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- cross-posted to:
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A Ukrainian soldier named Serhiy, returning from Russian captivity, has reportedly been found mutilated with swastikas carved into his forehead, as disclosed by Dr. Olexandr Turkevich, who is treating him.
The soldier, blindfolded during the ordeal, claimed Russian soldiers threatened to dismember him, citing accusations of fascism.
I just want to draw an important distinction between the Russian government, military leadership, & voluntary/willing soldiery and the average Russian citizen. It would be wrong to call the latter “the bad guys”, but not the former.
Thank you.
Russian here, protested against the war and find it terrifying, not buying official narratives of nazis and NATO threat for a second.
Still remember the 24th of February, 2022. Before the date, we were all like “naive Westerners, Russia will not openly attack Ukraine, that’s so obviously stupid on so many levels, it’s a brotherly nation going through turbulent times, that’s it”. No one could in their sane mind even comprehend something like this. It was unthinkable. No one wanted that aside from a few select extremists, and most people never supported it later on - though propaganda machine did make some progress on the weakest of minds.
And then we wake up that day, on 24th of February, and have a collective “HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK PUTIN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT OH WE’RE ALL SO SCREWED”. It was a very grim day, and everyone had worries of their own: some, like me, had friends and family in Ukraine, some were afraid of their men being drafted (which did eventually happen in September 2022), others were just terrified of the scale of human suffering it will entail.
Since then, we learned never to trust anything and question everything we believe in. It was a cultural shock like Russia has never seen.
Same day, 24th of February, streets sparked in violent protests, police got extremely brutal - to this day, almost 2 years into the war, police has constant 24/7 presence in the places that were the main anti-war protest venues of my city. It lasted for months, despite police never stopping and detaining extreme numbers of people: courts are still overburdened processing all of them. All until everyone who had integrity and bravery and nothing to lose got in jail.
Putin should pay for all the atrocities he has committed, and that’s something very many Russians will subscribe to.
As a Lithuanian, I actually disagree. We always knew that a day like February 24 would come. We kept telling that to our allies and they thought we were being paranoid.
You have to address the deep sense of Russian imperialism before we can take you seriously. Even the Russians who have lived in my country for 30 years or more have it. “We are Russians” they say. “We want the world; we want it and we won’t stop until we have all of it.”
I also know that people like you exist, and some people resisted, but our collective fear is that people like you are a smaller minority than you would think.
Same here, as a Czech, the Russian narrative that all Slavic people should be united under them doesn’t really help with a good night sleep. I’ve been just waiting for Russia to wage another of its wars for at least 15 years. I’m not happy that I was right, but this was very much expected.
I’m actually all in favor of Slavic unification (as well as any other reasonable and constructive one), but it should certainly NOT be under the leadership of any particular country. I’m super pissed by earlier centuries panslavists trying to cater to Russia in order to gain its favor and influence.
That’s not how brotherhood is made.
I’m very much against. Like, we have nothing in common with Russians, except our languages sharing the same roots.
That’s not exactly true, we also watched Krtek and Nu Pogodi in out childhoods, and both nations are considered “glum” (as never smiling) and cynical (and the correlation between being educated and being cynical, sometimes to the point of dark humor), relatively recent urbanisation. Otherwise, yes, of course, things are different, there is almost as much common with Bulgaria or Croatia
I meant something in particular, what you mentioned are things that we have in common with many others. There’s nothing except the language that really makes us part of a group which Russia is also part of.
Your call.
I’d argue we still have plenty of cultural similarities, not limited to language, and some sort of common identity as Slavs. In many cases, that alone is enough to be a force driving for unification.
Generally though, I just welcome peace and partnership, and unification seems to me like one of the best ways to achieve this - assuming it is voluntary and conflicts are sorted out, of course.
Well, one “brotherly help” from Russians was enough to cause so much fucking damage that we’re not over it 30 years after it ended.
We have more cultural similarities with Germans or Austrians than we do with Russians. To the point that if you visit Vienna you could easily mistake it for Prague (not taking landmarks into account, of course).
I have no common identity with Russians. Yeah, our languages share the same roots, but that’s all.
All the talk about unification of Slavs is one of the reason nobody likes Russians. No, thank you, we already are in a union (EU) and generally speaking, it’s a much better deal, because we share actual history (good and bad) instead of language roots and a few decades of being occupied (and murdered) by Russians.
Thanks for sharing your perspective.
Lithuania is often considered very anti-Russia, similar to other Baltic states, as attributed to a history of Soviet occupation and all the outcomes of it, so it’s natural that alarms raised by such country are more easily dismissed. At some point, this really could be paranoia; at another, it stopped being one. The art is in figuring out where one ends and the other begins.
As per imperialism - it is common in almost every country with big territory, population, large economy and military. US (above all), China and other powers have it too. I’m not saying it’s not ugly, I’m just pointing out it’s a general trend that should be approached more systemically - and until then, cultural shifts can only get us so far. I wonder what would it take to remove imperialist tendencies in every place in the world.
We are not anti-Russia, we are simply pro-survival. Even before the Soviet occupation, tsarist Russia did a lot to destroy our national identities, in Lithuania, they forbade writing our language in Roman alphabet and hunted smugglers that carried books written in it. The ban and other repressions caused several massive rebellions including 1830s and 1860s ones.
The Tsar later sent his hound, Muravjov, who hanged so many men that the line of gallows went from Kaunas to Vilnius (~90 km). They have put a statue of Muravjov outside of Lithuanian consulate in Kaliningrad. I guess they are going to put a statue of Adolf Hitler outside the Israeli consulate next /s
And imperialism is common among big countries, sure, but it is Russians who enflame their local minorities in neighbouring countries and then rush to save them. And we do have a Russian minority.
My point is, due to all this complicated and violent history, Lithuania will obviously be on a higher alert than many other countries - that’s what I’m saying first and foremost. This means a lot of false alarms, which the rest of the world recognizes, and which is why those early warnings didn’t help.
But thanks for making your point, it is important to the understanding of the problem as well.
Genuine question - could you provide examples of open high-level hostilities Russia has shown to Baltic or other countries related to Russian minorities? Cause from the inside it looks mostly as showing concern over Russians having their culture stripped away in order to force assimilation. Don’t know much on how it’s going in Lithuania in particular, but I have ethnic Russian relatives in Latvia and many of the restrictions imposed, language and cultural, seem very unreasonable and hostile.
Russian hostilities are not open until they are.
Belarus sent a lot of immigrants from 3rd countries to Baltic states and Poland to cause problems for us.
Russian propaganda machine was to blame for enflaming a lot of marginal political movements, like antivax, anti-LGBT and now anti-Ukraine.
Russian backed propaganda machines were cutting up Baltic states and inventing non-existant separatist movements since 2010. But unlike in Ukraine, none of them stuck.
The problem with Russians in the Baltics is how many of them still think that they are either in charge or that Russian army will be back soon. They completely refuse to integrate, refuse to learn our language, our customs, our values, despite living here for over 50 years. In comparison , I spent 9 months in Sweden, I can give directions and haggle in the market in Swedish.
I see your point.
I wonder, though, how many of this is genuine and how much is false politically motivated accusations, which are very often the case in the political landscape of many countries.
Being to blame and being the cause are two very different things.
Also, you know the world is fucked up when immigrants can be used as a weapon. We seriously need to deal with the problem, and not through stricter border control and enforcement. But I digress.
I get your integration argument, though.
We will never know how large the extent of Russian propaganda and other intelligence activities are, but whenever we have any problems in our country there are always chaos actors linked to Russia. They are always on the lookout for weakness to exploit. Even a local anti-fracking protest had ties to Gazprom.
Toppling the Russian government is the key to end the horrific war and genocide. The “Republics” in Russia should have been independent.
The whole “but every country is imperialist” is kinda weird to say, dude, considering Russia is the only one atm currently involved in an invasion
I’m not saying this to distract someone; I’m pointing it out to say that the solution to imperialism lies in some sort of global shift and not local cultural effort. Cultures of superpowers will inevitably gravitate towards imperialism, and we need to find a way to stop it at its root.
Honestly, discussing Russia’s economy as large in the same breath as the US and China is a bit disingenuous. US GDP is around 27 trillion USD, China around 18 trillion USD. Russia? 2 trillion USD.
Source for figures: https://www.forbesindia.com/article/explainers/top-10-largest-economies-in-the-world/86159/1. Even if we dispute the specific numbers, an order of magnitude is an order of magnitude.
Edit: typo
That’s true, and that’s why I selected several criteria here. For its relatively low economic power, Russia has tremendous influence in the region and does act as a superpower due to a large combination of factors.
I could try to address that disagreement. I’m inclined to assume that you, and citizens of other European countries that had a substantial number of Russians living there, tend to get this impressions exactly from those Russians. Russians who doesn’t live in Russia, and social media related to them. My impression is that they are much more crazy than average Russian living in Russia. The latter are uneducated enough to believe that the west wants to conquer Russia, but the former are idiotic enough to assume they are in some privileged position, and that mist Russians think the same. In reality the rest of Russians don’t have time to indulge in such fantasies and really busy with their lives.
So I’m saying the imperialism exists in a minority of Russians. The irony is that the president is with the minority and that’s why we are in current situation. He got crazy enough with time that he disconnected with majority of the Russians.
I think it’s useless to blame regular Russians in imperialism. But it might be useful to put some pressure on those Russians living outside Russia to make sure they think less about possibility to improve their lives by conquering some country.
A lot of Russians I deal with are young and well adjusted, only the old and the poor believe in Russian propaganda. My hometown, sadly, was home to both. When Lithuanians tell them to go to Russia if they love it so much, they get really quiet though.
The Russians from Russia who afford to travel are also notorious for being annoying and disrespectful tourists throughout Southeast Asia and various other places. Even in online games they stick to each other instead of playing with people from various countries.
I disagree about the Russians in Russia, I think the blame is on Russians, they are the ones who have kept Putin in power for so long. If the Dutch government started taking about retaking Indonesia or Belgian goverment wanted to take Congo back, they would be gone from power tomorrow.
I think one issue with your last argument is that the Dutch and Belgians are democratic and have the ability to remove government officials from power peacefully.
Despite what Russia pretends to be it is not Democratic. It is authoritarian. Putin is the ruler and no Russian can get rid of him by voting, it would have to be a violent revolution or civil war.
That’s much more to expect for an average Russian than simply showing up to a ballot box. Although I don’t excuse their complacency I do understand it.
Lithuania was not democratic in the 80’s and then it became democratic in 1990. All it took was a barehanded unarmed standoff against the Soviet tanks for a night. In a miracle, it only cost 14 lives.
The real problem is not the revolution, it is what comes afterwards. Most Russians do not understand democracy, they don’t understand how western countries function. They don’t have strong institutions or media organisations either. They will have to build those and do what they failed at it back in the 90’s.
It didnt took only took that, If it did there would be no more dictatorships, A big part of the administration turned against the state
Thanks. I think they need to be reminded of that more frequently.
Yes. I’m not sure what can be done about this though, except proper education.
I could agree but this is different from the imperialism in my book. At least one big reason for that happening is how well constructed the state propaganda was from the very beginning. It’s like most actors are acting out of fear mostly, while not really being obligated to follow the narrative. And the education problem, of course.
Wow thanks for sharing this. Mind if I ask, from your personal perspective/experience, how is the situation now? Did the propaganda work at brainwashing people over the past years?
I’d say at first it did work on a lot of people from TV generation, forming a picture of Ukrainian soldiers as Nazis driven by drugged President who is a puppet of american dementia man, and of Russian soldiers liberating people from insanity.
At its peak, even some of the generally anti-war individuals fell into uncertainty.
But the longer it drags, the less effective propaganda is. War exhausted country’s resources and killed its men, and this becomes clear even to past die-hard supporters of the war. Also, the dissolution of Wagner group made Wagner fans (which constituted a large percentage of pro-war individuals) more bitter towards the military effort.
So in general, the sentiment goes more and more towards “why are we waging this war in the first place” and “how much longer do we have to suffer”
Removed by mod
I’m not saying anything remotely illegal, but I’m just gonna say we do have anonymizing instruments when we really need them.
Thanks for voicing it!
Oh wow, I wonder whether something happened before Feb 24th that might have caught your attention? Any idea? I certainly remember there was something…
You mean Crimea? While it was a hostile act indeed, it was different. Might be less visible from the outside, again.
Lemme try to explain the difference. Again, no justification, I don’t have a strong stance on Crimea, just how it looks from inside Russia (and Crimea - having lots of relatives and friends from there and been there pre- and post-annexation).
The annexation of Crimea was relatively peaceful (while some Russian soldiers came to the peninsula, it wasn’t a full-scale invasion, no bullet was shot and no bullet was meant to be shot) and went in accordance to the interest of locals, who wholeheartedly overwhelmingly approved the change - and I’m not just sourcing this from Kremlin propaganda and referendum results, I’ve been on the ground and have many contacts in there. The sentiment has somewhat changed over time, but is still moderately pro-Russia. Crimea is also primarily inhabited by ethnic Russians - 67,9% Russians with only 15,7% Ukrainians by the time of annexation in 2014 - which might help to explain such a fierce support (source: Wikipedia). Putin has also taken action against growing conflict between Russians and Crimean Tatars, which, while being heavily controversial, got him even more support from the Russian population majority.
The 2022 invasion was meant from the start as a full-scale war, and was meant to meet resistance and be hostile to the civilian population. Unlike annexation of Crimea, which was more of a political recoloring than anything, this time it was an actual war, with blood, bullets, and flame, and with Russian tanks riding through Ukrainian protesters that wished those tanks to go away. And this is the kind of scenario Russians could not envision. In Russian mentality, Ukrainians, just like Belorussians, are brotherly folks, and going for the kill means betraying the almost sacred bond the nations have. This shows in Russian politics, with leaders constantly trying to tell population it is not a war against brotherly Ukrainians, but rather against Nazis and their leader Zelensky (yep, the guy with Jewish bloodline). But it is bullshit that the majority can still see through, and when the war started, it was a giant shock and, like, something that absolutely, under any circumstances, shouldn’t have happened.
This, exactly, has blinded Russians, myself included, into trusting Kremlin with their “combat exercise” rhetoric. Not that we had (and have) big trust in our government, but going to a real bloody war with Ukraine was too unthinkable to ever seriously consider.
Also, please avoid rhetorical questions in favor of direct ones. I do answer this one because it might be useful for the general context, but it is rude and also ineffective in case you actually want to hear an answer.
I’m not Russian so I have a limited perspective of this, but I remember people pointing out good indicators that the invasion was really going to happen during the weeks leading up to it, like how the Russian military was setting up field hospitals along the border. Obviously, hindsight makes reflecting on this difficult, and I’m not sure what information was available to Russian citizens at that time.
Explained this in my answer; long story short, the very idea of such invasion was super unthinkable to an average Russian, and, while we’ve seen news from Western media, we discarded them as sensationalist and lacking understanding of the real situation.
But, as we soon figured out, Putin has no issue crossing any red line.
okay, but did a majority of you vote him or not? multiple times? after opposition got kilked or disappeared?
you think the elections were rigged? then why isn’t he beeing toppled and democracy restored?
maybe russians got the dictator they wanted and deserved
It’s a little harder to topple Putin than you imagine. He does have loyal police and military, and civil protests are crushed.
And yes, the elections were heavily rigged, which was shown time and time again, especially when opposition still wasn’t all incarcerated.
Bruh, remember that time 110% of Russians voted for Putin?
But anyway, in my grandparental comment, I phrased it specifically to not blame anyone who did support Putin as long as they’re not actively engaged in the military. If they’re not causing direct harm, I’m not going to blame people for falling for Russian state propaganda.
Mate come on. A person willing to protest the Russian government in Russia does not deserve your vitriol. Even if every Russian except Allero supported everything Putin did, it wouldn’t make Allero guilty by association