Ask HN: Are there any HN readers on Crimea and can tell us what's going on?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7329118

by dexcs • 12 years ago

42 16 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

kushti5• 12 years ago

I have a friend in Sevastopol. He states almost all people there are suppose Crimea independence & Russia(though he personally doesn't share that).

sorenbs• 12 years ago

The sentiment is for an independent Crimea or to become part of Russia?

kushti5• 12 years ago

He says it depends on how referendum question will be formulated.

moondowner• 12 years ago

I heard that the Russians do (which make ~60% of Crimea population), whereas the Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars living there do not.

Casseres• 12 years ago

Not HN (edit: or specifically from Crimea), but there is a Reddit post by a self-reported Ukrainian protestor which I found interesting: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1z9pkm/iama_ukrainian_...

There is also another series of interesting posts here: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1zad2p/ukraine_pu...

It's not HN, but it beats the worthless commentary that I've seen on TV while they show stock footage of tanks rolling around (which I haven't heard is the case).

kushti5• 12 years ago

But he is not in Crimea! He's engaged a much as EuroMaidan protester living in Kiev

friendlyguy853• 12 years ago

I will try to sum up what is going on. After Ukrainians made government turnover of president Yanukovych ( he and his sons have stolen over 40 billion $ during last couple years), the new government made a terrible mistake and cancelled pretty conditional and stupid law, which allowed russian language to be used in official documents ( Ukraine is mostly bilingual, and everyone understands both russian and ukrainian). Canceling this law doesn't mean that russian language is banned. It is just CANT be used in official documents. After canceling this law, parliamentary representatives told that there will be a new law which will respect not only two languages, but will spread on others which are used on Ukrainian territory.

Putin's propaganda presented this as infringement of ethnic Russians and that new government are fascists which made illegal turnover.

Three main nationalities in Crimea are ethnic russians (1.5m), ukrainians (500.00) and tatars (who actually lived in Crimea, before Stalin repressed them in 1944-1950). Also Russia pays Ukrainian government for keeping part of their fleet in Crimea.

So, these forces "invaded" Crimea, but the had no russian markings and it was again presented, as these are volunteers who help to protect Crimea from west-ukrainian fascists (yeah, right, volunteers with guns, helicopters and armored cars). The Crimea parlament was capruted and now is ruled by pro-russian marginals who declare Crimea autonomy and that is should be a part of Russia. The officially request help from Putin to protect themselves. And yesterday Russian Council of federations allowed Putin to invade Crimea. But post-faktum it already happened.

viraptor2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the information about the cancelled law. I haven't seen it mentioned before.

friendlyguy853• 12 years ago

I honestly do not think, that it was a root cause. Judging by how fast and smoothly everything happened, invasion was planned long before, and cancelling this law was just a coincidence which gave a boost and just one more reason for invasion.

kushti5• 12 years ago

You forget to say about new "power" in Kiev and west Ukraine:

BBC video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkiSPMpTp_I Sasha Biliy @ Rovno government meeting(UA language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01is0p0mzJQ

(and much more)

Of course, people of Crimea, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Lugansk, Odessa see that violent nazi power and want to detach from the new Ukraine.

friendlyguy853• 12 years ago

Okay, i will say this only once - there are NO nazis in ukraine.

Sasha Biliy is not the whole country or doesn't represent even a city. He is just a mad guy who walks city streets with empty machine gun. This video made a huge resonance in Ukraine, so even our Interior minister [secretary of state] (Arsen Avakov) reacted to this on his FB page saying that this is absolutely inappropriate. And i am sure, that this man will be in jain really soon.

I ask this question every person who speaks about nazis in ukraine. IF there are nazis, who hate russian people - WHY there was NOT A SINGLE attack on russian embassy in whole ukraine? Why not a single russian was killed by evil ukrainian nazis?

dmishe• 12 years ago

And this is surely why people of those regions came to meetings today supporting country's integrity and crimeans.

grey-area• 12 years ago

It's weird the way any stories to do with Ukraine are being flagged off the home page - I'd understand if they were taking over the homepage, but this request seems like a useful one to me, and the topic one of interest for everyone here - plenty of things to discuss other than politics or tribal allegiances, here are some:

The reporting of wars and revolutions by the people involved themselves is causing a huge change in journalism - some news journalists I know are starting to question how to involve reader stories and reader opinions in reports without ending up with an incoherent cacophony of people shouting their opinions, with those the loudest to shout being those who are heard. Scepticism, source checking and editorial independence are needed more than ever when you are able to hear an entire crowd at once.

The use of twitter is also growing to cover conflicts like this - I find it really interesting just how far newspapers are now going in using twitter as a source (and verifying afterwards). Look at all the twitter refs in this live feed. [1]

Web images/video of conflict, and message boards such as this one have become the new battleground in establishing what the world thinks about a conflict, and techniques of manipulating them with false comments, hacking and false information are growing more sophisticated - RT was hacked today [2], and some protests have been reported as fake [3].

I have no position on the conflict that I'd like to share as I don't know enough about it, but an informed public is more essential than ever if the world is on the edge of war.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/02/ukraine-warns-r...

[2] https://twitter.com/RT_com/statuses/439981255052898304

[3] https://twitter.com/howardamos/status/440128242620825600

Ask HN: Are there any HN readers on Crimea and can tell us what's going on?

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