I resign from RU community
I spent four years being a part of and raising the Russian speaking Rust community as a moderator.
I enjoyed watching how our small group of enthusiasts transformed into the big community. We united people from many countries who are curious about Rust and speak Russian.
The Russian speaking community of active rustuceans is huge. As a community we tend to use telegram with many chats divided by categories: main (3700+ users), beginners (2500+), jobs (1700+), embedded (\~500) and many others.
We organized local events, meetups, conferences and contributed to an adoption of the Rust language in our countries.
But then everything changed. Putin attacked Ukraine. Soldiers of my country came to Ukraine to kill, destroy and demolish.
It appeared that our Russian speaking community is shamefully apolitical (surprise!). We can't agree on how to react. And I am not going to be a part of it no more.
The war changed the way we talk to each other. How we feel. How we behave.
Remember 1.59.0 release with a blog post supporting Ukraine? Here is a quote from the post:
Today's release falls on the day in which the world's attention is captured by the sudden invasion of Ukraine by Putin's forces. Before going into the details of the new Rust release, we'd like to state that we stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and express our support for all people affected by this conflict.
A well known Russian IT-news/forum called Habr cut off this paragraph from the translation of this post as a political, stating that it violates its rules. It is a big Russian website, a big business can be lost with one call from the authorities to cut it from the Russian segment of the Internet.
But how about our community telegram chats free from censorship? Someone bullied people for having a Ukranian flag 🇺🇦 in their names. I tried to talk to other moderators, but they "avoid politics".
Last night our discussion ended with another RuZZian speaking Rust moderator suggesting to exclude all Ukrainians from Russian speaking Rust chats and "not to be ridiculous". What a shame.
I don't want to be a part of such community until these kind of people are in power. I don't want to be a part of it until Ukrainians feel safe. At least in virtual chats. I am left with a right to protest (after fleeing to another country). And a right to speak out.
This is a shameful situation I am willing to raise. I don't know how to behave but to resign.
Слава Україні!