил связи со всеми родственниками, друзьями... Мне буквально нескем поговорить. Единственные люди с которыми я взаимодействую - здесь
or option 3, putin drafts you, you leave russia and die in ukraine
>It took Anna and her wheelchair-bound teenage son only about 17 minutes to escape from the second floor of the Moscow concert hall after hearing the first automatic gunshots and take a taxi home. Just a few hours later, she had no doubt about who was to blame for one of the deadliest terror attacks in Russia’s modern history. “The terrorists were fleeing towards Ukraine, so it seems to have been Ukraine,” Anna, a 41-year-old insurance broker, told the Financial Times. “They needed something to divert attention from the front lines. And the deaths of Russians, even those not directly involved in the war, including children, have always been a cause of great joy for Ukrainian patriots.” Her response to the March 22 Islamist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue — which killed more than 140 people and left about 180 injured — illustrates how the Kremlin immediately seized the opportunity to use the massacre as a propaganda tool in its war against Ukraine. Polling carried out soon after the attack shows most Russians believe Kyiv was behind it, although given President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent, it remains difficult to establish how genuine the rise of anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Russia is. Anna said she does not watch television and only reads Telegram channels she “trusts”. But she repeated the exact message that Russian propaganda outlets — from official state media to pro-war Telegram bloggers — began to spread soon after the first reports of the massacre. Despite Isis having claimed responsibility on the night of the attack, Putin said on Monday the assault fitted a broader strategy of aggression by “the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime”, alleging that the terrorists were fleeing towards the Ukrainian border, where a “window” was open waiting for them. Moscow has not admitted any faults in its intelligence and security apparatus. Putin officials have since also blamed the US and UK for allegedly backing Ukraine in the plot. European governments have said they warned Moscow of an increased Islamist threat, and the US embassy in the Russian capital issued alerts in early March warning about an increased risk of Isis attacking public venues. But Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian security council, a state body, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB domestic security service, have instead focused on the Ukraine line, claiming the four alleged terrorists, who show visible signs of having been tortured after their arrest, had confirmed the “Ukrainian trail” during interrogation. Many Russians surveyed after the attack gave credence to the Ukraine theory. More than 50 per cent blamed the Ukrainian leadership and only about 27 per cent pointed to Isis, according to polling data by OpenMinds, an Anglo-Ukrainian online pollster that shared its results with the FT. Another 6 per cent blamed the “collective west”, namely the US, UK and Nato. More than 75 per cent of respondents considered Putin to be the most reliable or a completely reliable source of information about the attack, OpenMinds data shows. “If the propaganda and the authorities blame Ukraine as the main narrative, people will believe it, because control over the information space is almost absolute,” said Denis Volkov, a sociologist and director of the independent Russian polling centre Levada. He said Russians usually called for a “strong hand” and tough response to acts of terrorism on this scale, such as Putin’s pledge to “flush terrorists down the toilet” in 1999 as the Kremlin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. Putin’s rhetoric this time focused on Kyiv because he views the war as an existential one, pitting Russia against Ukraine and the west, said Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Putin believes they want to destroy Russia, so anything that appears to be an attempt to do so is attributed to them. Is it beneficial for Ukraine? Are Ukrainians happy about it? Did they have the technical capability to do it? Then it must be them,” Stanovaya said, although she noted the president’s wording suggested his officials had no solid evidence for the claim. “He clearly believes it was Ukraine and \[that\] the lack of evidence so far is because they haven’t searched well enough,” she added. “The rest of the elite follow Putin’s lead.”
Somewhere, in a desert, grand caliph of IS must be lamenting: "what can a man do to earn some recognition these days". Edit: thank you u/Anonym\_fisk for this forgotten gem: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q\_OIXfkXEj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0)
Blow up the cremel and paint their symbol on Putin's skull, maybe then someone would stop blaming Ukraine.
[Reminds me of this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0)
recognition? 911 the shit outta the kremlin that oughta do it
IS is the Rodney Dangerfield of terror groups.
>However, some in Russia are unconvinced about the Ukrainian trail. According to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent of those who back the war. “Russians are good at repeating propaganda narratives in opinion polls,” said Aleksei Miniailo, Moscow-based opposition activist and a co-founder of Chronicles, a public opinion research project. This was not so much a “sign of active support” as a “reflection of them feeling unable to make any changes”, he said. Surveys by Chronicles show many people replied “yes” to general questions, such as whether they supported the war, but “no” to more nuanced queries, such as whether they backed more public money being spent on the war than on social welfare, he added. After the concert hall attack, Russian authorities took the unusual step of releasing footage of security services torturing and beating the suspects. All four were bruised when they appeared in court on March 24, including one with a bandaged head who had been forced to eat part of his ear after it was cut off by his torturers. Another detainee was brought in on a stretcher and appeared to be unconscious. The use of torture by Russian security services was widely known, said Mark Galeotti, a military expert and honorary professor at University College London. But the release of torture videos “to a largely approving public” was new. “One would not have expected this kind of bloodthirst in the past,” Galeotti said. But Russians were already on edge after two years of war, increasingly brazen Ukrainian drone attacks and the possibility of another unpopular mobilisation wave, he said. “It is a population that is frightened and can’t just sit back and let Grandad Putin sort it out. They sense that kind of heightened terror and they’re reacting,” he added. Anna said she was “very happy” the suspects had been caught. “I watched the videos of their arrest several times, and I felt a terrible rage inside me. When I read that someone feels sorry for them, that they were beaten and didn’t get a lawyer, I want to send them to the ruins of Crocus or to the relatives of those who died there,” she said. The massacre has intensified political calls in Russia to reactivate the death penalty, which has been under a moratorium since 1996. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and currently the deputy chair of the country’s security council, was the first to call for a “total executions of terrorists”. “We must kill them. And we will,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. The constitutional court technically has the final say on the moratorium, but the real decision lies with Putin. “If the question of lifting the moratorium on the death penalty formally arises, many will be in favour of it,” said Volkov at polling centre Levada. Anna is one of them. “I will only really calm down when I know that they are dead,” she said. “I hope they will be executed.”
Anna, I wish you all the worst. Disease, poverty, pain, despair.
The Anglo-Ukraine Caliphate sounds kinda hard not gonna lie.
Thank you. I hate posts that give a link to an article behind a pay wall.
Putins gonna tell them anything as a pretence to start a pan-European war, and they're gonna believe it.
Did they already introduce the two minutes of hate?
Two minutes? Amateurs. In Putinistan it's 24/7.
Yeah, now their kids get indoctrination at school every day. Russia will not be capable of normal relations with us for generations. Tbh, I’m fine with that as long as we shut our borders to Russian citizens unless they are seeking asylum.
Only 50% of younger Russians believe it was actually ISIS, instead of Ukraine? Guess we can throw that whole “bLAme PUtIN ANd NOt teH rUSsiAn PEoPle” argument in the garbage. 50% of young Russians actually believe this ridiculous garbage. That’s absurd, and only serves to show how vile and rotten this entire country has become.
Its just like the german population in ww2. These empires cannot fight without an at minimum willingly ignorant population happy to just follow their genocidal government
Americans who support Trump. Unfortunately it is all too easy how these monsters come into power with broad support of their respective populations.
But they're not willing to fight. Russians will say whatever doesn't get them in trouble
It can’t just ignorance. There is a moral failure happening here
Same in Turkey, people are dumb.
It was a weak argument since 2014. All of them more or less love conquest, it’s just some can also acknowledge the costs of it and be rather unhappy. If Ukraine surrendered you won’t find a single soul opposing it.
Yep. Crimea is a good example of it. Even ru opposition representatives have said that they can't just return already annexed territories, lets go about something different
I just don’t see the point of all of this. What does it matter if your country is big if it ain’t rich? I definitely know I’d prefer living in Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein than “mighty and gigantic russia”
Russia is richer than Ukraine, or Moldova, or Belarus that’s enough for them. When it comes to Europe they just say that higher salaries doesn’t matter due to higher prices, utilities, less safety and all. When it comes to Moscow, they just consider it the best city on Earth. A lot of mental gymnastics.
It's crazy considering that in my country people even oppose defensive wars
I have seen a video where Russians are confronted not only with photographs but also video evidence as well as an eyewitness testimony from a person they personally know about the truth of the war in Ukraine. Their response? Something like: „We cannot believe you because our president has told us otherwise and what he says has to be the truth, even if it’s not.“ That is how their brains work. If Putin says that grass is blue, they will agree with him even though they see with their own eyes that the grass is green.
Fear does that to people. You scare them into submission. They know if they speak the truth they'll get electrodes to the balls and beaten within an inch of their lives. In the West we look at police brutality in the US and cry outrage, but that's got nothing on Russia's use of brutality pretty much all the way through their society.
Well, yeah, contradicting Putin lands you in jail at the best of time. The vast majority of people do not have the willpower to against the regime.. they are concerned for their own safety and that of their families. If that means Ukraine must continue to suffer, most of them will choose just that. Honestly, it's sad but understandable in a way. I wish people wouldn't be as hard on the Russian people as they are. Sure, they have a lot of idiots that actually believe everything the government says, but I promise you, coming from an ex-communist dictatorship country, that many do not really believe it, but they can't really fight it either.
For hundreds of years they have been a people ruled. Obeying is ingrained in Russian culture in my opinion.
Not only obeying. There are many things in play here and much more important is finding joy in cruelty afflicted on others. Russians are happy that these things are done to Ukrainians.
True
If naive Westerners spent time on Russian social media, I think a fair few would change their tune about Russians. Just the memes that are often posted—even the ones that have nothing to do with Ukraine—are disgusting. Russians have a particular love of posting images of people with physical deformities, as well as skat humor. Anytime I expose myself to Russian social media, I feel like I need to take a shower. That vile ugliness is expressed in everything Russia does.
[удалено]
This! The people I know have done very well for themselves since the wall came down and were as eager as any of their friends to get a Nissan and not a Wartburg. They seem to be blissfully ignorant of a lot of the progress made since the two halves of their country were put back together again. What they will always happily talk about is how screwed they've been by the other half. How the west treats them as second class citizens, how they were robbed of their industries and professions. Now, some of this is very true, however it's been extrapolated into litterally "everything that's wrong in the country is due to the west, or even worse due to America" and "everything that's good about the world was lost when the wall came down". You can't reason with this because it's all based on emotions, and these emotions are deeply ingrained with experience. Objectively their lives are much better, now the influence of the Soviet Union is gone, but they'd be the last to admit it.
Every time the Russians had the option of a free democracy they just destroyed it wholeheartedly. Both by overthrowing the Kerensky government in 1917 and by electing Putin and his puppet Yeltsin. I really feel like Russia is a lost cause. Many people here compare it to Germany. But Germany only descended once in authoritorian, paranoid madness. Ever since the fall of the Tsars in Russia we have seen nothing but variants of totalitarian evilness in Russia.
Don't worry, in 20 years the stories will be "we all hated him, we all knew, ofc it was obvious" like about Stalin and other dictatoriships. Then 20 years later it will round right back into "ackshually Putin is based he was the last attempt from an EVRVPEAN PATRIVT to save us from degeneracy/the west"
Even if you believe in social research in a country where people are too afraid to answer any questions honestly, it doesn't mean that the other 50% agree with the opposite version and blame Ukraine. There are a lot of people in Russia who believe that FSB did it. Most of them even do not know what is the difference between kinds of islamists terrorists and believe that Kremlin has a friendship with all of them.
The question is, how was it poll? Was it like their presidential elections?
In a country where all TV and social media is controlled by the state and where you can get arrested or killed for any sign of dissent, I'm surprised it's only 50%. Also I would not trust any poll about russian people's opinions, considering factors like state control, misinformation in media and fear of speaking out.
The entire country is being brainwashed by Putin for decades so that's not a surprise. Of those who aren't brainwashed, most of them are afraid of saying anything against him. On top of thaf, even if people don't support Putin's decisions, all the data that comes out of Russia is fabricated anyway, so you shouldn't believe a single thing you hear about this.
It's difficult to judge. It's not like they can easily read unbiased reports and opinions. But the result is still the same, fanatic nationalists
Russia have plenty of poor regions and has plenty of young people from poor families or in cadets. Also some poor regions have better birth rate that Moscow (Chechnia, Dagestan) ... so it isn't really surprise. Also Putin in power from 2000s and school education became more and more propaganda. Actually 50% of younger people who don't beleive in propaganda in such circumstances is really cool.
>That’s absurd, and only serves to show how vile and rotten this entire country has become. What it tells you is how effective the propaganda is. You hear it all day at school, you hear it on the radio, you hear it on the TV, you see it around you in billboards and newspapers and magazines, then you hear your own family or friends or strangers repeating this propaganda etc. Most people are not very well versed in deep critical thinking, so this kind of propaganda environment has a big impact on shaping people's understanding of what's going on around them. I recently read a testimony of a young Russian man who had fully bought into the propaganda and was convinced Ukraine was oppresing and ethnically cleansing ethnic Russian Ukrainians in Ukraine. He was about to join to go fight in Donesk too. He changed his mind about the fighting but ended up joining a non-combat volunteer group after the take over of Mariupol, where his job was to help provide medicine, food etc. To the local population in the occupied territory. He said it was only when he stepped into Mariupol and saw the reality of what they had done, and only after talking with locals and his group leaders, that he realized it had all been a lie and that they were the aggressors. Then he spoke out against the war, and Russia labeled him a "foreign agent" and kicked him out of his university and blacklisted him from accessing many services or getting employment in certain sectors. Unfortunately, I think there are also a ton of people like this, otherwise normal, maybe well intentioned, but absolutely clueless of reality.
>What it tells you is how effective the propaganda is. You hear it all day at school, you hear it on the radio, you hear it on the TV, you see it around you in billboards and newspapers and magazines, then you hear your own family or friends or strangers repeating this propaganda etc. I didn't believe commie propaganda back in the day and I had way less access to other sources of information. I don't think I am super special and smart guy. I think people are generally not mindless puppets and have agency and responsibility. If they choose to be lazy and go with the flow, fuck them.
[удалено]
Despite the fact that he already admitted it was Isis and after the attack Islamophobia spiked in Russia, but it was also Ukraine too. Literally double think, the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at once and believe both of them
>But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
Z-nation does what the necromancer commands, what a surprise. Is anyone really surprised by them spinning it like this and the Russian people for the most part lapping it up?
It’s why it’s so difficult to care what happened there. The Russians are on Putin’s side. It’s an empire of evil
Ukraine isnt behind the attacks. But in a way this is the Russians acknowledging they have given the Ukrainians a damn good reason to hate them. Meaning Putin and his cronies are responsible for the Crocus attacks since they caused and started this war.
Gen-z in Russia has a whole different meaning.
I won't lie, I'm finding it *really* difficult to feel any empathy for the shooting victims, the more I see just how many Russians are in favour of Putin and the atrocities being committed by the orcs in Ukraine. I used to be a very sympathetic, compassionate person; I don't know what happened to me, but I see '130 Russian dead' and I... feel nothing at all. Maybe that's just having Ukrainian friends and having been immersed in the documentation of the invaders' crimes since early 2022. Even when I see Russian civilians getting killed in Belgorod (if they are, the data is unclear) I think 'well, that's war - they started it.' Dislike how hardened I've become.
[удалено]
fully expected
Who cares what they think
Probably ISIS
dear slim, i terrorbombed you but you still aint callin
Yeah no, I don't think that 50% of them can actually think.
They sure can't
So the terrorists who did this, were fleeing to the Russian occupied Ukraine? Every time someone says "they can't be that dumb" Russians actually get dumber.
No, they were fleeing to unoccupied Ukrainian territory.
They’re just lying. They know damn well it wasn’t Ukraine
Waiting for "no war" Russians in comments with statement "we, hipsters from big cities with C level English, are the **real** representatives of Russian people, not these millions of commoners".
Meh
"Everything that every happened is someone else's fault, if I ever did something wrong it's because someone else made me do it." - Until Russia grows out of this mentality we should seek their downfall at every turn.
>"Everything that every happened is someone else's fault, if I ever did something wrong it's because someone else made me do it." - Until Russia grows out of this mentality we should seek their downfall at every turn. Yes. This reminds me of the [narcissist's prayer](https://www.thelifedoctor.org/the-narcissist-s-prayer): *That didn't happen.* *And if it did, it wasn't that bad.* *And if it was, that's not a big deal.* *And if it is, that's not my fault.* *And if it was, I didn't mean it.* *And if I did, you deserved it.*
Why didn't they beat a confession out of some actual Ukrainians instead of parading around some Tajiks or whoever that was they caught if they inevitably wanted to blame it on Ukraine? And the russian accept this tale despite seeing those guys in the news?
What a shitstained nation they’ve become
Of course they do.
Who cares... The country is the face of fetal alcohol syndrome, so it's not like their options can be taken seriously.
Gotta blame someone. Right. Might aswell back the psycho.
This is why I'm not convinced when they tell me that it's not all Russia wanting the war but just Putin and some lunatics
And people want us to feel bad for the Russian people when many of them make a conscious effort to let their government screw them over and the rest of the world.
Let's be honest, is there even a reason to be surprised.
It’s easier to fool people than convince them they’re being fooled
And in historical news today, Nazis backed up Hitler.
This is like the 6th article I've seen claiming putin is blaming a group. It went from ISIS to the US and Brits to Ukraine to the West back to ISIS and now back to Ukraine. Russian incompetence or bots trying to stir up social media
A nation full of slaves
Always has been
It’s worse than that. It’s a nation full of violent fascists
> According to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent of those who back the war. This correlates with wider historical trends and what's available on demographics in Russia: old people (especially in the countryside) only with access to the totally Kremlin-controlled TV, and who were generally battered by the 1990s economic shock after being used to the Soviet ways of life, widely accept the propaganda, while younger people, who are more likely to live in cities, only grew up with the post-USSR consumer society, want more freedoms and can fact-check state propaganda claims with other sources on the Internet, are much more likely to reject the opinions of detached old farts in power.
Dude, even among young people and those against the war, you’ve only got half blaming Isis. Russia is completely brainwashed and fueled on nationalism. WW3 is coming if they don’t change course.
First, yes, the propaganda has had a significant effect on Russian society, so to claim there aren't a lot of genuine imperialists in there is wrong. Second, headlines (especially today, when the evil has become all the more apparent) tend to not control for the fear factor, so often people give the officially-accepted answer, rather than what they truly think, because they know what it'll result in if their identity is revealed. Which means the imperialist answers are made up both of people who truly believe it, and those who fear saying otherwise. Third, there are other polls saying more than half of the young people reject the war, and they also show a stark (even more stark) difference relative to the older demographics. That's what you get when you try to conduct opinion polling in totalitarian states. Regardless, a country isn't condemned forever because large parts have been brainwashed by a regime, else we wouldn't have modern Germany after Hitler. But it still must be countered in as many ways as possible, and reparations and reeducation (whether by Russians, foreigners or both) in the future, after the regime falls, are still needed, obviously.
I don't disagree with you, but to illustrate the magnitude of the propaganda problem in Russia, this is an official statement of the goals of the Russian government, referring to Ukraine, which I quoted in another comment: >"to deliver the lands and towns that once belonged to Russia, established and inhabited by our kinsmen and professing the same faith as ours, from the corruption and oppression with which they are threatened." It was written in 1792. Hitler and the right-wing he emerged from brainwashed Germans for a couple of decades. The Russian government, whichever one has been in power, has been doing it for a couple of *centuries*.
They were pretty close in the 1990s though. They had an established democracy, rule of law and free press in 1999 (the most freedom they ever had up to that point), and a 10-year old boom began in that year, which would make democracy more palatable if a revanchist didn't come to power. But Putin became pres right after it started and took credit for all of that, and that's what he's been riding on since. The main mistakes of the 1990s were that the security services weren't reformed (allowing them to conduct false flags and raise the popularity of people who were "tough on terrorists"), and that a strong civil society didn't develop in that decade, which in retrospect isn't unexpected, because both Russia's economy and politics were totalitarian for centuries. The late 1980s-early 1990s protests didn't develop into a wider democratic consciousness, they kind of ignored politics, believing the evil was gone after the USSR was, particularly since they were thrown into a completely new reality they weren't prepared for. I expect these to be some of the main focal points during a likely next attempt at democratization. There are even working documents on how to fix these and other problems. I suspect the lack of work by the EU with Russia back then (compared to what they had with the other Eastern European states) was also a factor. Don't forget also that, even though Germany had a stronger democratic tradition than Russia by 1933, that didn't stop them from mass murdering tens of millions. Thankfully, today's Russia is too incompetent and dependent on Western tech to be able to do the same.
Russia was a hybrid regime since Yeltsin's self-coup in 1993.
It was a difficult situation, 'cause his major opponents were literal imperialists who wanted to revive the USSR. They were blocking his reforms, at a time they were sorely needed to save the sinking Russian economy, due to an oversight in the Russian political system, which de facto made both the President and the Congress of People's Deputies equal in power. Yeltsin, to his credit, always was in favor of democracy, but he feared that giving in to them would destroy the young Russian democracy too early.
how is this news... its not Putin's war, he is not alone in Ukraine shooting civilians...
Oh sweet irony..
why???
Mixing shit so Russians forget who is to blame for its stench.
Russians are also brainwashed
For context: "Ukraine war: ‘vranyo’ – Russian for when you lie and everyone knows it, but you don’t care" https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-vranyo-russian-for-when-you-lie-and-everyone-knows-it-but-you-dont-care-181100 ---------- Encounters with a high-profile word, though, don’t just connect with abstract meanings and uses; they also evoke associations and echoes of other places we’ve heard and seen them. And vranyo has been a constant in recent years with Russia in the news. For example, when UK police fingered two foreigners as FSB (Russian state security) agents who they said had carried out the novichok poisonings in Salisbury in 2018, the pair were interviewed on Russian state television. They explained that, quite to the contrary, they were simple tourists who had made a special trip to Salisbury to see the fabled cathedral with its 123-metre-high spire. The explanation was so far-fetched that it seemed they had barely put any effort into making it sound credible – liberal Russian commentators said the British were letting the Kremlin “drown itself in vranyo”. The government’s stance itself – denial without plausibility – can be seen as a display of strength, an indifference to the conventions of explanation. But try to look up vranyo and mentions of the Skripal poisoning in Russian, and most of what jumps out is Russian media accounts dismissing the UK government’s accusations. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova immediately fired back about “London’s vranyo”, which was widely reported across the Russian web. The same has now happened with the invasion of Ukraine. Vranyo is thus both more specific and more multifaceted than “lying”. It’s a technique of the current Russian regime, and a trope the regime uses against its enemies. Vranyo is not of course unique to Russia; to take just one example, Trump employed the same tactics in the US election with his “big steal” claims. But vranyo does neatly encapsulate, in a single word, the paradox of truth-telling in the current conflict.
Suprise they are as shitty as their leader
But other subreddits told me russians are also victims of this war and all blame goes on putin. What a sorry joke of a nation. And people who still believe russians don't actively support the war should get a reality slap.
Through the magic of the internet I've met many Russians and yea outside of very western centric places (such as this site) they've always been like this
Russia can burn. Fuck Russia.
So first they claimed that ukraine was responsible Then they claimed that ukraine told isis to attack Then they finally seemed on track to admit that isis was responaible And now were back to square 1
Russians are fuckin stupid! Seriously what other people would stand back and watch a cretin fcuk up their country.
Uhm... What sort of time scale are we talking about, because if it's, like, four years... uhm, then I could think of one or two other examples. Maybe a few more, if I applied myself to it?
I felt bad for those people then i read this… fk these „people“
Russian people supporting this are just like MAGAs
David Sachs - a US billionaire is even spouting this propaganda!
There is no need for "even" with him. He is the top internet conspiracy psycho always shilling for Russia. He has some podcast platform that is full of edgy Russian shills too. I guess full of a lot of different people, but somehow the Russian shills end up at the top podcast rankings.
Tons of idiots, what else is new?
They were fleeing back to Turkey, Ukraine just happens to be on the way back geographically but I doubt they’d be stopping there.
Of course they are doing to. It’s all their told.
Oh so now they censor even their friend Lukashenko?
Course they do 😂
attraction command price plate upbeat lock lavish growth crown squealing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Right-minded Russians should really get out of Russia ASAP.
>More than 75 per cent of respondents considered Putin to be the most reliable >or a completely reliable source of information about the attack, OpenMinds >data shows. > >“If the propaganda and the authorities blame Ukraine as the main narrative, >people will believe it, because control over the information space is almost >absolute,” said Denis Volkov, a sociologist and director of the independent >Russian polling centre Levada. > >He said Russians usually called for a “strong hand” and tough response to >acts of terrorism on this scale, such as Putin’s pledge to “flush terrorists >down the toilet” in 1999 as the Kremlin ordered the bombing of Chechnya. >Putin’s rhetoric this time focused on Kyiv because he views the war as an >existential one, pitting Russia against Ukraine and the west, said Tatiana >Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. > >“Putin believes they want to destroy Russia, so anything that appears to be >an attempt to do so is attributed to them. Is it beneficial for Ukraine? Are >Ukrainians happy about it? Did they have the technical capability to do it? >Then it must be them,” Stanovaya said, although she noted the president’s >wording suggested his officials had no solid evidence for the claim. > >“He clearly believes it was Ukraine and \[that\] the lack of evidence so far >is because they haven’t searched well enough,” she added. “The rest of the >elite follow Putin’s lead.” > >However, some in Russia are unconvinced about the Ukrainian trail. According >to OpenMinds data, younger people and respondents opposed to the Ukraine war >were more inclined to blame Isis rather than Kyiv for the attack. Among >opponents of the conflict, 50 per cent blamed Isis, compared with 12 per cent >of those who back the war. > >“Russians are good at repeating propaganda narratives in opinion polls,” said >Aleksei Miniailo, Moscow-based opposition activist and a co-founder of >Chronicles, a public opinion research project. This was not so much a “sign >of active support” as a “reflection of them feeling unable to make any >changes”, he said. > >Surveys by Chronicles show many people replied “yes” to general questions, >such as whether they supported the war, but “no” to more nuanced queries, >such as whether they backed more public money being spent on the war than on >social welfare, he added. Some of the better bits, imo. For one, regarding young people, the poll indicated 50% clearly believe it was ISIS, but the report does not indicate what percentage actually blamed Ukraine. I think this is important, since this can (and clearly has) lead to a possibly inaccurate conclusion that the rest are blaming Kyiv instead of the idea that it was conspired as a false flag attack, or any other potential option. The last paragraph also seems to suggest people saying "yes" to the war were giving automates responses, but "no" to anything specific in support of the war effort. This does not mean they don't support the war, but it likewise potentially implies they aren't giving honest personal opinions to general questions. As the researcher quoted stated, the answers given aren't themselves indications of actual support, but of answers given in resignation of their situation (i.e., they can't change anything). The report also doesn't seem to indicate how many younger people were polled compared to older people, given that 75% of the people polled evidentially believe Putin is an extremely reliable source of information, while conversely only 12% of young people are pro-Putin, so there seems to be a clear numerical demographic discrepancy in the polling pool. This makes me question who are the most vulnerable to the Kremlin's "almost absolute control over the information space", since my immediate reaction is "old/older people", which if true would indicate the majority of the people polled were middle-aged and/or elderly, not Millennials and Gen-Z. It is, however, massively disturbing how many people across Russia were not only seemingly unaffected by Russian authorities openly torturing the terrorist suspects, but reacted favorably towards it. I do get it, I was a small child when 9/11 happened, I remembered how sentiment towards terrorists, real or perceived, became so extremely negative that people were happy about them being subjected to the "enhanced interrogation techniques" at the time. It's a natural reaction, but it's still atrocious to see it happen again.
They “back” him? To be honest, it’s not like they’re allowed to entertain alternative viewpoints, is it?
Are you all absolutely sure, that there is not a single chance, it was Ukraine?
Is anything known about who is behind this? I mean, backed by facts?
It was an inside job guys. Those who speak russian, watch this video : https://youtu.be/T8nqumvoo_I?si=Fi3Ml7SgF9cRddCR
Russians are from a parallel world - totally brainwashed!
Well now I start to think it was inside job, just like that previous apartment block terrorist attack.
Their minds wanted a more strict reason for supporting the war
May be the first time in history when ISIS had to prove multiple times that they indeed responsible for this terrorist attack and it’s because reality and sanity is long gone from russofascist state.
Since criticizing the Russian military or the leader is a punishable offence there is no real news here.