About the things that you've mentioned - yes, he's been doing that since the very beginning. I see that as a part of keeping his image.
As far as I know, even though in the modern world democracy often goes along with human rights and freedom of public speech and other things, it isn't necessarily defined by them.
When I mentioned democratic institutions, I meant the institutions through which the government can reply to the needs of the people, like the administrative (!!!) courts, or local small town and neighbourhood parlaments, or special development pro...
Hello! I am Russian too, and I have a similar problem. However, I just try to avoid talking to my friends and family about politics. I know I won't make them change their mind. I'll just upset and probably hurt them by this.
About your question: it is weird how much you trust the Western media. Of course, they are an independent source. But they don't have any motivation to actually find out the truth. They have the idea that "Russia has unprovokedly and unlawfully attacked Ukraine. This war is inhumane and unnecessary. Ukrainians are brave people who defen...
I understand why this post is so largely unupvoted.
Firstly, it looks like it suggests the idea that individual politicians who represent countries don't make any significant special impact, which if of course wrong. Also people might say that you are mixing two different things: war on cancer is not a war while war in Ukraine is very real, even though it happens to be not on the grounds of America or EU. But your post explains that this is a totally different kind of comparison.
Secondly, most lesswrongers don't seem to care about Russia and Ukraine anymore...
Just where did you get the information about "one of the most relentless intelligence services"? It might be outdated.
Sanctions will not work this way, period.
It is obvious if you think about it for a while.
Sanctions have been the main official justification for Putin's prolonged rule and his mistakes. They were the fuel and the proofs for his "The World Is Against Us" rhetorics. Now they enabled him to introduce some interesting laws, like 15 years of corrective labor colony for "spreading fakes about the special operation of liberating Ukraine from the Nazis"
People whose well-being has been affected by the war will not protest. It is always better to be poor than
Wait just one minute.
According to everything I've seen here, you're not even supposed to pose a question like that. You're not supposed to ask "Are sanctions good or bad?" because you're not the ones responsible for imposing them in the first place and, let's be sincere, nobody here can make an actual, significant effect on the course of that war.
No, instead of that you're supposed to ask "Why exactly are the Western nations imposing those sanctions?" You can express moral judgement only AFTER you understand what's going on, or else your words will be an e...
Calm down, they just mistranslated the name of the ship that went... okay, sorry, they mistranslated "Moskva"