(no subject)

[dragonlady7]

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scrmnviking https://scrmnviking.tumblr.com/post/677366598911311872/they-fled-the-ussr-or-putin-to-be-here-give-them :

guerrillatech https://guerrillatech.tumblr.com/post/677347359201656832:

They FLED the USSR or Putin to be here. Give them the props.

[img desc: a Tweet by user lethalityjane. “Reminder to not be assholes to your local Russian themed restaurants and businesses here in America, the 50 year old grandmother who sells piroshki did not invade Ukraine.”]

I think it could not be clearer that this is not the will of the Russian people, and I have nothing but sympathy– think of all the things that have been done in my name by the US military over the last, Christ, twenty years? Longer? My entire adult life. I did not ask for them to launch drone strikes on Yemeni weddings, I have watched in horror and voted in every possible election and written furious letters to my representatives to beg them to stop– why on Earth should I assume any random Russian person would have had any more power than I, in this sort of thing?

I worked with a group of Russian and Polish programmers at my first post-college job, in 2002, and one of them came to dinner at my house, and he said he did not want to talk much about it but he was here because of Putin. Already in 2002! He had come with his family and was living two hundred miles away and going to see them on the weekends, because this was where the high-paying job was. He was young, I think his family was his parents and siblings.

Anyway– it is fair to say that there is no one the average person could ever randomly speak to or encounter who is in any way benefiting from this war, nor anyone with any kind of power to effect it. It is chillingly, horrifyingly familiar, and untold harm is unfolding as we speak not just in Ukraine but in Russia, where the banking system is now collapsing and taking with it much of the stability of Central Asia, which was already having some problems. I don’t see a good end and I can’t bear to think about it. But this is a violence being done upon the people of Russia as well, make no mistake. (Your picture was not posted)