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
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.
“You go on the metro, and people stare at you because you wear a uniform. Again, I didn't go voluntarily, I received a summons and came to the military enlistment office.
At this point I had some sympathy.
I didn't run away or hide like you. I acted like a law-abiding citizen. But when I come on holiday, they point fingers at me,” the soldier said.
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.
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!'
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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...
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.