My reading of their rules is that you don’t need to become a citizen. You need to have a government issued ID from the country you reside in. That seems rather simple if you are a legal resident, at least for any Western country.

In 13+ years of legal residence in Germany, I was never issued an ID.

I assume if a Russian citizen were in the same boat, the residence permit affixed to their passport would suffice, but it's not an ID card.

AFAIK, no EU country will issue a proper ID card (valid throughout the EU) to non-citizens. In Spain at least you get a special foreigners' ID card that's more or less equal within Spain. In Germany the most you can hope for is your residence permit in card form, but I was not so lucky.

> AFAIK, no EU country will issue a proper ID card (valid throughout the EU) to non-citizens.

You can find specimens of residency permit cards (for non-EU citizens) here, which are typically sufficient ID to open a bank account:

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/prado/en/search-by-document-...

> AFAIK, no EU country will issue a proper ID card (valid throughout the EU) to non-citizens. In Spain at least you get a special foreigners' ID card that's more or less equal within Spain. In Germany the most you can hope for is your residence permit in card form, but I was not so lucky.

One of the first things I had to do upon arrival in Sweden was go to Migrationsverket to get my "Uppe­hålls­till­stånds­kort": a residence card. It has your residence status on it. I also had to get a Skatteverket "Identitetskort". Both of these have been accepted as valid identification documents both within and outside of Sweden, I've had to provide scans of one or the other numerous times.

Hmm, I would be really curious to see what happens when a foreigner with an Identitetskort leaves the EU. Maybe those countries that accept an EU ID would also accept that?

I'm not sure about this but I think the German residence card, if you have one, is "ID" enough for a lot of things inside Germany, but there are still cases when you have to use your passport. I know at least one person who drives around with her residence permit and her driving license, but doesn't carry her passport regularly.

I usually carry my passport as well (though now I also have a national ID card which I think can take its place within the EU while traveling).

But I don't think that being able to travel with the thing is a requirement for it to be acceptable as an "additional photo ID" for the kinds of validation we're talking about here. Even if I can't travel with my Skatteverket or residence permit cards, they have been regularly accepted as ID verification for services based outside of Sweden. They've been sufficient when it comes to showing that I do indeed have the relevant Swedish identification documents and reside here. I think once, possibly for E-trade, this was coupled with having to provide a bill sent to my Swedish address. But that shouldn't really be a big issue either for anyone actually residing in another country.

Yeah, I can obtain an official residence confirmation in current country, sufficient to e.g. open a bank account and such, and I don't think it is the same as a "photo ID" (edit: as in, I still use my Russian passport to identify myself in routine life here).

To think that a couple of months ago I was hoping businesses wouldn't target Russians based on passport as an extra mile in enacting sanctions. Now the only options increasingly are seeking asylum or transferring my existing customers and moving to Russia to seek work there.

I can 100% assure you that every EU country issues both residence cards and drivers licenses to non-citizens.

What about drivers licenses? Surely they issue those to foreigners and it should be considered a valid form of government ID?

Oh. I don't drive but it might be a possibility. Thanks for the pointer!

German drivers licenses do not serve as government IDs. Only found that out when I was told I don't need a new license after changing my last name.

Europeans who drive normally carry their national ID card, and their driver's license. This is enough to drive out of, and back into, the EU across some borders.

Where did you come from then? Presumably an EU country?

In 2019 "GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20552797 where the top comment is "US Sanctions should not affect internet services"

Last year "GitHub is fully available in Iran" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585 In the blog post Github says "We want every developer to be able to collaborate on GitHub, and we are working with the US government to secure similar licenses for developers in Crimea and Syria as well."

The fact is that currently Github's limitation does not preclude committing & collaboration, just paid features (sponsoring, copilot). For the time being Microsoft lawyers are OK with it, but not sure for how long.

To clarify, I did not blame Microsoft.

IIRC, US government sanctions target specific businesses and individuals in Russia, not all residents of Russia. (They do, and for reasons I cannot fathom, target all residents of Crimea and Ukrainian territories under control of separatists.)

Since no one can truly vet every single user for involvement with sanctioned entities, in the end it is about specific businesses and their legal teams, how they interpret the sanctions.

Some businesses chose to preventively block anyone they suspected of physically being in Russia. They, however, accepted a proof of residence (which those who were lucky to escape and live in another country could generally produce). Microsoft, in what to me personally is the first, doesn't. If this becomes the mainstream interpretation of sanctions globally, I imagine many will have to give up and move back to Russia.

If you share liberal values with the rest of us, you need to emigrate. If not, well, perhaps you can create a github clone for Russia.

Not everyone can immigrate. This is not a "simply do this" option.

It took weeks to get my partner that was simply visiting family out of Russia. They had the full support of my resources and my employers HR team assisting in relocation of families with members in Russia - and it was still an expensive, time-consuming, and stressful process.

Emigrate, not immigrate. It may seem nitpicky, but it really isn't because those two are polar opposites.

Seeing ignorant comments like this, it’s not hard to understand why so much of the world is sick of Western hubris.

It's a simplistic view allright, but then so is yours. Not all Russians are kremlin-dwelling villains, and not all westerners are post-colonial finger-waggers.

What Github does is no doubt for business and regulatory reasons, but also moral: after decades of downright malicious behavior on the international stage (not to mention the preceding 70 years of pure evil), Russia finally sunk so low in the world's esteem that doing business with or within Russia has now become "not done"; it's seen as enabling evil to continue. Even businesses that are not affected by the sanctions now hesitate to do business there (shipping, for example).

It's unjust for ordinary Russians to get caught under these sanctions, and is perilously close to collective punishment, but Russia simply, finally went too far.

I agree that a degree of blame carries over, but the impact of measures like this (that affect ordinary Russians who left the country due to political disagreement) could be the opposite of desired. Not many Russians will be seen as eligible for asylum, regardless of their political views, and barring that the remaining options for software engineers working remotely are slowly narrowing down to returning back to the country and working to benefit its industry. Those who have families would be affected most strongly.

Even being a liberal myself, I agree that it's a mistake to push liberalism on cultures that are not interested in liberalism. This has put completely unnecessary strain on the relations between the west and places like Russia and the Middle East.

What is non-negotiable on the other hand is that whoever you are and wherever you are, the rule of law must be respected. You may correctly point out that not even the west is perfect in this regard, but then go be better than the west. Be the place we should want to emigrate to, not the other way around.

This is true, however, Russia was moving towards a liberal direction all by itself in the 80s and 90s. That positive progress was stopped deliberately by Putin, after he rose to power with not a small amount of nefarious actions.

You might say that a truly liberal nation would have managed to stop him nevertheless. Could be, but things like this often hang by very thin threads. E.g. as we know, the American democracy was very nearly destroyed in the previous presidential elections. It could have very easily gone south.

Russian hubris, on the other hand, is awesome and everybody loves it!

At least they didn't say "just overthrow your government", I've seen that one plenty...

Freedom is never granted, it is earned and paid for at the highest price [0].

What's their excuse?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre

The excuse? Probably the same as during the times of USSR.

Could you give some examples of kleptocratic dictatorships that have fallen due to a revolution bottom-up, as opposed to external force or a change of power at the top, for inspiration?

One example I can come up with myself is Ukraine, but in that case US explicitly supported the change and its representative was present on the ground during critical time*. If US were willing to do the same for Russia, I'm sure this could make a difference.

* https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-victoria-nuland-wades-into-u...

While the average person does theoretically have the option of revolution, it's realistically a very difficult and dangerous thing to even attempt to arrange, so most people -- in any country -- would watch their leaders do many terrible things before they would even consider such an option.

The US invaded and occupied a sovereign state based on outright lies less than 20 years ago, and I doubt even the strongest critics of that war were seriously considering a revolution.

Expecting some programmer in Russia to do it, and punishing them with sanctions for not doing it, is frankly insane, and since the leaders implementing these sanctions must know that, it's dishonest too.

Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning did something pretty revolutionary in that war. Has any russian done anything comparable?

You're attempting to reframe the conversation away from "overthrow your government" to "release embarrassing information about your government". I hope you can see that these things are wildly different.

The US treatment of both Assange and Manning no doubt serve as a potent warning to anyone considering a similar leak in the future. Russians have also had plenty of similar warnings.

From the start of this thread:

> If you share liberal values with the rest of us, you need to emigrate. If not, well, perhaps you can create a github clone for Russia.

Even after clearing the enormous hurdle of emigration, Russian citizens face discrimination in opening bank accounts, getting jobs, starting businesses and so on. Even GitHub will likely force them to prove somehow that they are no longer tied to Russia, which may be very difficult depending on where they emigrated to and how they got there.

The treatment of ordinary people who had nothing to do with the war this way is against all the values we claim to hold, and ultimately damages the credibility of the countries complicit in it.

> You're attempting to reframe the conversation away from "overthrow your government" to "release embarrassing information about your government". I hope you can see that these things are wildly different.

Yes, I did do that. My bad.

> Even after clearing the enormous hurdle of emigration, Russian citizens face discrimination in opening bank accounts, getting jobs, starting businesses and so on.

I’m sure this is not terribly different from the checks that the western world would (and, I say, very well should!) do on every citizen immigrating from a hostile country. It’s not a perfect situation, but nothing in this whole situation is exactly perfect.

Did you read about the Russian spy that was caught trying to infiltrate the International Criminal Court? He had been working on a cover story since 2010. That’s the level of the threat that we need to be prepared to thwart.

Of course, this diligence should be handled by the authorities and once a person passes all those checks, they should be considered just like anyone else.

That popular revolutions rarely work in this day and age, especially when the majority of the participants don't know how to wield a gun? In the Colonial Era, every able-bodied New England male knew how to at least, hunt and shoot. Every successful "revolution" in the modern era has depended on whose side the Army was on. Why? Because the Army is composed of people who's sole purpose is to get good at using guns.

Wait, then why are most modern western government trying to impose stricter gun control measures?

Assuming the person you were responding to is accurate, one reason would be to prevent a revolution that kicks those in power out.

Why would any government encourage its citizens to get better at revolution?

They impose stricter measures In a heavily misguided attempt at trading rights for security. Suffice it to say it's not really an effective solution.

>That popular revolutions rarely work in this day and age

I'm curious if you have any list of revolutions that have succeeded and failed. I can't really think of any in recent times. I don't think revolutions in Africa or the Middle East to be a good comparison and those are the only ones I can think of.

Is there a reason that the Arab Spring isn't a good example?

There are a few reasons.

1. The culture is different. It may work, but I feel like Europeans are a bit more passive. As long as things aren't too bad they will let the status quo remain.

2. The Middle East / Africa had a lot of weapons that Europe doesn't. In some areas they had CIA training as well (albeit a few decades ago in some area).

3. Several of the Arab Spring required the West to get involved to aid in the overthrow. It is possible the CIA or others had to help in the others. There is no guarantee the West would be willing to get involved to oust Putin especially since he has nukes. Seeing how the West is mostly providing monetary aid and surveillance in Ukraine and not direct military support we could possibly see the same in Russia.

4. I think the Russian surveillance state is better than the Arab Spring countries. Might not make a huge impact, but it could stop things before it got started.

I am curious, since I don't keep up with the Middle East a huge amount, how many of the countries are in a better state now then they were 10 years ago? Didn't ISIS take over part of Syria? Having a successful revolution doesn't mean anything if a worse government gets in power.

Perhaps I'm just being cynical. I just don't think it is quite comparable.

> Seeing how the West is mostly providing monetary aid and surveillance in Ukraine and not direct military support we could possibly see the same in Russia.

Indeed, I'm sure Western support would be forthcoming if a movement gained traction — but the effective surveillance state and history of severe suppression make that exceedingly unlikely. The risk is enormous and the likelihood of success tiny.

Your point about liberal values shared by the rest of you is nice, but does not jive with reality to be honest.

It's funny how many US and EU-based apologists of the invasion (blaming NATO for the war, etc.) I encounter and have to enter flamewars with to condemn kleptocracy and defend democracy. Their position is not shared by me or any of my Russian friends, but there we are.

As to your point regarding creating a Github clone in Russia, I'm fairly sure it's in line with Putin's agenda.

Have you managed to convince anyone of your point of view by entering into a flame war with them?

It's hard to know for sure, but I hope over time it helps. The trickiest part is that many of them seem to have given up on their governments and doubt democracy, so I have to remind them that even imperfect democracy is still better than an unchecked kleptocratic dictatorship. They also argue about US being a much more prolific warmonger historically, but that's more or less besides the point.

Indeed it is, and it's a commonly used conversation-stopper: whataboutism never solves anything.

But my question was rhetorical: you can't convince anyone by flaming them. Personally I believe in calmly stating facts, with thorough analysis and logic, and lots of empathy for the other person's point of view.

Maybe flamewar wasn't the right term. The mediums where those conversations take place are meme-rich and generally flamey, but I don't think it prevents me from stating facts.

Psychological and sociological results seem to disagree wildly with what you said there.

I'm not in Russia though. Just that citizenships and such stuff for us regular folks take a while in most countries...

This is the correct response.

Westerners also need to lobby their government to grant temporary asylum to western-aligned smart Russians.

They need to emigrate because we need more good people here and Putin’s ilk does not deserve any of them. Of course, the ideal solution would be for those people to make Russia a better place, but this thread and many others seem to suggest that such a thing is not possible there.

Which is obviously bullshit. Of course a revolution is possible. ”They’ll just kill everyone”. Right. Their previous revolution saw 7-12 million casualties. I’m certain that Putin would fall with a far easier struggle —- his story is far less powerful than what Lenin et al brought forth.

The only significant thing he has is strength, mostly in the form of nukes and mobstery. Against a real internal uprising, that is nothing. You cannot fight your own people with nukes, and nobody respects a crime boss when their luck starts running out.