Look, RIPE have been neutral in every conflict so far in their lifetime, as far as I'm aware, and for communications rather than payment services it is actually an advantage to have a neutral to keep the lines of communication open. It also lets us talk to them and keep the flow of actual news into Russia going, rather than lock them in a room with their own propaganda.
I understand the desire to throw everything including the kitchen sink at Russia, but remember that sanctions are primarily directed against the ordinary public of the country, and that cutting Russia off from RIPE is not going to stop their military.
(The sheer suddenness of the flip on Russia, and its scale, surprises me. We didn't do it when they shot down a passenger jet, or carried out several terrorist attacks with chemical weapons outside the country, or when they supported Assad in Syria, or even the previous time Russia invaded Ukraine. Perhaps if something more graduated had been done earlier we wouldn't be in this position)
> (The sheer suddenness of the flip on Russia, and its scale, surprises me. We didn't do it when they shot down a passenger jet, or carried out several terrorist attacks with chemical weapons outside the country, or when they supported Assad in Syria, or even the previous time Russia invaded Ukraine. Perhaps if something more graduated had been done earlier we wouldn't be in this position)
All those things were awful, but relatively small and often confusing compared to the undeniable full-scale invasion they're doing now. Previously they took small bites, usually through proxies. Now they're taking a big bite, directly.
> (The sheer suddenness of the flip on Russia, and its scale, surprises me. We didn't do it when they shot down a passenger jet, or carried out several terrorist attacks with chemical weapons outside the country, or when they supported Assad in Syria, or even the previous time Russia invaded Ukraine. Perhaps if something more graduated had been done earlier we wouldn't be in this position)
Back then I was shocked that one can just invade and annex part of a country in Europe and virtually nothing happens. Sure, a few minor sanctions here and there, but really nothing that would have an effect.
Obviously, the idea was to to appease Russia and try to involve it economically in order to ultimately have it become more liberal and democratic. If you look at Merkels actions in particular, she was using that exact playbook that the US had been using after WW2 in Europe and Germany in particular to great success, but failed in China, and also Russia.
So I think all previous actions have to be seen under this strategy. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and direct lies on the diplomatic level before that ("just an exercise, won't invade, calling troops back" etc.) forced the West to concede that appeasement and economic inter-dependency as a strategy failed and that if Putin's Russia succeeds with the invasion in Ukraine, Eastern Europe will be next. So the strategy changed to "Putin cannot be allowed to win in Ukraine".
> Back then I was shocked that one can just invade and annex part of a country in Europe and virtually nothing happens
We allowed them to slice that particular bit of salami, to warm the frog a little; I guess they thought it was a green light to slice further. Heck, their plan came very very close to working; the assumption was that they could land commandos at Kyiv airport, kill Zelensky, install a puppet (as previously) and then muddy the waters in the news (as previously) while the new president of Ukraine thanks them for liberating his country from the Nazis.
(this is a statement of what I believe their plan to have been, not an endorsement!)
This is the right answer. Communication with those on the other side is a good thing. Yea they can get their message out, but so can dissidents on their side of the border. Those on our side can also get news and information in to those that don't support the war.
>The sheer suddenness of the flip on Russia, and its scale, surprises me
What do you mean by this? My impression is that most western countries responded mostly the same way: with more sanctions. Are you referring to all the voluntary actions taken by NGOs/corporations?
A bit of both, really: more sanctions, going all the way up to Iran / North Korea levels, for a country much more interlinked with the Western world. Contrasting to the lukewarm response to all the previous incidents. The NGOs have snowballed as well - FIFA! The notoriously money-driven international organisation that's holding the World Cup in a Gulf monarchy in a stadium built by possible forced labor has suddenly got a conscience? The IOC, who let Russia back in after a doping scandal under a weird compromise?
Ukrainian pilots are in Poland right now taking delivery of fighter jets. That's amazingly fast.
I think the key is that the Ukraine is a democracy. Quite recently it had a president backed by oligarchs, voted that one out, counted the votes fairly, and he left office (not without some pushing and shoving, but he left). That makes this like Hitler's attack on the Czech, not like shooting down a plane or behaving atrociously in Yemen.
RIPE are based in the Netherlands and are subject to EU law, as a subsequent email from their Managing Director makes clear [1]:
> Our staff are currently reviewing the latest EU sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. A reminder on our process: If we have reason to believe that a member is subject to EU sanctions, we freeze their membership in accordance with our published procedures. Sanctioned members are unable to request new IP resources or submit transfer requests. However, we do not de-register their existing resources or terminate their Standard Service Agreement (SSA).
If the EU want RIPE to vary from this policy, then the EU can presumably instruct RIPE to do so, in the same way as SWIFT has been instructed to stop transacting with some Russian banks.
If RIPE took action in a case like this without receiving an instruction from the EU, that would set a pretty poor precedent.
This is in contrast to what ukraine has been requesting, which is for ICANN to drop .ru from root servers, and for RIPE to deallocate IP address space.
I strongly support a universal terrestrial communications protocol. In many ways, that's not the internet of today - but it's the internet that will be.
Have courage for principles in the face of an overwhelming preference cascade - they will serve you (and your spirit) better in the long run than retreating exactly when they matter.
If they took a more critical approach to Russia, what would that look like?
I’m skeptical of neutrality to some extent when you have a war of choice by a despotic country invading a democracy…. but I’m not sure what getting involved looks like for every organization.
They would probably stop serving anything related to the Russian government and military, but hopefully not consumers or companies, unless said companies (like military) end up on a list of companies under sanctions.
The correct decision, and the same should have applied to SWIFT.
It's one thing for countries to ban their citizens, banks, etc from accessing Russia and vice versa, and putting infrastructure in place to enforce that.
It's something else to cut Russia off from global communication networks. Now, more than ever, we need to communicate.
If you (ab)use global networks (irrespective of where they are domiciled) as political tools, the victims of that will strive to create their own networks so that they have freedom, and the value of the existing network is diminished.
Russia already has alternative network SPFS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPFS), blocking them from SWIFT will anger the ordinary people further and they will believe the narrative of west being against them even more.
Of course disconnecting Russia from the internet isn’t on the table, but if they did, perhaps a silver lining is that the cybersecurity situation could be greatly improved.
> It is crucial that the RIPE NCC remains neutral and does not take positions with regard to domestic political disputes, international conflicts or war.
> Failure to adhere to this approach would jeopardise the very model that has been key to the development of the Internet in our service region.
Out of curiosity, what could RIPE NCC do if it decided not to be neutral and to side with Ukraine?
I could imagine it can withdraw all the IPs assigned to Russia and Belarus. What would be the consequences if so? Perhaps the collapse of the whole Internet in Russia and Belarus, as ISPs will not be able to provide their services and all websites hosted there will see their URLs being disconnected from their IPs?
Well, no. They would be cut off from other countries/ISPs that drop the BGP routes.
But Russia could just allocate IPs as they see fit inside their network and coordinate with friendly countries on routing arrangements. Although things would obviously get difficult for third parties if the IPs are assigned to other entities.
If they'd manage to convince other ISP's to drop any BGP sessions with Russia, it probably means a separation of Russian internet from the world, and that would probably make more harm than good in the bigger picture.
I have seen a lot of Russian apologists on HN claim that literally every single proposed non-military intervention "will do more harm than good". Every single one.
The fact is that the people of Russia need to feel incredible pressure. Their lives must become incredibly difficult. Unbearable even. It's the cleanest way out of this.
You really don't get how suddenly having a world actor doing whatever the hell they want with the IP space would play havoc with the rest of the internet?
Mmmmkay. Bit much on the blowing up the house to put out the fire. Personally, there are still a few nuts that deserve to flourish over there. SciHub being one of my chief concerns.
European countries are also keen to avoid a point of no return.
If Russia feels too much pressure and goes into complete isolation from the West there is nothing too lose anymore and the conflict can easily escalate beyond Ukraine.
US/Europe want to avoid this due to the huge disruption it would bring economically (gas shortages etc) and the end of any hope for a diplomatic resolution.
I'd personally support more measures, but it's not as clear cut as one might assume.
We still have to share a continent, and pushing Russia into the arms of China can have huge long lasting ramifications.
The payment sanctions are hitting hard. The large drop in the value of the rouble will spike living costs. Western-connected Russians can see what's going on. And, of course, let's not forget that (by Ukranian estimates) several thousand Russians have been killed already. They've lost more people than 9/11 to this insanity.
As long there are cables connecting them, they will be fine. Whatever RIPE can do to isolate russia can be done by their peering partners, russia might do it themselves.
RIPE doesn't really have the power to withdraw assigned IPs, the Russian ISPs can just keep announcing them. Perhaps they could break their RPKI data so their prefixes would be dropped as invalid by those checking signatures (I would consider this a misuse of RPKI), but they would still mostly work.
The frustrating part about this message is that behind all that "staying neutral" (which may be correct), there is absolutely no message of support from RIPE to its more than 200 members in Ukraine, or Ukraine in general.
They must remain neutral. Information must flow freely. It will actually do more harm to Russia than the other way around. It is perfectly possible to block Russian assets by other means. If only countries realized that it should be done about a decade ago.
> History will not look kindly on those who insisted on a neutral stance on the face of evil.
In that case, let us start with the war criminals in the US and Europe, and their enablers in the media, technology and think tank space, who illegally invaded Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East (and Africa) and unleashed a reign of terror for 20 years.
What exactly is your position? Do you really think the right course of action is tell the country being actively invaded that we'll get back to them right after we're done with a decade of prosecutions?
It's double standards; the US is guilty of war crimes and has yet to face any consequences or even condemnation. They got away with labeling people as a category putting them outside of the US's own legal system, international law, and the Geneva Convention; oh no they're not enemy soldiers / POWs, they are terrorists, it's Different. That led to them being put in CIA black sites and Gitmo and made them victims of inhumane treatment and routine torture. Some have been incarcerated for twenty years now without trial. The world knows, footage from the humiliation and sexual abuse in gitmo came out years and years ago... and nothing happened.
If this was e.g. a central or eastern European country, its leaders would be on trial in The Hague by now.
> "get the rest later" never actually ever seems to happen when it comes to the US and EU.
This.
The neocon-influenced US addiction to spreading freedom and democracy to authoritarian countries has been almost universally deadly to their citizens. While these dictators are bad, it is the unfortunate truth that their brutality helps keep sectarian conflict in check. Look at every place that has had the US gift of democracy forcibly shoved down its throat.
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal."
Sorry, shall Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders also withdraw from Russia and stop acting humane and neutral because of evil and inhumane deeds of Russian state and military?
Ukrainian medics are treating wounded Russian troops, who came to kill and damage.
Sorry, shall Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders also withdraw from Russia and stop acting humane and neutral because of evil and inhumane deeds of Russian state and military?
I understand the desire to throw everything including the kitchen sink at Russia, but remember that sanctions are primarily directed against the ordinary public of the country, and that cutting Russia off from RIPE is not going to stop their military.
(The sheer suddenness of the flip on Russia, and its scale, surprises me. We didn't do it when they shot down a passenger jet, or carried out several terrorist attacks with chemical weapons outside the country, or when they supported Assad in Syria, or even the previous time Russia invaded Ukraine. Perhaps if something more graduated had been done earlier we wouldn't be in this position)