I didn’t really get this either.

I did think the final paragraph was notable, a “zeitgeist of our times” if you will:

The absurdity of the situation prompted tech author and journalist James Vincent to write on X, “current tech trends are resistant to satire precisely because they satirize themselves. a car park of empty cars, honking at one another, nudging back and forth to drop off nobody, is a perfect image of tech serving its own prerogatives rather than humanity’s.”

So you’re saying russians genuinely believe that since 2014 they’ve been “fighting Nazism in Ukraine” and this is not a genocidal imperialist war?

As I mentioned in my OP, you do know that every russian had uncensored youtube within a single click on their smartphone until the last month or so? Btw, the YT app is available in russian and there is a lot of russian language content.

This makes no sense!

Nothing to do with “winning” and I never framed it as such. For me “winning” is kicking the Russians out of my country, not some internet discussion (like for you).

Keep on white washing russian crimes and enabling the degeneracy of a strong majority of russian society.

Just watch that it doesn’t bite you and your family in the ass one day! Your delusion will not be of much use then!

It would depend on the geo-political context, currently there are less viable options.

In a different context, beyond the main mass of hardcore criminal (several million russian) that require strict punishments, you could leverage a legal proof method.

Every russian signs a legal paper outlining and their overall support for genocidal imperialism, putin, knowingly promoting false russian propaganda and so on.

Based on the of level severity of their support for genocidal imperialism, they would have to pay financial compensation and engage in global community service work (de-mining in Syria, junior janitor in an infectious disease hospital in rural Africa).

The legal paper would have a clause stating that if you claim you never supported genocidal imperialism (as certified in the legal paper), but later evidence comes up that you were actually supportive of russian degeneracy, you lose all your assets and will be required to do two decade of global community service (or go to jail). This clause would be valid indefinitely for the life of the person.

Note, I am not saying the above-mentioned approach is viable right now. I am trying to show that there methods to create incentives for russians to be open about their support for genocidal imperialism.

I will need to take a more in-depth look the paper, but reading the introduction and conclusion, I don’t see such a clear critique, it sounds like you mostly made it up.

You just learned what a list experiment was just a few days ago and were arguing for a comical anecdotal view, so pardon my scepticism regarding your ability to read papers or act in good faith.

Prefer to talk to Ukraine = continue to occupation of Ukrainian territory, with torture camps and experimentation Ukrainian identity. I.e. genocidal imperialism.

We’ve seen how the russians acted after 2014, there is no reason trust them to act differently now.

You’re a delusion child, that is too cowardly to admit their mistakes and take a sober look at reality.

There times when it is reasonable to trust the US government.

You should never trust anything that comes out of russia; even their “opposition” (let alone their government thugs).

I agree with you, I am very desperately trying to prove something to someone who can’t even read the work of RFE/RL!

Total dupe!

That’s not a convincing answer.

Before our exchange you didn’t know what a list experiment was or what the term preference falsification meant.

Yet you were aggressively parroting the standard polemic about “innocent russians” and “all polling is wrong because it doesn’t align with my message”.

And now you’re acting all high and mighty with strawn men and “vastly different takeaways”.

You claim that the paper shows the mere existence of preference falsification. This is complete bullshit and you know it.

Preference falsification = A - B

Where:

A (~75%) = support for genocidal imperialism via regular polling

B (~65%) = support for genocidal imperialism via list experiments

If you don’t believe A or B to be true, then you can’t define whether preference falsification exists.

This is basic logic and you’ve totally failed it.

Diplomatic resolution? What’s that?

Russia continues to occupy 20% of Ukraine and then attacks again when they are ready?

Fucking awesome diplomatic resolution!

I am asking you about the hows and whys because you made a claim that we need to support russian “dissidents”.

Is it not reasonable to ask what and when we’ll see the outcome of this?

Why would you do something if you have no plan for how and when to achieve a given outcome?

You’ve thankfully never had to actually deal with russians, that’s what’s driving your petty bullshit and delusions.

Let’s hope things stay that way, for your own benefit.

Can you stop trying to imply that I didn’t read the study? What are you trying to achieve with such petty passive aggressive jabs?

Of course it’s not a perfect method, but it aligns with other studies (quantitative direct polling and other list experiments, as well as qualitative). It also aligns with long term historical studies around positive attitudes of the russian population towards imperialism (increase in approval of government following invasions, annexations and genocides) over the past ~30 years.

How am I trying to strawman you? Critiquing your reliance on annecdotal experience (that funnily enough mirror my own - although I don’t claim my anecdotal experience means anything) is a straw man?

Show evidence for your framing around “let’s not jump to conclusions”!

What external factors? What external social influences? Be clear and direct in your claims and back them up with something more than “I feel so”!

Show how these factors are important! Going back to my original post, fully uncensored YouTube has been a click away for every russian with smartphone until recently, is this not the case? Can the same not be said about telegram?

What am I trying to accomplish with my argument?

To show reality and not let well meaning, but completely unverified platitudes (that contradict all research and even history) get in the way explaining the nature of russian imperialism.

You’re not convinced that white washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians is relevant because you don’t have to deal with the cruelty and degeneracy of the russians.

Why should we not make russians who support genocidal imperialism (both conceptually and as implemented by their leaders) responsible? Are they children? Of course they should pay for their actions.

And what if the reality is that a strong majority of russians are not interested in implementing any kind of change in their society?

Or that the russia as a society has dug itself into such a hole (supporting putin for 25 years and supporting genocidal imperialism for ~35 years) that there is no easy way out other than violence; something the absolute majority of allegedly “opposition minded” russians are not willing or able to engage in.

By the way, that’s totally understandable; but in that case they shouldn’t talk about magical fantasies of a democratic russia of the future appearing out of no where.

Let’s say for the sake of argument I agree with your take that genocidal imperialism of russia since it’s founding is not representative of current russian society.

How and when do you expect any changes to happen?

How - I am not asking for in-depth details, just a general outline that goes beyond “somehow in the future”.

When - 5 years? 10 years? 50 years? 100 years?

Addendum question - while we wait for these changes, what would you like people in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya and Belarus to do? Please be specific.

And what is their estimate of preference falsification? It’s just ~10%, no?

What impact does this level of preference falsification have with respect to the % of russians who support the invasion of Ukraine, annexation of its territories and extermination of Ukrainian identity?

We go from ~75% to ~65% with preference falsification w.r.t. support for the above, is that not the case?

Do the numbers cited (less preference falsification) in support of the war not fall under the definition of “strong majority”? Is 65% not a strong majority?

Don’t the authors clearly state that their methodology (even with weights) likely underestimates the true level of support?

Their numbers (for support of the invasion of Ukraine) align with other polling methods; which is damning for the “innocent Russians just got played a bad hand, they are not really genocidal imperialists” narrative.

Why did you leave out these numbers? I don’t understand. They clearly reference them. Why would you do this?

But you would never accept any methodology or research that doesn’t show what you want to see. Be honest! It’s not about the research or the numbers for you.

So why bring up “accurate figures”?

White washing the genuine support for genocidal imperialism among a strong majority of russians leads to 100 of thousands of deaths, 10 of thousands people being tortured (UN stated that 95% of Ukrainian POWs were tortured, and that doesn’t include civilians) and millions having their livelihoods ruined.

And I am just referencing Ukraine. There are many other examples. The russians killed 5% of the civilian population of Chechnya in the 90s. That would be equivalent to killing 7 million russian civilians.

https://meduza.io/feature/2024/06/25/a-kogda-uzhe-pobeda-to-nasha-budet

The article is in russian. Very stuffy and verbose writing style.

They’ve only released an in-depth preview news article. I believe the full paper (with an English translation) will be released later this month.

Why do you say this?

If 75% of russians support the “denazification” of Ukraine, that says a lot about them, no?

Is there anything else that you noticed beyond “aligns with US foreign policy objectives”.

Did you only read it in English? What other language services from them did you read.

Considering the points that you raised, what are your critiques of list experiment methodology (e.g. the one by LSE that I referenced earlier) and their findings that preference falsification is just 10%. I will note that you are the one who brought up personal safety.

If the vast majority of your country are genocidal imperialists, it really doesn’t matter that a tiny micro-minority are hiding their preferences does it? At the very least you can admit that this logic is consistent, no?

Since you brought up Levada, they show that something like 84% of the Russian population supported the annexation of Crimea (i.e. at the very least they are committed imperialists). This data point has been consistent since 2014.

In context of your critique of Levada, how is that list experiment research had a comparable level of support at 80% for the annexation of Crimea?

The truth of the matter is that your have no evidence (quantitative or qualitative) or even a working theory to justify your view that the vast majority of russian are just poor souls who got stuck with putin.

This is nothing new for me btw. On the English language internet, you constantly see comically dumb takes about russians being little angels and putin being solely responsible for all evils committed by the russians.

Agreed, that is an important point. That being said, it was raised in the article, a more “technical” comparison wasn’t provided.

Wikipedia has a decent (albeit somewhat outdated?) comparison with other battery types.

Seems like sodium-ion batteries are somewhat cheaper, require more space and have lower usable cycles.

The NYT article is aimed at western audiences, of course they are going to present a more humanistic pitch.

English language content from the russian “opposition” is often misleading.

In russian, Navalniy initially clearly stated that “Ukrainians, you should forget about Crimea” and that “Crimea is not a ham sandwich, you can’t just give it back!”

He later did a PR pass on his position with a call for an “independent referendum”; a typical russian imperialist mindset. The Ukrainian constitution only allows for national referendums on such matters.

Navalniy own head goon even confirmed that they supported the annexation of Crimea because the vast majority of russian are imperialists:

https://time.com/6162889/navalny-ukraine-russia-leonid-volkov/

He was most definitely not anti-war. The russian invasion of Ukraine began with the annexation of Crimea; which was supported by Navaliy and his team.

One of Yashin’s responsibilities as a deputy in 2018 was conscription. Russia has been at war with Ukraine since 2014.

Now I understand for Yashin the “real” war started in 2022 and he was just “looking to promote democracy by taking part in municipal politics”.

But that’s irrelevant if you are from Donbas and your family was forced to leave in 2014. Or if you language and religion are being prosecuted In Crimea.

Kara-Murza went a tired rant about how we sanctions need to be weakened

Pivaovarov stated opposition minded Russians shouldn’t donate to the AFU. Imagine dissidents of the Nazi regime (who took part in a prisoner exchange) stated that opposition minded Germans shouldn’t be supporting the war effort against Nazi Germany.

Just a question, what do you know about RFE/RL?

Do you follow any of their news program series?

Do you speak any other languageslioe Ukrainian, Belarusian or Georgian?

You do understand that anecdotal findings don’t mean anything, right? I’ve lived in russia for a decade; the three russians I still speak to are anti-war. That’s not how any of this works!

I’ve posted links and reference to various research works previously in this thread. You can start by looking at polling from Levada (lots of age group information), Russian Field and a paper by LSE that uses list experiments (URL in one of my comments in this thread).

Even qualitative research by russian academics is damning for russian society. They find that even among those who don’t actively support the invasion, a majority still want to see their army win (i.e. annexation Ukrainian territories, steal children, bomb children’s cancer hospitals). This was a recent project done in a small town (15K) in Siberian russia, released just last month.

A strong majority of russian are most definitely genocidal imperialists (including the 19-29 age group, although it may be more of a regular majority than a “strong majority”). You’re really ignorant (of practically all quantitative and qualitative research as well as of history) and/or you are naive and not willing to ask yourself difficult questions.

I mean I did suggest you go to Levada, Russian Field and LSE List Experiment research on the extent of russian support for the war.

All these research series are very easy to search for online. This is not secret or paywalled research.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680221108328