doo

Please don't mistake empathy and compassion with inaction. Each ruzzian soldier has a family and a life. Each of them deserves our compassion and sympathy after they stop fighting. Ether via surrender, injury or death. In that order of preference.

The "it's not that simple" argument has been puzzling me since the moment of the full invasion. I must confess having family and friends in Ukraine, really helped with the perspective.

See, just when it started, I saw pictures of people walking for hours and days with tiny suitcases, trying to escape death. Walking into a complete unknown, which is still mostly the case for them even today.

In the other hand I was talking to ruzzians who were against the war, but the extent of their action was from confirming "well, this is awkward" to saying "I would have left, but". Basically also saying it's uncomfortable, but doing something is even more uncomfortable.

And now suddenly they are fighting for their life, but not with a suitcase, but with a machine gun.

So three years later, when I see ruzzians stop fighting because of surrender, injury or death, I feel sorry for the situation they're in, but I also see that they are in this situation because if the choices they were making for the last three years.

And majority of those fighting against Ukraine in Ukraine today are still making a choice to continue. Because the alternative is uncomfortable or even because they want to.

What I concluded regarding empathy is that our approach needs to be that of a surgeon - they know that they will cause damage, but their goal is to minimise the overall damage.

I hope they would choose surrender, but when not, incapacitation and death are our next best options.

Dead fuckers in this context

Even if they were somehow forced into this recently (which is not impossible given that there are up to two million slaves in ruzzia), it's already three years since the full scale invasion. They weren't caught by surprise.

Definitely a terrible situation, but far from "poor afraid ruzzians"

Life in prison, I believe

They will happily tell you that they are all about peaceful resolution. Meaning unconditional surrender of Ukraine, which is the ridiculous point.

I was like "somebody likes lists more than me!" and in the last point, "ah, yes, just like me :)"

Don't put high hopes on the general public there. Soviet union was very good at brainwashing and propaganda. With the new tools and several decades to develop and use them, putler's team brought that to a completely different level.

I hear a lot of stories of Ukrainians giving up on talking to their relatives in ruzzia, because all they hear back from them is denial and propaganda.

Ah yes, two nations famous for their appreciation of individual human life /s

Civilian disobedience can take many forms, not all of them involve an active confrontation with the government or police.

Unfortunately, from what it looks like, all everyday russians are living their normal everyday lives.

Unfortunately this means that the majority of the population either supports the war (especially as long as they're winning) or are zombified enough not to care.

In either case, those are people that will be fine with being conscripted and sent to the front. As long as they're not getting hurt, themselves, of course.

By all means, I'm not advocating russian style of bombing obviously civilian targets, but those russians are far from poor and powerless.

They do nothing because it's uncomfortable.

Yes, I heard it's getting more militant too. One of the reasons for that is that before they were drafting from the poor regions and there a little money gives a lot of motivation. Not the case in better off regions, so force is needed to "motivate".

Poor or rich, it doesn't matter. They go to war and are ok with that as long as they're winning. There's no remorse or suspicion that they might be on the wrong side. They just don't care.

In addition to other comment, first he's been their "elected" supreme leader for so long, that a lot of young people never knew anything different. It's like domestic violence, if a child is being regularly hit and so all his friends, the child learns that this is how things should be. Second, by completely controlling media putler created and maintains political apathy (it was already strong in ussr), so even if they don't like something, they know very well that there's nothing they can do.

Indeed, they already make virtually no progress, the equipment losses have shifted to old stuff. The only "problem" is that the collapse will be sudden, so we cannot tell when exactly it will happen. There's hope that we're actually close to the Ukrainian victory. Maybe even this year already.