Stay strong, hopefully, Russia will collapse and you'll be free - I may be naive but I still think there are enough Russians who can see this tragedy as the doing of a man who wants to continue to live the life of a king, and it's probably his only way of survival after so many murdering and prosecution.
I'm not sure a collapse of Russia would be good for GP. Living under an oppressive regime is not fun, but Putin's Russia isn't that bad as dictatorships go, and anarchy/societal collapse aren't fun either.
GP won’t suffer from anarchy or societal collapse. According to internationally recognized state borders, they live in Ukraine, not in Russia.
Russians have lost approximately half of the land they have occupied in the first 3 months of the full-scale war. We have repeatedly observed that Ukrainian government is willing and capable of bringing law and order to these liberated territories.
I know someone who has spent a lot of time working in Ukraine, and has acquaintances there they keep in touch with. Their description of the situation is not nearly as rosy as yours. The war (which, for the Donbass, started in 2014) has devastated an immense amount of territory. Ukraine had Europe's lowest fertility rate even before the war, and now millions of working-age men are dead, wounded our have left the country, which makes prospects of a quick recovery slim. Also, Ukraine's government is extremely corrupt, and while less autocratic than Russia it is very far from a model democracy (was even before the war, and war tends to make countries more corrupt and authoritarian). The best thing for GP to hope for would likely be peace, as soon as possible, and which side of the armistice line they fall on won't make much difference for them.
Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation. Note GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking strangers here on HN because they fear the consequences from the Russian invaders who call themselves “government”.
> Still, living conditions of people north of Kyiv, north of Kharkiv, or in Kherson is dramatically better than GP’s situation.
They are also dramatically better in Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Vladivostok. Of course being far from the front lines is better than being near them.
> GP can’t even freely talk to English-speaking stranger
People in Ukrainian-controlled territory can't talk freely either, there have been many cases of extrajudicial arrests and even killings of dissidents by Ukrainian government authorities. For example, peruse Gonzalo Lira's list (Lira himself died a week ago in Ukrainian custody): https://twitter.com/GonzaloLira1968/status/15174577687976796...
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This is a war between two thuggish regimes. One thug might be a bit more brutal than the other, but the war itself is what's doing the most harm to ordinary people.
> being far from the front lines is better than being near them
Kherson is less than 5 km from the active war zone. Northern parts of Kharkiv oblast have a Russian border nearby, with Russian recon groups routinely trying to infiltrate.
> can't talk freely either
I have several friends currently in Ukraine. None of them is scared of expressing their political views, neither IRL nor on the internets. None of them supports Russia for obvious reasons, but not all of them are huge fans of their current government.
> extrajudicial arrests and even killings
Wikipedia has an interesting article about the guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Lira The article says the arrest was lawful, Ukrainians released him on house arrest, he tried to flee the country, then he was arrested for real and died of pneumonia in custody.
Every death is a tragedy, but I don’t believe Ukrainian government deliberately killed that person. Why would they fake pneumonia during the war, at the time when random civilians are routinely killed by Russian missiles and drones across the whole country?
> This is a war between two thuggish regimes
This is Ukraine’s war of independence. Ukrainians have lost the last time in 1917-1922. This time, things will be different.
He was arrested for political speech, which is ipso facto an unjust violation of his fundamental human rights and of natural law. Putin's Russia also has "laws" that justify the arrest of dissidents, doesn't make it OK. (And many of the other people on Lira's list were simply summarily executed, without any trial or other legal process)
Are you aware that Ukraine engaged in an existential war? Gonzalo Lira was justifying Russian aggression against Ukraine, denying the facts of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities, as well as massacres of civilian Ukrainians by Russian invaders in Bucha and other cities.
Then he was taken into custody because he violated the terms of his bail and tried to escape. Originally meant to be under house arrest in Kharkiv, Lira was detained in another part of Ukraine: Zakarpattia Oblast, where he tried to cross the border into Hungary
There are a number of real journalists in Ukraine investigating big corruption cases, some of which have even resulted in the replacement of the Minister of Defense. These journalists have not faced assassination or imprisonment, although there have been instances of them being pressured in some ways
It seems you apply US laws to the rest of the world. Ukraine is not part of the US, it’s a part of Europe. In Europe, the legal systems are rather different.
For example, public display of Nazi symbols in the US is a protected free speech under the first amendment. However, the same action in many other countries is a crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_Nazi_symbols This doesn’t make governments of France or Belgium “thuggish regimes”.
Gonzalo Lira was Pro-Russia supporter during war time. See the way he spoke about women and what his real intentions were. More about the real Gonzalo, who was a paid russian shill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nyvrMYGEz4
His views do matter to provide context as to why he was in Ukraine and why he was in Jail. During war, normal rules don't apply. You have to be daft to support Russia, while you are in Ukraine. He was a grifter, enough said.
There were many dictators with high popularity rates. Remember Romanian leader Ceaușescu? Yet, popularity didn't save him. On the other hand, there're still people in Romania who consider him the greatest president of all time :)
It's very common and normal, to have a small popularity numbers for the politicians in the democracy. People have a variety of opinions, moods, or sympathies because they are diverse and have different levels of experiences, moods, and feelings.
Was it popular? While a dictator is in power most people show they support for self preservation and once the dictator is dead / in exile there no skin in the game.
That's kind of what being bathed in a constant firehose of disinformation does to public opinion, though, right? Most of those people aren't even living on earth one.
> You do realize Putin has a significantly higher approval rating among Russians than Biden, Trump, or Congress has among Americans, yes?
I'm not going to waste time arguing about fantasy. If you want to have a discussion grounded in reality, I'm up for it. With that said, that statement you made you have in no way shape or form to support it - not about Biden, Trump or Congress, but about Putin.
You have no idea how a country feels under the foot of a dictator that has been murdering, arresting, or crippling any voice that is against Putin.
Not to mention the millions of Russians that left the country, and are now not even allowed to vote in their embassies!
> This is with independent polling as well
How can you have independent polling in a country that has political prosecution? How can you have any semblance of independence when Moscow actively makes an effort to wipe out cultural landmarks, including the language, of the different people who live in Russia?
Moscow has used genocide as a tool to control people, they used it in the past and are currently using it in Ukraine.
> "Independent Polling" of people living under a repressive regime appears to be 100% impossible to me.
In Russia, it seems to be promoted a culture of ratting those who are against the government, which is also very common in these regimes - and that has a very deep scarring in societies that go over it.
I'm from Portugal and to this day there's still a cultural undertone of not ratting anyone to authorities, even if it is something that's hurting you or everyone, all because of the disgust and hate towards those who ratted people to the government police.
During our dictatorships, there were also the same theatrical displays of polling, voting, having opposing candidates approved by the state, etc. Salazar was always the man of course.
It's impressive that Russia still hasn't had its societal reform away from dictatorships in the XXI century. Sadly we're now paying the consequences of it, but it might be closer than we think!
They explain their methodology, and discuss things like what kind of questions tend to result in respondents terminating the interview.
I don't know how independent they really are; but I haven't seen evidence that they are effectively state-controlled.
If they are independent, then presumably it's true that most Russians are nationalists and Putinists. That doesn't seem implausible; as far as I can tell, a majority of voters in the USA are nationalists and Trumpists.
I've never visited a country while it was under the fist of a dictator. And in a way, Russia is special; in Russian history, autocracy and tyranny have been a constant, except for the ten years after the collapse of the CCCP. Those ten years were miserable for Russians, so it would be unsurprising if they feel safer and more comfortable with autocracy and tyranny.
To be fair what we consider to be "western democracy style" didn't really exist prior to the late 1800s. Even Britain only started resembling a democratic state in the 1830s.
