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Posted by u/jacquesm 4 years ago
Tell HN: If You Are in Russia
Every Russian citizen and every Russian company that is currently relying on businesses in the West such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and so on for hosting, communications, connectivity and other services should expect those services to be cut off at some point in the near future, and plan accordingly. This also goes for stuff deeply integrated into services in your home country that you have come to rely on, which may stop to function.

Regardless, you won't be able to pay for any of these services at the next billing period so they will be terminated one way or another.

Back up your stuff, move your service while you can or you risk losing everything, this is not a drill.

Understand that the level at which this is currently playing out means that it could very well happen that governments will sanction businesses in the West that continue to work with and do business with Russian entities, businesses or individuals.

Some may decide to do this unilaterally for reasons all their own, some may give you warnings, some won't. Contrary to how these things normally play out the speed with which sanctions are being enacted and their severity should not be underestimated. Effectively threatening the world with nuclear annihilation has put the pressure on in a way that I have never seen before, leading to a degree of unity that is unique and which will speed up the process of ordering and implementing these sanctions to unprecedented levels.

Use the time while you have it.

If you are a private individual from a Western country get out while you can, even if that means a detour via Dubai or China. This could very well get ugly and you don't want to get caught in a country where lots of people are being made to believe that you and/or your country of origin are the cause for their hardship. Waiting it out is a risk you probably can not afford. Some Western governments have already ordered their citizens out of Russia.

I hope sincerely that all of this will be behind us soon and in a way that minimizes bloodshed on both sides, but I especially wish that for the defenders, who had no agency at all.

cf141q5325 · 4 years ago
You might want to check stuff like virtual office service, incorporation in an EU country, they start really cheap, as well as getting a VPS to bounce from. And stuff like Electronic Money Institutes for at least some really basic banking.

Fair warning though, some of these things look rather shady so use some common sense and be careful with your local legislation (See MrDisposables response)

edit: To elaborate on the last part see what happened in Kazakhstan recently. Their outage lasted luckily only shortly but you might not have to think about only western sanction but also Russias distaste for VPNs as well as the possibility for having your internet cut. Sure Kazakhstan is a lot smaller in terms of internet infrastructure, but there didnt seem to have been a way around their shutdown. You are then only left with satellite as well as maybe coverage from the neighboring countries. Both getting really expensive with a devaluing currency and at high threat of sanctions.

MrDisposable · 4 years ago

  > "incorporation in an EU country"
Illegal, due to the "КИК" law, and, if I remember correctly, punishable by a heavy yearly fine (about $50K ath the current exchange rate).

  > "Electronic Money Institutes for at least some really basic banking"
Outgoing transfers to foreign banks and electronic money institutions are now illegal, due to the yesterday's order that forbids Russian residents to transfer money to their own accounts abroad.

inglor_cz · 4 years ago
Interesting.

JetBrains, s.r.o., producers of IntelliJ (and a bunch of other IDEs such as Android Studio, PhpStorm and CLion) are incorporated in the Czech Republic, but in practice, all the development is done in Russia.

piker · 4 years ago
> Outgoing transfers to foreign banks and electronic money institutions are now illegal, due to the yesterday's order that forbids Russian residents to transfer money to their own accounts abroad.

Break this law if you can. Weigh the probability of being prosecuted in the mass of others breaking these laws versus the probability of facing real hardship from the economic sanctions. Doubly true if you have a family you're taking care of.

cf141q5325 · 4 years ago
Thank you! Do you know if its only incorporation in EU countries? I am not quite sure about globally, but since Canadian and US Limiteds are likely out of the question as well that would (have been?) Hong Kong then?

For the banking, is that transactions out of the country or any transaction, so also from money you get from out of Russia? I was more looking through the sanction perspective

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kragen · 4 years ago
Is it also illegal to buy Bitcoin?
madaxe_again · 4 years ago
Sweet. I would recommend checking on stuff like “do I know how to grow and harvest potatoes” and “ensure I have firewood and a wood burning stove for heating”. These will be much more useful for survival than a virtual office space.
cf141q5325 · 4 years ago
Yes, hierarchy of needs. But not loosing your livelihood makes the other problems easier to deal with. And like OP said, the time window is closing fast, some of that might not be possible in the future. Having pointers to potential problems and solutions can be helpful and save time. Even if its just by being able to rule them out fast.
Cthulhu_ · 4 years ago
That's cool and all, but you need to have a house outside of the city for a lot of that as well.

Mind you, thanks to the rise of remote working - and virtual office spaces, I guess, begrudgingly, although I'm confident those are aimed at extroverts that need to see people and wave their arms and stuff - living in a city is no longer a requirement for working at companies you want to.

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Svoka · 4 years ago
I hope this loopholes would be closed and Russian economy crumble. Stop supporting warmongers, then we can build businesses.
SPDurkee · 4 years ago
Are any countries accepting refuges from Russia that seek asylum? I know some Russians that are wholly against their Government's actions. I hope some provisions are being made to allow those who wish escape to do so...
ChuckNorris89 · 4 years ago
>Are any countries accepting refuges from Russia that seek asylum?

This is an important topic. Some EU countries like Czechia are even blocking visas for Russian citizens now and I think this will be a trend in other EU countries.

AFAIK, since Russia is the aggressor here and is (on paper) a democratic country (but not really), then its citizens are not considered yet victims of the war, and are most likely not falling under the rules of refugee status, unless they can clearly prove that the Russian government is a threat to their life, which would be a bit difficult (like if you're in political opposition to Putin).

I honestly don't envy the Russian people now. They're forced into a conflict they don't want to be in, and are suffering the consequences.

qnsi · 4 years ago
CNN finds that twice as many Russians believe it would be right for Moscow to use military force to prevent Kyiv from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as say it would be wrong.

One out of every two Russians (50%) says it would be right, while only a quarter (25%) say it would be wrong. The other quarter (25%) are unsure, according to the survey.

But the poll also found that more Russians think it would be wrong than right to use military force “to reunite Russia and Ukraine” – two countries with a long and complicated history of being intertwined.

It’s a close call, but 43% of Russians said use of military force against Ukraine to join it to Russia would be wrong, while 36% said it would be right. (The rest of the respondents said they didn’t know if it would be right or wrong.)

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-uk...

koonsolo · 4 years ago
> They're forced into a conflict they don't want to be in, and are suffering the consequences.

Ukrainians are also forced into a conflict they don't want. Unfortunately, it's up to both the Ukrainians and Russians to do something about it, not Ukrainians alone.

The Ukrainians clearly made their decision. Now it's up to the Russian people to make theirs.

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stickfigure · 4 years ago
This is an opportunity that The West is probably going to miss for ideological reasons. We should accept Russian engineers, scientists, doctors. Don't forget that during the Soviet era, they had to build walls to keep their intellectual capital from leaving. Take them!
jxding · 4 years ago
@pwnallthethings on Twitter makes exactly this point and I find it quite convincing. Link below. If (and this seems increasingly likely) this war drags on, we should try to attract and welcome as many Russian mathematicians, scientists, and engineers as we can before Putin forbids them from travelling.

This is why I find the recent cancellation of many public Russian individuals concerning. We should be offering them citizenship (I exaggerate!), not shaming and dropping them. Rossophobia against normal Russian citizens is counterproductive.

Thread: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/14979877099686051...

goto11 · 4 years ago
In Europe you can generally only get political asylum if you are considered personally at risk of persecution. So just disagreeing with the government would not be enough.

The current refugee crisis is going to be a challenge for Europe. I think most countries would rather spend their resourcing on helping the direct victims of the war rather than Russians fleeing from the consequences of the sanctions.

kragen · 4 years ago
You're absolutely right.

Worth mentioning that even though Binance was founded by a Chinese guy and is banned in the US, they're saying they'll cooperate with sanctions. So if your savings are in Binance, maybe move them to a wallet where you hold the keys, not some server overseas.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK · 4 years ago
Binance said they will freeze accounts of sanctioned persons. Not all Russians are under sanctions, only a small subset of them.
kragen · 4 years ago
Who will be sanctioned is unpredictable. A week ago nobody was sanctioned.
ur-whale · 4 years ago
> maybe move them to a wallet where you hold the keys

Something you should be doing anyways by default, war or no war.

Self-custody is one of the pillar of what makes crypto interesting.

Exchanges, as the name implies is a place where you move your crypto temporarily to perform an exchange. Once that is done, you get your funds out.

If you leave your crypto (or fiat for that matter) on an exchange, what happens next (confiscation, hack, exchange owner runs with the money, etc ...) is the result of you ignoring this basic tenet:

Not your keys, not your coins.

kragen · 4 years ago
I agree, but this is a moment when it's especially important.
aaaaaaaaata · 4 years ago
They have a US entity.
marius_k · 4 years ago
Can we sanction Putins orgs on blockchain? Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30510973
kragen · 4 years ago
If we were looking for ways of storing and exchanging money where popular groups can confiscate the holdings of unpopular groups with impunity, we already have one; it's the banking system. We don't need a blockchain for that. It sounds like what you want is for cryptocurrencies to not exist, which is a reasonable point of view, one I held for many years.
leolevlev · 4 years ago
Not all services have local replacements, but I strongly recommend storing your backups in the ru segment. In the case of shutting down cloud providers like Google nothing would work fine for several days, and your unstable service – not a main problem for all others.

#НетВойне #РоссияНеМолчи

MrDisposable · 4 years ago

  > storing your backups in the ru segment
Or locally, on your owh HDD. It's a shame though that the HDD prices will soon become exorbitant, and a NAS would be unreachable for most folks.

carstenhag · 4 years ago
In war time you really don't have to backup tons of videos, movies, etc. A 500GB. flash drive or SD card will probably do.
godmode2019 · 4 years ago
I think its very sad normal Russian people are going to be targeted when European countries are still buying oil and gas from Russia 700million a day going straight to the war machine.

Europeans pretend to care and sanction everything except for the oil and gas that is funding that war.

There should always be a difference between government and people.

All these sanctions are harming normal people, essentially economic carpet bombing.

daminimal · 4 years ago
The reason these sanctions are harming normal people is that Europe is driving for a change in Russia that will never happen unless the people blame its own government for the situation.
the_duke · 4 years ago
It's absolutely possible, it would just come with an enormous impact on citizens and the economy.

The result would be exploding prices, shortages and rationing of gas, potentially even power cuts at night or reduced availability of power to industry.

But the EU countries could absolutely do it if they really wanted to.

But this is also a big escalation.

Energy exports are the lifeline of the Russian economy. Canada just banned crude oil imports from Russia yesterday. Without a delay Russia just stopped diplomatic relations with the country and withdrew all diplomats.

It's basically a declaration of war to them, because if it spreads and even countries like China theoretically were forced to join in, they would really collapse.

And if Russia is pushed I to a corner there's no telling what they might do.

Archelaos · 4 years ago
The US is hypocritical as well. They could reduce their excessive energy consumption and help the Europeans to replace the Russian coal, gas and oil.
fabian2k · 4 years ago
It's simply not possible to change the infrastructure that fast. Gas is used for heating, that's not optional in winter. Europe needs to build more LNG terminals (which they decided to do) and order gas from other countries that have the ability to greatly increase their output. This all takes time, but in the long run Europe will stop being as dependen on Russian gas and oil as they are now, Putin made sure of that.
zelphirkalt · 4 years ago
Surely not possible everywhere, but I have turned off the heater and am wearing 3 sweater instead, as a symbolic act and also to find out how realistic it is. We have temperatures around 5 deg C here, I think. So far I am doing fine.
skocznymroczny · 4 years ago
Western Europeans willingly made themselves dependent on gas. It was supposed to be an intermediate step for "ecological" transition away from coal. But unlike coal, which is widely available in Europe and from other countries (the coal mines may have closed in many countries, but the coal is still there), gas is hard to obtain in Europe and need to rely on a few gas countries.

When Trump criticized German dependency on gas and was slowing the construction Nord Stream 2 he was criticized and laughed at.

modo_mario · 4 years ago
>and order gas from other countries that have the ability to greatly increase their output.

Which is why the west fucked up in Syria and Russia got a great deal. Now Syria blocks gas pipeline options from Qatar at Russia's behest.

iso1631 · 4 years ago
They've had nearly a decade
kevin_thibedeau · 4 years ago
I'd bet heat pump manufacturers are ramping up for their biggest year ever.

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blablablub · 4 years ago
What are the possibilities for an average russian citizen to leave russia and start over somewhere in the west? How about visas? Does anyone know?
9214 · 4 years ago
In 2022: zero, unless you have relatives/friends from abroad who are willing to help. I'm mid-20s below-average Russian born and raised in a city with population of 19k (and declining), Ural region. Average salary here is around 200-300 USD, 400 if you are lucky.

I emmigrated in 2019 to work with an international startup in Montenegro: and ended up being ostracized and harassed by my manager from another country (won't point fingers to avoid unnecesary nationalism) on a cultural/ethnical basis; was forced to leave after a year and a half.

After that, in 2021, I was offered to come to US by a fellow colleague with Ukranian roots: worker visas were denied to Russian citizens at that point, and most of the embassies were either closed or worked in a limited capacity (also due to pandemic).

My last attempt (again in 2021) was to apply for PhD in EPHE institute of France (I have an MS degree in a programme related to medical tech, computer vision, and brain-computer interfaces): I got nothing in response.

Since then I have been holed up in my hometown. Another friend of mine proposed some time ago to come to Vietnam: but with the entire world openly opposed to my nation, I doubt that will ever happen.

fer · 4 years ago
> apply for PhD in EPHE institute of France [...] I got nothing in response.

Well, that's hardly surprising, and it's not because you're Russian, in France it's hard to get any institution to ever reply you by mail, let alone if (I guess) you wrote to them in English.

If you want to work or do a PhD in France (in English) I can offer some support and pointers for my region, you can hit me up at the email on my profile.

bigodbiel · 4 years ago
Best bet is Southeast Asia or China (but that maybe harder). SE Asians in general happen to view European issues as somewhat distant to them [1]. As such better welcomed, and where also more likely a future Russian expat community is sure to thrive.

[1] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/southeast-asia...

boruto · 4 years ago
You may not like the advice and may think it is 3rd world. but please do look at India, for a half decent developer salaries would start at 1000 USD - 2000 USD.

Most people definitely are not opposed to Russia, they are oblivious to international events.

modernpink · 4 years ago
The Russophobia that has been pouring out is lamentable. And people don't realise this will only push the Russian people further towards Putin to re-establish their pride. And the sanctions are making this even worse. This mirrors Germany's treatment with the Treaty of Versailles leading up to WWII.
hans_castorp · 4 years ago
> but with the entire world openly opposed to my nation, I doubt that will ever happen.

I think most people understand that this is Putin's war, not the war of the "Russian people". And many people I have spoken to in various demonstration against the war (in Germany), protested against Putin, not Russia. I did not see a single banner with "Stop Russia" - all referred directly to Putin.

5ESS · 4 years ago
You could always marry a foreign National to gain citizenship in that country. The going rate for a US sham marriage is about $60k.
jeffrallen · 4 years ago
It would be easier to fix your own government. General strike. They can arrest protesters, but they cannot arrest the entire working population.
nikanj · 4 years ago
"They" are also Russians. The key here would be convincing members of the police / army that they should work for the people, not Putin.
anonymousDan · 4 years ago
My brother was on the verge of traveling to Russia from Latvia recently as a tourist. Apparently you can get a bus from Riga to St Petersburg that takes a few hours. I presume you could take one in the other direction to get around the lack of flights etc, but I have no idea about visas etc.
jacquesm · 4 years ago
You can get to the border, but it will be hard to impossible to cross it legally right now.
ausudhz · 4 years ago
If the airspace of half of the world is closed for Russia how you think they can even fly?

They've sanctions that would even make it impossible for normal people to do a bank transfer in their "new" country.

tgsovlerkhgsel · 4 years ago
> If the airspace of half of the world is closed for Russia how you think they can even fly?

First flying to the other half, or taking land transport (at least for the border crossing part).

anonymousDan · 4 years ago
There are plenty of land borders, a flight isn't necessary.
makeitdouble · 4 years ago
More than being Russian, the real issue would be to be moving country amidst the pandemic. Although the every day restrictions have been lowered in many countries, they won't be quick to allow for immigration again.
niek_pas · 4 years ago
Just to add to what has already been said about money, visas, etc.: you’d also be facing the choice of leaving your family and friends behind.
TheRealNGenius · 4 years ago
Hey there, I know there are a lot of negative responses to this inquiry in the comments. I'm no expert, but I do genuinely believe that if there is a will, there is a way. I have several elder family members who chose to flee their country and become refugees in the 80's. Eventually, they found their way to the west. For anyone considering starting over elsewhere in another country, do your research, know the risks, and consider the consequences if you truly believe this is what you want.
eps · 4 years ago
An exhaustive list of visa options for IT/startup people - https://habr.com/ru/post/653587 (from few days ago, in Russian)
sirolf1 · 4 years ago
I'm trying to help a friend to get out of Russia. Someone knows where you can find information about the current options to leave the country>?
maniflames · 4 years ago
Definitely, just not right now. As far as I know most western countries have stopped taking in Russian citizens.

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jarek83 · 4 years ago
It's so bad for Russian people and companies. We generally should not give any advice to them since their rescued incomes pour money into killings of Ukraine civilians. I hope you guys could cut off from the devastating powers in your country in some way.
ev0lv · 4 years ago
>>We generally should not give any advice to them

I disagree completely. Putin's decisions aren't the decisions of everyday Russians. And the Ukranian conflict is more complicated than the single-side narratives you are fed. Giving people advice is the morally right thing to do.

roguas · 4 years ago
It is more complicated obviously. However any side that initiated military force against another country should be condemned. This should be plain and simple.

Every conflict has sides and perspectives. We should put a certain veil of "I dont care about your side anymore" once military force is used. Otherwise we promote military force as a valid response.

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throwaway3968 · 4 years ago
This is going to curb our ability to bring food on the table, let alone to organize logistics for a resistance.