Given all of the insanity over the past few days, the countless threads on WSO about the war and theoreticals, I thought it would be important to
- let the community know that WSO is built and maintained 100% by Ukrainian developers. We have a team of 5 currently all displaced from their homes l, many with young children.
- encourage the community to show support and empathy for Ukraine. They are fighting hard but they also need our support.
I know we've introduced sanctions, but what about swift? Why is that not happening now? Given my limited knowledge of geopolitical dynamics, what else can we do as a community to help the Ukrainian people during this scary time?
Thank you,
Patrick
Ps - lead developer saying the two ways below likely best for now...
Donations to Ukrainian army: https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank…
Proven volunteers: https://www.facebook.com/backandalive/posts/22319…
Ding ding on the SWIFT comment. I wish our Ukrainian friends the best of luck and sincerely hope Europe pulls it together and backs them. Happy to donate to them as well personally.
That sounds like fear mongering... Look at the percentage of settlements in usd and euro in image below.
Will it cause a very extreme spike in oil prices? Yes, but maybe we can use diplomacy and help European energy shortages in other ways to make this a reality and imposing sanctions with real teeth.
Looks like the important Russian banks are going to get kicked out of swift. My girl uses a smaller fintech style bank so I don't think it will hit her. But it will be far-ranging and hit them hard for sure.
I dont think the dollar is the most important thing here lol
Hi guys, I'm the lead developer on WSO.
On Thursday I woke up in a new reality. I’ll never forget a few things. My wife’s eyes when she’s woken up and heard about explosions in our city. How my 1.5 years son was giving me a toy car to play with him and I was scared as fuck and couldn’t explain him why dad can’t play now. How I was running in circles trying to gather things picking up them and leaving again. Millions of people woke up on Thursday in the same reality. I hope that no-one in the world would experience those feelings ever.
For anyone who looks for a ways to help Ukraine:
Donate Ukrainian army: https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi
Or volunteers (proven ones for years): https://www.facebook.com/backandalive/posts/2231955700295188
Thanks.
Thanks for your time and energy to WSO. Prayers to you and your family to get through this crisis unharmed.
Are you going to evacuate?
My question as well. Curious why more people haven’t left. I’ve seen news reports mentioning 100k people moving into surrounding countries, which sounds like a lot, but in a country with a population of 30mm is a fraction of a percent. Would’ve thought a ton more would’ve been evacuating. That just sounds like an incredible small amount. (This is an honest question - generally curious why more people haven’t gtfo)
In Ukraine we don’t say “Evacuate”, we say “russian warship, go fuck yourself”.
Stay strong man, I can't imagine what you're going through. Thanks for all you do for this community.
Obligatory fuck Putin.
This his horrible, particularly as a father. Most of us are on your side and I hope you and your family stay safe and things return to some sense of normalcy (whatever that might mean) sooner than later. Your in my thoughts...godspeed!
Hey guys, thank you for your support.
I don't have time to read everything but in general the wso devs are safe for now.
It is easy to be brave when you don't take part in combats and your city isn't bombed.
So don't take my words about evacuation wrong, I've taken my family to a safer place and returned to my city in case any hands will be needed there, but it is quiet here for now (except air alarms from time to time). I'm still working on WSO as it is the way to get distracted from reading the news.
However not everyone in WSO devs team was as lucky as me.
Our mobile app devs team was located in Kharkiv. Second biggest city in Ukraine (1.5M of people), rigch and beutiful city.
Russian-speaking city with pro-russian (don't think that this is appropriate to say now as they fight as lions) major close to russian border.
This city is being bombed now, I think you can easily find videos of artilery strikes on the residential areas or missle hit the central square today. Civilians died, including kids. I wouldn't post videos here but I think they are easy to find. Russians kill people who speaks the same language, who look the same, who grown reading the same books, listened to the same music and shared a lot of history.
Mobile app team evacuated but I haven't talked with them since Thursday. Their families still can be in Kharkiv.
We also have dev from Kiev.
My brother is still in Kiev.
Don't know how to finish this without being too dramatic (I'm afraid I've already was). We are scared, but we will continue to fight. We have a reason for that fight. And we appreciate any support.
Here is a good article on the geopolitical dynamics and why sanctions are much weaker than it should be. Putin just timed the invasion very well, knowing that the western political leaders are struggling with several issues only Russian natural resources can solve.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/26/russia-ukraine-invasion-timeline/
The reality is western democracies would have to be far more united to take on this invasion, but the exact opposite is true. You can even tell from how the majority of WSO comments blame this on liberals, cancel culture, affirmative action, etc. or somehow turning this into Chinese people eating dogs.
The Ukrainian people decided they no longer wanted to be slaves of Putin. They didn't want their natural resources to be pillaged by oligarchs, and they wanted to control their own futures and the futures of the children. When there's a slave revolt, you kill off the leaders to make an example for the rest, which is what Putin is doing. As you can see, there's a lot of support, even on WSO, for Putin to reclaim his slaves.
Best example of this was that one comment on how white people in western Europe are dying because they hate themselves (woke culture), and that Putin will take much better care of Ukraine than the West. This is somehow the most liked comment on that Russia thread.
The Ukrainians are fighting like lions. Hoping everyone can provide meaningful assistance sooner rather than later.
GoFundMe page for the displaced developers? Would like to help out.
I am glad you let the community know Patrick. Know a few companies who's dev teams are also in Ukraine and in the same scenario. People need to remember how connected our world is these days.
As for SWIFT, energy sanctions etc. You are fully correct they are just excuses by the west to not want to face the conflict head on. That said the bravery Zel and his people shown this weekend we could see a much different reaction come Monday. France/Germany are both sending direct aid now and SWIFT restrictions are coming. We need to keep the momentum going.
do you really wish for an open conflict and potential for a nuclear war? you obviously liberal pos
I'm sorry our leaders fed you false promises that lead to this. Best of luck. I have working ties/friends on both sides, recommending to stay out of it as much as possible.
You are deranged.
Because I don't want to encourage him to waste his life in a pointless fratricidal war?
It's because they know you well enough.
I’m obsessed about what’s going on in your country and find your people to be brave and will prevail.
Thank you guys for all you do and God bless. Keep us updated.
This is great, thanks for the links to donate. One question I have, though: do you mean that the only developers working on the site are Ukrainian? That sounds like an interesting coincidence that the devs all happen to have the same ethnicity/citizenship.
Yeah I’m sure that will really scare Russia…
Put up a pride flag, that ought to get Russia running for the hills in fear
Is there any way to help the African citizens blocked from fleeing ukrania by polish and ukranian authorities???
This is for Nigerians but it might point you in the right direction:
Damilare / ViF su Twitter: "https://t.co/TAfT6i3uUq Contact number for all the Volunteers who are giving safe passage from Ukraine to asylum #AfricansInUkraine https://t.co/Sw89npQAdX" / Twitter
Thank you very much
Sanctions don't really work, they only end up hurting people who have nothing to do with this.
The challenge with the SWIFT sanctions is that they are easily countered. This is far from the first time that we've threatened Russia with SWIFT - it's been done multiple times over the last 10-ish years. My guess is that they already have a workaround for it and can already live without it. So I support this sanction but I'm pessimistic that it will have some significant impact.
So I think that the world needs to think beyond SWIFT and what else we can do that won't be easily countered.
Yeah doesn't make sense that Russia wouldn't anticipate SWIFT sanctions. It will no doubt accelerate the shift away from the USD which we're seeing having occurred for decades to the benefit of the yuan. EU as an economic power is becoming almost completely irrelevant aside from Germany (maybe UK). Who's rising? India / China / SouthEast Asia. China in particular is doubling down on manufacturing & so this means that yuan will by default continue to take share
The U.S. is making itself less relevant (outside of the Americas) with the current actions
I believe they are now negotiating.
No way Putin is going to fold now. He will double down. Russia's plan A was a decapitating strike without too much collateral damage but now they are going for plan B aka Grozny. Negotiations are to keep the countries on the fence like China, India, Brazil, and ones in the Middle East from turning against him.
Realistically sanctions don't work. They do hurt Russian economy and its citizens as well as the West. Will they stop Putin from continuing with the war? Obviously not. They can put him into a bunker from where he will have only two exits: suicide just like Hitler did or use nukes. I suspect he is getting older and may be sick. That's why he started his gamble. He will take over Ukraine at some point. Only naive people will continue fighting against him. The smart ones will escape to Poland while they can and Russia allows it. Both Putin and Zelensky are shitbags. One wants to invade a sovereign state because of muh security. Another doesn't want to accept Russian peace conditions because muh political ambition. I hope both will get their rope but not gonna happen. P will continue to be a dictator for 20 more years. Z will find a cushy spot thanks to his connection with Biden and Democrats.
Hi jericho_1, you downvoted my comments so I decided to reply.
You make a point, but you are missing one big thing: russian people don't realize that Russia is in war. You underestimate the wounds that word "war" caused for russia in the past century. Their propaganda says that it is "special operation" that is aimed against Ukrainian military.
I read their news and no-one is aware about their losses or care about Ukrainian kids born in basements. They like "hey, why my credit card isn't working? why I can't watch movie, what is happening?" while we hide in basements.
Russia was doing as much as possible to force people to not care about politics. It still works but sanctions may change that.
I have no illusion of changing your mind, but this comment is for anyone who is in doubts. There are no goals that russia can achieve here. They can capture cities, they can set new goverment or do whatever else, but no-one will accept that. People on the East of Ukraine (pro-russian region) stop tanks with bare hands, they take Ukrainian flags and go to russian military blocking roads (should I post a video?). They can start shooting civilians blocking them (but keep in mind that those civilians from the east are speaking russian and have relatives in russia) but it will cause only more rage and more desperate resitance. And even they capture the whole country the Grozny way it will be ruined. Ukrainian population is 1/3 of Russian. They'll need to supply ruined region in some way. They barely could do that with Chechnya that is tens of times smaller than Ukraine. And one more thing, Chechnya was a tragedy for russians. Putin has got his popularity by ending that war.
I know that you see that as a football match where one team wins and second loses. But that's a bit different. Military power isn't the only thing that matters.
This is assuming Russia wants to capture Ukraine. There are certainly some parts he wants but I don't think Putin cares if the rest remain a country or a wasteland as long as he prevents it from joining NATO. It is very different from Chechnya as Chechyna is part of Russia, Russia has to rebuild it.
I certainly hope that there will be enough domestic pressure for Putin to stop.
p.s. re jericho_1's point. You can definitely make an argument being fed weapons but not troops from the rest of Europe to fight Russia is really in the interest of Ukraine.
Look I don't care about the linguistic aspect as much as you do and I don't read Russian or Ukrainian or Western news. I don't care what Putin or Zelenski want. I can only see bloody war that could be stopped if Zelenski or Putin had balls. Neither one wants to give up. This is the reason why Ukraine got 1kk people running to Poland. You know who wants this war? West. They supply Ukraine with all the weapons you want as long as you fight Russia. Russians die, Ukrainians die. US and Western Europe win as long as NATO soldiers aren't affected. You live in illusion if you think Ukraine can stand to Russian military. Giving weapons to civilians doesnt help the situation. It is a bloodbath.
I remember Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 to fight some nazi. I'm not that familiar with Azov battalion but concerned why Ukrainians support them. Can you talk more about them and why they use Nazi symbols like swastika etc?
https://ca-news-forum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/2022-03-03_622051eb7a755_FBWontCensorNeo-NaziAzovBattalion.jpg
This is not a "both sides are bad" case. Putin is not negotiating peace in good faith; he will only stop the onslaught unless "denazification" is achieved, which is absurd because Ukraine is not run by Nazis.
Not nazis? You are crazy. They openly use swastikas and SS symbols. All nazis have to be burn to the ground. I bet you are denying Holocaust as well.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/03/02/what-is-ukraines-azov-battalion/
Ukraine's dalliance with neo-Nazi forces: What the US and NATO do not want to talk about (opindia.com)
Ukraine's Nazi problem is real, even if Putin's 'denazification' claim isn't (nbcnews.com)
Azov fighters are Ukraine's greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat | Ukraine | The Guardian
Drumpfy, the liberal equivalent of a holocaust denier. Get off your high horse, Nazi apologist.
This is about most likely actually about WATER. After the anexation of Crimea, Ukraine built a dam across the main freswater source in Crimea and cut access so significantly that 90% of the regions agriculture has completely dried up. The Russians already bombed the damn. Russia had spent billions on ground water projects in Crimea over the past 8 years and that has amounted to basically nothing.
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