They could always, you know, just fucking leave.
Now tell Putin that.
400,000 people that could have taken up arms against their dictator but they chose not to.
If being sent to the western front is a death sentence anyway, why not choose to die trying to live?
I'd gladly take a bullet in the back of the head rather than starving and suffering frostbite for months THEN taking a bullet in the gut or bleeding out after having my legs blown off by a mine.
Don't get me wrong, there's honor in defending your country and your freedom, but these men aren't dieing for either of those things.
Consequences for their families/friends. It's not a choice I'd ever want to have to make.
Never put the blame on the people. Imagine you are a being forcefully recruited to fight in war. You have family at home. You have hope. And therefore you stay passive. There are 8 billion people on earth, including you, who could try and take action. After all, why try if you can at least try to survive?
My words are a bit scattered, sorry for that, but I cannot stay calm when I see someone blame the people instead of the system. A revolution does not rise just because it seems fit. A revolution rises because oppression wasn't fully successful somewhere. That's my opinion at least. And if you look at history you will probably see the same patterns.
Also being sent to the western front isn't automatically a death sentence. You could be wounded and be taken to hospital, you could be captured and be put in prison, you could also simply try and survive.
I'm not going to pretend there aren't people that deserved their death there, but I'm positive there were also plenty of people that were just part of the machine and saw no way out.
Any country's biggest military asset is the poor populace that is promised a better life and then ground down into the tool or sacrifice that the leaders decide they need. Call it brainwashed or just "stupid", plenty of the deaths even on Russia's side were just normal people caught in a terrible conflict.
And to be clear, I'm in no way suggesting Ukraine shouldn't have defended itself, I just put the blame in Putin's hands, not on the peons he throws into the grinder for his own vanity project.
I think the people who are truly against this war or putin are a minority in russia. Most of the people their are in line with Putins course and have been so for decades.
that may sound gruesome but the only way to peace for the people of ukraine is to kill as much russians as possible there. Only when we cross the threshold of human losses that Putin or the Russian people are prepared to accept, we will see true negotiations.
How is it gruesome to say a defending force against an invader must kill the invaders?
The gruesome part lies solely on the invaders trying to oppress, invade and take over a peaceful neighboring country by force.
To be fair, other ways for Ukraine to win might include things like assassinating Putin or taking territory.
Fingers crossed for the former 🤞
Unfortunately, Russian has a lot more people to throw into the meat grinder. Sure, their society is probably going to collapse completey due to this in a few decades, but that's something Putin couldn't care less about about. He really seems to think he can will remembered as a great conqueror instead of a pathetic failed Stalin wannabe.
Putin is going down as the guy who could have un-fucked Russia and chose not to. Idiot just killed his best potential successor. The collapse is baked in and the consequences won't really hit Moscow for another 30 years or so, just long enough for another generation of Russians to grow up and get sent to die in another imperial Russian fever dream.
At least he follows the tradition of Russian rulers who seem hellbent to make things worse instead of better. He only one I can think of who at least tried to make things better was Gorbatschow, but thanks to the propaganda of his successors he is hated in Russia.
Ukraine has lost similar numbers. War is miserable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
This is somewhat misleading. According to that Wikipedia page, just using the US estimates, Ukraine has had 70k deaths and Russia has had 120k+. While these are similar in that they both round to 100k perhaps, Russia has almost double the Ukrainian military personnel losses.
War is miserable, but I don’t think Ukraine is losing military personnel by nearly the same clip that Russia is.
While that's true, I would argue the total human cost is similar. Your estimates do not count stolen and killed Ukrainian civilians. Adding those would make the numbers far closer, especially since no Russian civilians are caught in this conflict so far.
Not saying any of this is OK. Just unfortunately the numbers are very similar. War is miserable.
*And yes, the fact that Ukraine is suffering more losses due to the fact that it's Russia invading absolutely makes Russia the bad guy here. I'm just pointing out that the losses are unfortunately very close.
The population ratio ia roughly 3:1 though, so even 120:70 is far from sustainable or winnable sadly. I'd imagine those numbers would be way better if the military aid was not drip fed...
Hollywood presents fighting war in this heroic way. After seeing enough videos of soldiers getting blown to bits by randomly passing drones, I think it’s more bleak than that. You likely are going to get killed in the least heroic way… lying in the dirt.
Based on these casualty numbers there is just about a 99% chance you will be killed or severely maimed. Unless you have a legitimate higher purpose for fighting, which I believe the Ukrainians do, it would be best to avoid it all together.
no, life has no meaning in Russia, that's the problem
When russia lost 100 men, they lost like 1 and a half.
“Soldiers”
They're always in the last place you look, Vlad.
Of course they are, why would you keep looking once you found them?
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