More a case of “confidently lying”
More likely a case of “confidently being paid to lie”
A lot of useful idiots do it for free
I used to lurk on r/AskRussia, and in the run up to the invasion most of the Russians there (who may or may not be representative of Russians in general, I dunno) were confidently saying that there was no way Russia was going to invade Ukraine, it was unthinkable they’d do that to their brothers and neighbours, and it was just Western propaganda. When the invasion happened they were in complete shock, you could tell that many of them felt completely ashamed of their government, at the lies, and that they’d believed them.
As an ethnic russian living in Germany this was exactly the way I felt. But afaik this sadly does not reflect the general russian population. I think people have always less problems to accept more lies than to accept that they have been fooled.
We all need to remember online spaces like reddit generally lean younger and more liberal. We never really get a holistic view of any situation. Just as people on reddit would say “we didn’t want trump” and the response was “clearly over half of you did” from europeans, this is another example of how we have to realize we are in our own little bubble in these online communities.
That’s somewhat debatable, though, considering Trump won by electoral votes but lost the popular vote by about 2%. The percentage of votes cast by eligible voters was also only something like 57-60%, so it’s more like 27.5% of eligible voters directly voted for Trump (if I calculated that correctly).
This tweet was cottage cheese when it was posted.
Russians have a slur specifically for Ukrainians. They couldn’t even tell half of the countries in Europe. But they’ll go out of their way to go after Ukraine.
I’m Ukrainian myself and know Russian and I don’t know of any slur. TIL, I guess
Edit: *didn’t. I have since been informed
I’m sure you’ve heard of “khokhol”.
Actually the first time I heard that. Then again, I live in Germany and haven’t been exposed to cursing too much. Damn.
Americans always seem to think that there is some kind of pan-ethinc bond between people in completely different counties, as if we weren’t all killing each other until that whole “world wars” thing.
That’s what happens when you sacrifice your cultural identity for “white American”.
