Hey everyone who visits, I'm gonna start using this journal as a way to keep people updated if they wanna check in on me. I am more active
on plurk, if you are there too feel free to send a request. I post there a lot more about the current events and how I'm doing and stuff.
A summary of the past few days, best as I can put it together.
- Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin is apparently deranged. This was a surprise and a shock even to the Russian elites.
- The propaganda within Russia is extremely strong and obvious, but an incredible number of people believe it, there is a lot of hostility towards anyone who even says that war, in general, is bad. My uncle (my mom's brother) and his wife yelled at my mom for her expressing fear about the war, almost calling her a fascist who "believes some crazy Ukrainian squad commander" (my workplace's CEO, whom mom quoted in her post. The quote was essentially "let's stay calm, check our sources and be civil towards one another"). They still haven't apologized to her...
- The invasion is in full force now. Russian government keeps refusing to call it an invasion, a war or an attack, merely a "special operation".
- Independent media are pressured and silenced. They're also ordered to report on the situation using only information provided by the government. The government denies any damage to civilians in Ukraine, calls every piece of evidence of the destruction "fake news", says that the military is only targeting military buildings and objects with "surgical precision".
- A lot of people are protesting, and not just the general populace: many prominent figures, from doctors to artists to even bank owners and politicians (including one who signed the recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk "republics", which led to all this) are openly speaking out and addressing Putin. He's not listening, protesters are getting arrested and punished.
- Yesterday Medvedev posted in Vkontakte (a Russian version of Facebook basically) saying that "no one is afraid of the sanctions", they're just a sign of "political impotence" and that breaking ties with Europe would let us finally reinstate "a number of useful things, like the death sentence". Also, diplomatic relations aren't actually important anyway.
- We're getting slammed with sanctions which will affect the general populace terribly, but not the elites most likely. I absolutely don't blame the other countries for the sanctions, I want this nightmare stopped too. But we are still going to suffer because of one demented maniac and his echo chamber.
- I am safe (for now?) because I live very far away from the border, but I really don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or even later today. My brother is currently living rather closer to the border and could also be drafted into the army or, if there are retaliation strikes on the general territory of Russia, his town could potentially be targeted too because it's connected to the military complex. Shit's scary anyway.
- I think we may be looking at a potential civil war if Putin keeps refusing to listen because the outrage is growing.
Today's things.
- Several Russian banks will be banned from the SWIFT system, which means they won't be able to have international transactions. As you can guess, that's Less Than Good for the economy. It's particularly less than good for me, because I work for a translation company and our clients are obviously almost all located abroad. We get paid in dollars and euro, normally. Shit will probably be fucked on top of general additional economy stagnation and inflation, predicted to be on the level of 2014-2018. We struggled to even buy food or pay for public transit back then, so that will be fun.
There are many more things happening too, of course, I'm just talking about what's particularly personal right now... It's actually pretty hard to compose all this, I haven't been sleeping well this past week and the sheer level of shock, anger, despair, fear, and the huge amount of info I have to consume every day to keep up is very overwhelming. I'm trying my best to write Proper Sentences but boy howdy it is hard.
Anyway... What I'm leading up to is that if you would like to support me financially, I've got a
ko-fi set up. I don't know if I will need the money because I have no idea what is going to happen, but with the SWIFT system being cut off I fear that this will be the only time I can ask for the support? I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking tired. If it turns out that I don't need the money in the end, I'll do my best to return it to you, though with currency fuckery going on it will probably end up being a little less. I'm sorry.
I'm going to try to sleep. Stay safe, everyone.
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