It’s about 8% of the male workforce. Even those that were “just” wounded and came home, they likely cannot get back to the life they had before.

This is an absolutely insane “just a number” and they will spend generations trying to recover from this just a number.

Life has become far poorer, duller and more dangerous than before the war,

Oh no, poor russians! Life is dull!

There’s a slight difference between a life taken away when ruzzians bomb a city and a family dies in their sleep and a life taken away when somebody willingly goes to the military, is sent to the foreign country and gets killed while trying to kill an enemy.

But you’re right, it’s definitely human lives taken away.

Did you know that all those people are raised on the idea that there was dictatorship in ruzzia and then people stood up and there was the great October revolution?

The reason they can’t do anything is because things are not that bad. For them.

Entire nation? Merely the grand majority of it.

See, after the ww2 there was a debate whether there’s something special about Germans that made them do what they did. Everybody knew that the fanatical and sadistical part was a very small minority and it wasn’t Hitler who worked in the concentration camps or Gestapo. It wasn’t Himmler who worked in factories or fought in the army.

It was normal everyday people who lived, laughed, laughed and that.

Their kind of excuse was lack of information.

What is the excuse for the good russians that enlist to the army, work in factories making drones or simply live their life and pay their taxes? Apathy that was cultivated over the decades?

Apparently, a serious number of them found the motivation to move to Georgia now that the war that they maybe don’t approve can actually affect them.

And I’m sure massive majority of them are loveliest of people, they have friends, parents they take care of, children. And they grumbled in their kitchens that this war is a waste of life in the evenings. And until today, in the mornings they went to their jobs that directly or indirectly supported the war. Because, you know, it’s war and terrible, but it’s bad pootin, it’s not them.

Am I hostile? I think I am. And I’m not even in Ukraine, I just have family there and for 4 years now I hear from them of what was bombed, how their life is now shaped by war. What I don’t hear from them is how bad it is for the poor good russians that don’t have it easy.

Am I hostile? Probably. But I think it’s kind of hostility of a doctor to a cancer.

We’re give or take 10 days from 1.5 MILLION.

There’s a nuance in your argument.

You’re right, ruzzia is a terrible oppressive state and doing something against it is super dangerous and difficult.

But there’s a catch. See, a 100k of them just crossed into Georgia. By all means their life is not going to be the best of roses.

But they didn’t do it in 2022 when their cuntry openly invaded Ukraine.

They didn’t do it in 2014 when their cuntry covertly invaded Ukraine.

They did now, when their own wellbeing is under danger.

In '22 I had a chat with a lady I knew that was happy that Crimea returned to ruzzia in '14. She said she was against the war and described the situation as “uncomfortable”.

You’re right there are plenty of “good” russians among those who just left. But they didn’t leave because they are against the war. They’ve left because their life is in danger of becoming uncomfortable. Which means that until now it was, you guessed it, comfortable. You’re right, maybe not luxurious and definitely not free, but it was good enough.

When “Mr Nobody against pootin” came out and started winning prizes, Ukrainians were really pissed. Because the message of that piece is exactly what you’re saying - poor good russians can do nothing because of the evil pootin. The problem is that when it came out Ukraine already killed a million of poor good russians and now the evil poo wants to conscript more to bring that to two million.

Uncomfortable. Shift your butt a little to reduce the discomfort.

I’m sure they’re talking about scaling what they do in Ukraine already today - find people who want to make some quick cash and don’t mind that it’s not exactly legal.

Furthermore, that 1% of the total population is about 10% of conscriptable men. I do hope (and believe) that the economic collapse is very near to that figure.

Thank you. You too!

No mental health issue is an excuse for being an asshole, a fascist or a criminal. Depression doesn’t give people an excuse to kill, autism doesn’t give people an excuse to rape, etc.

They fought Nazis after starting the ww2 together with the Nazis and dividing the Europe for two years after that. They never been anti Nazi per se, they just ran out of space to expand.

Indeed. And thank you :)

I’ll use it as a showcase for my cloud architecture ideas, so right now it’s a basic single-vm with a plan to gradually optimise it into the oblivion (way beyond docker if l get my way) and document/blog the process.

just to let you know, i’ve just migrated to self-hosted ghost. thank you!

Shite. Now I need to find a replacement for substack.

Mathematically love and hate are equal. Just with different signs.

It’s ironic that the article warns from the dangers of thinking your enemy thinks like you and then follows with the risk of invasion.

Pootin doesn’t need to invade the strong Poland or the weak Baltics. All they need is to heavily invest into fascists in those countries, create a migrant crisis or ten, sit back and watch how the Europe crumbles.

And the best part? They’ve been doing this for a while now.

Can it be an inflatable one?

Are you seriously connecting one murder (which is definitely a terrible thing) into a systemic oppression?

But if there’s indeed an opression happening, now should be the perfect time to fight it not by complaining but by doing it legally with support from ombudsmen. Start a movement, but integrate it as a common fight, which it is.

That is some “logic”. So Greeks were responsible for Mussolini because they are close to Italy?

Sorry, no. Back in the good old days everyone was fighting everyone and the Greeks also were happy to war and expand.

What we can talk about is the last give or take 200 years when the borders mostly settled and modernity started. This is where ruzzia (and a couple of other nice empires) were trying to fuck everyone else. For ruzzia it was starting with Japan, Korea and China over by the Asia and into Europe, wrapping with Finland.

Ukraine for ruzzia was always a problem exactly because of the so called similarity. The Rus started in Kyiv and it was a great shame for them. Ukrainians were supposed to be uneducated slaves, not founding fathers. That’s why ruzzia systematically tried to destroy the culture, the language and the people.

Soviets inherited the approach and pootine has happily announced he’s doing that too.

And that’s what matters. Unless you would like to suggest that Greece should pay reparations to Egypt for occupying in Alexander’s time.