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beedlejooce t1_irw9p07 wrote

Reply to comment by optimistic_agnostic in European champion in swimming died in battles near Kherson by KindArgument0

To be fair they don’t exactly have a choice. Civilians are forcibly dragged off the streets. Your entire family’s name is basically ostracized from societal ability to succeed in Russia if you refuse to serve. And then 10 years of hard labor in prison at the very least.

There’s a very small percentage of Russians serving that actually want to be there. You have people burning themselves alive, shooting themselves in non lethal spots, and purposely breaking their bones in hopes of getting medical exemption. This is basically all Putin and the other Kremlin blindly stroking their master’s ego.

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optimistic_agnostic t1_irxhhd4 wrote

Or they could turn their weapons on these 'oppressors' and chose to fight for their country, family and livelihood rather than die in a foreign land killing civilians and waging a war of annexation and the expansion of the Russian federation. Yet they chose the later. It's not just putin, it's the populace that is complicit, don't kid yourself or expect us to be that naive.

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beedlejooce t1_irxjsn4 wrote

Well of course them standing up to the oligarchs would be the ideal solution. Ain’t that easy. It’ll take at least the next two generations of younger people to switch the ideology of supporting free elections in Russia. Once the older people in general, but especially the ones in power die off there’s a chance at least of revolution. Most of these Russian soldiers do not want to be there. Of course there’s always zealous extremists but most are done with it.

Russian people have been fed this propaganda narrative their whole life just to be lied to as a pawn. But in reality the US did the same thing to our troops in the Middle East, sending soldiers to die for a mission they knew would fail long term. It was never gonna work. All the war crimes too so.

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