Russian Soldiers Say They Are Viewed With Disgust in Moscow.
kyivpost.com
According to two Russian soldiers interviewed by a pro-invasion blogger, if you wear a Russian military uniform on the metro in Moscow people distance themselves and give you dirty looks.
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At this point I had some sympathy.
And then he lost my sympathy.
It's like certain problems we have in the US, just with different players.
When "law abiding" is placed before basic ethics, problems like these arise. It's also, sometimes (maybe not here) a smokescreen people use to justify their unethical behavior.
People like to use things like "I didn't make the rules" to justify bullshit - while actively enforcing them.
“I was just obeying orders” - sounds familiar.
Sounds like the excuses of the weak willed. FFS Russia is massive I doubt itd be hard to draft dodge.
I am not in any way defending said people for being rapists, murderers and overall just nasty fellows. I would like to point out that Russia has been known to lash out on people's loved ones to get them to fall in line, so running away may be just part of the equation. Now to what extent one's attachment to one's family forces them to do things is an interesting topic.
Could a person that rapes and murders because they got a free pass be considered capable of genuine human affection towards their loved ones? Or are they using it as a generally accepted excuse 'they were gonna harm my family if I didn't amputate this poor fella's arms in a dark dungeon!'?
That being said, there were some recorded phone conversations circulating around a bit earlier in the conflict about some of them loved ones communicating to soldiers about 'how many did you rape/kill?' and 'loot some shit and bring it home!'
Obligatory not all people are the same and such.
Yeah, draft dodging means maybe losing your freedom and the ability to provide for your children, which is a shit situation to be put in.
But the choice is between poverty and fucking murder. Your choice sucks, but you choose to be a monster. I spare my sympathy for those who choose to be not-murderers.
But at the same time, they are absolutely being fed propaganda and don’t have an accurate view of what is going on in Ukraine.
That is a valid point. I personally can't accept it changing the situation, but I won't hold it against anyone that do.
I wanted to say they know how things are in reality, but suddenly remembered teacher in my school. Yep, some of them are completely brainwashed. Mostly those who will not be drafted. Either by being too old or having non-draftable sex(it would be funny if I'll get banned for this).
As Ekaterina Schulman says: this is unusual war. War is what Yong do, but this one is war of Old/Elders.
I read an interview of locals from an Ukrainian village that got invaded - the Russians rolled in and asked the locals "where are the Nazis? Lead us to them!", and were surprised that the locals just asked them to leave, instead of cheering for their "liberation ".
So the propaganda certainly reached the military, at least.
You mean in early days? Haven't served myself(and hopefully won't), but what I know is in Russian army your only sources of information are your commander and your peers whoose only sources of information is same commander and you. This sounds like an excellent ground for propaganda.
But:
A lot of people were from poor regions.
They are in the middle of nowhere.
So Russians are dumb and their phones don't get internet? Nah. Bullshit. Russians are fucking cowards. The whole world knows it. It's been on display for over a year.
The dumb die. So it is and always has been.
Bro half of the fediverse is loaded up with communists and fascists, respectively.
Kind of weird to pretend Russians have a monopoly on being dumb.
You sure showed'em
Tell me I'm wrong
From what I can tell, around 99% of the time people use the word communism, they don't really know what it means. You seem to know there is a difference between communism and fascism, so, maybe you do.
But, to suggest half is communist, and the other fascist. Is kinda silly. Silly to such an extent that "proving you wrong" is likely to be a futile and unpleasant endeavour. You do you.
There are literally two massive instances lemmy.world had to defederate from, and one is fascist and one is full of communists and tankies.
I wasn't even counting the communists all over this instance.
That's... that wasn't what you said. You said
"Bro half of the fediverse is loaded up with communists and fascists, respectively."
Which is read as "half of the fediverse is loaded up with communists, the other half fascists". Now, I don't know what instances you are talking about, since I'm on lemmy.world, and I have not encountered anything to the effect you are suggesting. Lemmy.world is 129k/391k, the next two largest are lemmy.ml with 46k/391k, then hexbear with fewer. So, yeah... are lemmy.ml communists, or fascists?
If your point was to comment to someone on lemmy.world who said (paraphrasing) "Russians are dumb for getting enough information that it is cowardly to still support the war", saying that well, half of the fediverse is communist and half is fascist. Which, first of all, communism isn't necessarily dumb. Americans think it is, but they don't know what it is, so who gives a shit. But, to what you where saying, and "Tell me I'm wrong". Well, I don't know. You seem to be intelligent enough to figure out which part of the stuff you said is incorrect.
I've bitten the bullet enough to explain this to you, and, I'm not keen on being patient with the deliberate obtuse or those who argue in bad faith.
EDIT: I took a look at hexbear, and that seems very fascist indeed. But, it's still just 10%. I'll admit that's significantly higher than what I thought made sense. The contents exceptionally dumb.
How is hexbear fascist? It's a far left instance...
According to Wiki only 3.5% of Russians have good English proficiency. I also saw numbers between 5% and 10%. Even if it's 10% of Russian population, 90% can only read and understand Russian. They go to the internet and what do they see? Russian fucking propaganda! Now imagine yourself in their shoes.
And whose fault it is? You go on the internet speaking English, and what do you see? Russian fucking propaganda! Where is the Russian-speaking Western propaganda machine when you need it?
When you understand English at a good level you're able to find multitude of opinions and make up your own mind. If you fail for Kremlin propaganda at this point - it's on you. But if you don't know English, you don't have access to alternative opinions at all. That's a VERY BIG difference.
Duh, that's my point! Why isn't there Western propaganda in Russian?
How is it the Kremlin can pay a bunch of people to write fake news in English and turn Western social media to shit, but the White House can't do the same to write fake news in Russian? So much CIA, MI6, all the EU agencies... what, you telling me they don't have the money, or what?
Information in Russia is tightly controlled. All independent media outlets of any kind were forcefully closed in 2022. If you want to create a Western propaganda outlet today, you have to have some people doing stuff in Russia. But once they're there they will go straight to jail.
Well, don't do it in the open. I know the whole world and their uncle let RT run their media freely for like forever, but I can't believe Russia's information infrastructure is so tight that a well organized task force couldn't infiltrate it without being detected.
Like, maybe in 2020 they could have me fooled, but after what they did in the Kyiv assault of 2022, when they fried their own comms, ECMd their own missile defenses, kept selling tank fuel for cigarettes and drinking the cooling liquid... that whole country must be a freaking clown town.
What, do they need to send some clowns to blend in? Then do it, start some pirate news stations, get to the people and let them have an alternate point of view.
Back during the Cold War, the East had Radio Free Europe to listen to. You could get arrested if they caught you, but people still did it. Tech has changed since then, but Radio Free Europe is still working, so they must have some infrastructure still in place. Use that, or whatever modern equivalent.
Draft dodging is probably worse in Russia.
Would you rather kill your own children, or kill someone else's children? At least they aren't shooting refugees for refusing to rape each other, that's the Saudis...
Ain't the world a nice place?
That's nowhere near the dillemma they are facing.
Russians are already torturing, kidnapping and executing civilians so not even a valid whataboutism.
Having your children or parents/grandparents, starve or freeze to death, can easily kill them. Maybe it's not 100% certain like shooting someone to death, but still, most people value their own people's lives more than someone else's.
And it's not whataboutism, just a qualification on a scale: I haven't heard (yet) of Russians forcing civilians to torture each other, so they're like a step less depraved than the Saudis.
I mean, I can have sympathy for any soldier that's being forced to be a soldier. But the reality is, that sympathy dries up pretty quickly when it comes out that while being a soldier they're rapists and war criminals. At certain point 'just following orders' is no longer a valid excuse... and you reach that point long before raping civilian women or PoWs. or... you know... you're own troops while in a combat situation....
If a fascist hands you a gun and tells you to murder a bunch of people so that he can get wealthier and more powerful, you shoot him and ask those people for asylum. Anything else makes you a fascist too.
Counterpoint: fuck going to a Russian prison.
I think there is 1:1 model of Russian prison cell somewhere in Netherlands. At least the type of cell where Navalny is held.
On the other there are rumors about people who commited crimes only to be found guilty and not being drafted as result, but they are rumors.
It's also not a defence. They don't have to follow orders.
They can just turn up get recruited and then surrender to Ukraine at the earliest safe opportunity if they want to. Plenty others have.
It is not patriotic to fight a unjust war, it is not patriotic to just do what you're told without thinking.
Ehh, fatality is high. It's better to not be drafted in first place.