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‘We were sure the Russian army would protect us’: fury after Ukrainian incursion into Kursk
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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You are underplaying the struggles of civilians in a war zone just because they happen to live on the wrong side of the border.
Civilians have all the rights to not want war on their country, at their doors, no matter which side of the border they are, and they are allowed to lament the incompetency of a government that hides critical information from them in an attempt to cover up its failures.
The Ukrainians have the right to keep fighting, and I hope they win this war. Putin is a criminal and he must pay for his crimes. This doesn't mean that civilians caught in the crossfire are being petty.
A lot of Russians support the war, though. Those deserve what they're getting. And they're very lucky it's the Ukrainians invading them, not the Russians.
But how many of them support the war because the only media available is Russian state propaganda?
the answer is - it doesn't matter. the biggest learning from the nazi germany was that you don't need the entire population of a country to be homicidal psychopaths. all you need is a small group of those psychopaths, control or media, propaganda and you get a perfectly functioning system where normal everyday folks go to their normal everyday jobs.
just those jobs are in gestapo. or in maintenance of gas chambers. or making food for the equally confused soldiers.
of course, we should avoid civilian casualties as much as we can (but apparently russian army is not required) but the system needs to be stopped.
russia has cancer. chemoterapy is not a pleasant procedure that affects both ill and healthy cells. the alternative is, unfortunately, to allow that cancer to spread to the entire planet.
I'm just saying we can't just assume these people would be in favor of the war if they weren't forced to only consume pro-regime media. I'm sure a lot of North Koreans support the Kim regime because they've been indoctrinated since childhood with basically no accurate information about anything, so they just don't know. But if you read the accounts of the ones who do end up escaping to the south, they're just floored by how the world really is.
Of course we cannot. I agree with you that nobody is born evil or a criminal (even psychopaths are not guaranteed to become serial killers).
By all means, if not for propaganda, we would live in a very different world.
But the unfortunate fact is that they did consume enough of that propaganda to do nothing, or worse, follow the orders.
Yes, they are not criminals by nature, but what they do is crime or at least they are an accessory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)
I think you mean peripheral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral
No, I meant an accessory as in:
An accessory is a person who assists, but does not actually participate, in the commission of a crime.
I'm all for having sympathy for Russian civilians and even soldiers in some cases. I get that overt opposition to the war (and even calling at a war) is a very dangerous opinion to have out loud in Russia. I'm very sympathetic to those citizens that oppose the war and the administration, but keep quiet about it. I wish they'd do more, but I don't expect most Russian citizens to stick their neck out like Navalny did.
All that said, Russian propaganda isn't magic brainwashing that entirely prevents rational thought. It's just propaganda, and many (possibly most) Russians know that it is propaganda. Unlike North Korea they've still had access to alternative news sources (all maybe not for much longer). They have had plenty of time to smell the bullshit and look for less biased news.
The propaganda does make it harder for the average Russian citizens to recognize this war for the atrocity it is (or even a war), but they're not brainwashed zombies, and they're also not morons, so they're still responsible for their choices. If they choose to actively support this war, or if they choose to actively support this regime, that puts some blood on their hands - even if it's mostly because they chose to continue to live in ignorance despite all the signs.
You could say that about fundamentalist religion too, and yet there are a whole lot of extremists out there of various religions and a big part of it is that they were indoctrinated from birth.
I could and I do. Being born into religious fundamentalism is no more a moral get out of jail free card than being born on Russian soil. In both cases you got dealt a rough hand, but you're still responsible for your actions. Supporting atrocities isn't ok, no matter what your upbringing was.
A lot of Russians have no idea what's going on. Rural communities get their information from state media and their local politicians.
I remember people in rural areas of my East European country being interviewed about politics and they were completely clueless. Some thought the president was still the same guy who was violently overthrown in bloody revolution over a decade before. Many would vote for whoever their mayor told them to vote for. I remember someone being asked why she's voting for someone and her answer was "because he's the president" (he was running for a second term). She honestly didn't know how it all works and found it natural to vote for the president, not some other guy.
So yeah, if people like that are told those guys are oppressed and we sent an army to liberate them, they'll believe it and support the war. That doesn't mean they deserve to be victims of that war.
You realize the interview only showed the people who give the best sound bites? I bet you could find someone living in Washington DC who still thinks Clinton is President. And maybe someone who thinks Hillary Clinton is President.
People are responsible for who they vote for. Being uneducated is not a good excuse when there's only a few choices. It's not like they're being asked to run the entire country. If they are voting, they have a major responsibility and entire years to make up their minds.
Those villages didn't have electricity or running water at the time. They lived in the middle ages. My wife's grandparents lived in such a village. Her grandfather was thrown out by his parents as a kid because he was too small. He lived in the woods, surviving on roots and berries for years. Who is president was the least of his concerns. If the guy who gave him a piece of land to call his own told him that the best candidate is X, then that's who he'd vote for.
There were thousands of villages like that one all over the country. Reporters didn't need to hunt for he best soundbites, just pick a random village and you'll get all the material you need.
In most of those placed the mayor would come down before elections bringing gifts and telling them how everything they have is because of his party. And they have no reason not to believe him, since he's the only contact they ever have with any type of politics.
Russia has had democracy for 33 years. The people living on the Ukrainian border have electricity and running water. They are not idiots. You are acting like missing a few comforts makes people so stupid they can't take care of their own lives.
Guess what? Most people who voted for George Washington for President lacked running water. And all of them lacked electricity (except Ben Franklin I guess). They figured it out because you don't need running water or electricity at all. If you can run a farm and feed yourself, you can figure out who is lying to you and choose your leader.
Russia had democracy for less than 5 years before there was a constitutional crisis where Yeltsin got impeached, defied the constitutional court, staged a coup and consolidated power away from parliament and towards the presidency. By 1996 all the TV channels in the country were under control of his political allies. Later on, Putin was hand picked by him specifically for his personal loyalty over any other quality. But putin didn't even have to work that hard to consolidate power- all the tools of authoritarianism fell into his lap.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis
Are we still pretending Putin wasn't behind to the FSB blowing up apartment buildings in Moscow in a false flag operation to justify a brutal war in Chechnya? That's how he consolidated his authoritarian power, seems like a bit of work to me.
I would say no. It isn't as much "work" as sending in the tanks from the regular army to shell a competing but legitimate branch of government, and having a SWAT team machine gun hundreds of protesters.
I get what you're saying but it's still supporting the war. It's like if someone grew up bigoted because of their upbringing. Guess what, they're still a bigot.
Your choice to be ignorant about the world doesn't excuse you when the world bites you in the ass. We can only hope the war at their doorstep is a wakeup call.
“Support the war or go to jail for 10 years!”
How many are going to take the 10 years?
If everybody took the jail, there'd be no war. Of course you can't expect it of people, but it's true.
A lot of Americans supported the equally illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I still don’t think they deserve even how shitty their non-occupation civil government is.
Given how war works I’m almost certain there will be war crimes against the civil population here. Not as bad as what the Russians are doing in their occupied territories I sure as fuck hope and expect, but worse than anyone deserves. I can see Ukrainians getting to be a bit vindictive etc about this, they’ve earned it, but as armchair commentators online at a safe distance we should fucking show some empathy for people in a shitty situation they have very little control over.
I can’t control my government and I live in a democracy. I don’t blame Russians for most of what their state does either.
That's a stretch to call the USA a democracy with all tactics to keep right-wingers in power.
That's some serious revisionist history to claim the invasion of Afghanistan was illegal. How do you define what's an "illegal" invasion anyway?
UN law. Oh, look, turns out those don't apply to Security Council members if they don't want them to, weird.
The UN is a forum for diplomacy to happen. It's not the fucking world police LOL.
International law is just a collection of treaties that countries may or may not have signed on to. Russia's invasion of Ukraine could be considered an illegal invasion because it violated treaties.
There was no such treaty prohibiting the US from invading Afghanistan, in fact there were UN security council resolutions in support of it, here's some light reading for you on the UN supporting combating terrorism in Afghanistan after 9/11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1386
While there isn't actually a world police, NATO is the closest thing to it. 9/11 triggered Article 5 of NATO, so basically Al Qaeda punched the world police in the face and the Taliban tried to protect their Al Qaeda buddies.
Also remember the Taliban wasn't recognized as the government by the UN. So in "UN law" terms, NATO was going into Afghanistan to support the UN recognized government (The Northern Alliance, previously called the Mujaheddin) against a terrorist group (al Qaeda) and their allies (Taliban). This was done with explicit endorsement by the UN security council.
Maybe you should read up on international law, it's a little more complex than you're assuming it to be. There are actually justifications for military action, like when a terrorist group attacks another country. Afghanistan also may be more complicated than you think with all the various factions within the country.
The big thing I remember hearing at the time was that it was an illegal war because Congress didn't declare war and only they can. I thought the Russians calling their invasion of Ukraine a special military operation was a slightly tongue in cheek jab at the US since that's basically what we called the invasion of Afghanistan.
That's just internet nonsense. Nobody declares war anymore, because it's going from zero to a hundred in an instant and it's difficult to back down from. Which is something that could lead to World War 3 which is widely seen to be a bad thing. It's all about escalation so there can be de-escalation if things seem like it's getting out of hand.
Post-WWII, congress does what's called an Authorization of Use of Force. Which is effectively the same thing if you're worried about upsetting the dead slave masters that wrote the constitution. And there was an authorization for use of force for Afghanistan.
Nope, it was called the "Global War on Terror" from the very beginning. The US did not avoid the use of the word war. The "special operation" bullshit is just a Putin propaganda thing.
You're not making a point here about the situation, but you are making a point about yourself.
Don't suggest you're okay with collective punishment: we're supposed to still hate war crimes.
What war crimes have the Ukrainians committed so far?
Thank you for saying this. People (like the below commenter) dunking on people just trying to live their lives who live in a country where their government fucking sucks is gross and not well thought out. (And even if a lot of Russians support the war, its worth remembering that their access to information is limited, and all nations of people become stupid and nationalist in times of war. That doesn't forgive it, but it doesn't mean they deserve to live in a war zone as punishment.)
Really? Does that also count for Germans during WW2? They suffered a ton more than the Russians in Kursk do now. Just to be clear, I would be strongly opposed to fire bombing Russians (as we casually did to WW2 Germans/Japanese civilians). However, I would say that the current Ukrainian invasion into Russia falls well within the bounds of a proportional response.
It was the Axis that discarded the rules of war and embraced the concept of total war. Sucks to suck.
I said nothing about Ukranians' actions being unjustified, nor do we have any reason yet to think that war crimes are being committed in the area. If this brings them an inch closer to winning the war, I wholly support them.
Still, laughing at people suffering because of war is such an abhorrent behaviour to exhibit, and the fact that people are bending logic to justify it is wild.
You all should learn some empathy.
People crying for these Russians, who are in relative safety and who were free to go, are just comical to me.
Where were you when all these Ukrainian cities were shelled and other war crimes happened?
There is no "relative safety" in war and "free to go" means abandoning their homes and belongings, which is a fucking awful thing to do. Who are you, random armchair commentator, to speak like that?
I was crying for them as well, just as I'm crying now, just as I will always cry for people caught in the flames of war, which is one of the worst experiences a person can be asked to live through.
Y'all think that having fucking empathy for civilian lives means rooting for Putin, which is not true. Putin is a dictator, a criminal and an abhorrent human being, and I hope he pays for his crimes. Here, I said it again. But this article is not about Putin, it's about a woman lamenting that her government lied to the population instead of doing anything to protect them, and now she hasn't heard from her elderly parents for days.
It's something that I wouldn't wish happened to anyone, ever. The fact that they are Russians doesn't suddenly change the tale into a comedy. Laughing at the expenses of random civilians who happened to live under the autocratic rule of a violent narcissist is not something that I will ever condone. I can root for the Ukranians while also keeping my humanity. But apparently you can switch it on and off at will depending on who you are looking at.