Ukraine’s Defence Forces killed 480 Russian invaders over the past day. In total, 274,950 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.
It’s a little disgusting how we are cheering for people dying in cruel and needless wars.
That being said, I hear the Russian solders seem to be insane and go out or their way to cause misery and pain.
Honestly, I would leave this planet tomorrow if we had anywhere else to go. Earth is mental. It has crossed my mind that we are all in hell right now. People are so primitive and cruel.
It’s worth bearing in mind this war could be over in a single second, if the Russian army and its various mercenaries hoisted the white flag and proceeded to leave Ukraine and went back to Russia.
From the beginning, we’ve heard stories about Russian soldiers being shot for not following through. I’d like to think that I’d choose the right thing and walk away, but no one knows until they’re in that position
That not necessarily just a Russian Military thing thats just a military thing. “Desertion in the face of the enemy” is punishable by death under multiple military codes. Including the USs UCMJ.
This is very easy to say on the Internet. Things change when bullets are cracking around you and stuff is blowing up all around. I’d also like to say I’d do the right thing in this case, but I’m also home, not being conscripted and pushed into the meat grinder.
Alas, Putin will never do that. He’ll need some kind of “win” before even considering a peace talk. It might be easier to force him to publicly kiss a gay man’s cheek than pulling out from Ukraine empty-handed.
Throughout the first year of their military service, hundreds of thousands of new recruits in the Russian armed forces face grossly abusive treatment at the hands of more senior conscripts. Under a system called dedovshchina, or “rule of the grandfathers,” second-year conscripts force new recruits to live in a year-long state of pointless servitude, punish them violently for any infractions of official or informal rules, and abuse them gratuitously. Dozens of conscripts are killed every year as a result of these abuses, and thousands sustain serious-and often permanent-damage to their physical and mental health. Hundreds commit or attempt suicide and thousands run away from their units. This abuse takes place in a broader context of denial of conscripts’ rights to adequate food and access to medical care, which causes many to go hungry or develop serious health problems, and abusive treatment by officers.
This report, which documents these abuses, is based on three years of research that have allowed Human Rights Watch to analyze the dedovshchina system, its consequences for the physical and mental well-being of conscripts, and the extent to which treatment under dedovshchina is inconsistent with Russian and international human rights standards. During 2002 and 2003, we conducted research in seven regions across Russia, including Cheliabinsk, Moscow, Novokuznetsk, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, and Volgograd. We interviewed more than one hundred conscripts, their parents, officials, lawyers, NGO experts, and former military servicemen. The conscripts served on more than fifty bases in more than twenty-five of Russia’s eighty-nine provinces. We also extensively studied the archive files of several soldiers’ rights groups. In February 2004, we had a meeting to discuss our findings with officials of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow.
Dedovshchina exists in military units throughout the Russian Federation. It establishes an informal hierarchy of conscripts, based on the length of their service, and a corresponding set of rights and duties for each group of the hierarchy. As in militaries around the world, newcomers have essentially no rights under the system-they must earn them over time. At the beginning of their service, conscripts are “not eligible” to eat, wash, relax, sleep, be sick, or even keep track of time. Thus, any restrictions placed on these functions are considered permissible. The life of a new recruit consists of countless obligations to do the bidding of those conscripts who have served long enough-a year or more-to have earned rights in the informal hierarchy. Second-year conscripts, called the dedy[1],have practically unlimited power with respect to their junior colleagues. They can order them to do whatever they like, no matter how demeaning or absurd the task, while remaining beyond the strictures of the Military Code of Conduct or any other set of formal rules. If a first-year conscript refuses to oblige or fails in the assigned task, the senior conscript is free to administer whatever punishment he deems appropriate, no matter how violent.
Dedovshchina is distinguished by predation, violence, and impunity. During their first year of service, conscripts live under the constant threat of violence for failing to comply with limitless orders and demands of dedy. Many conscripts spent entire days fulfilling these orders, which range from the trivial, like shining the seniors’ boots or making their beds, to the predatory, such as handing over food items to them at meal time, or procuring (legally or illegally) money, alcohol or cigarettes for them. First-year conscripts face violent punishment for any failure-and frequently not only for their own individual failure, as punishment is often collective-to conform to the expectations of dedy. As a rule, punishment happens at night after officers have gone home. Dedy wake the first-year conscripts up in the middle of the night and make them perform push-ups or knee bends, often accompanied by beatings, until they drop. First-year conscripts also routinely face gratuitous abuse, often involving severe beatings or sexual abuse, from drunken dedy at night. Dedy sometimes beat new recruits with stools or iron rods.
Dedovshchina has all the trappings of a classic initiation system; indeed, it likely emerged as one several decades ago. Such systems, which exist in many social institutions around the world, including schools, athletic clubs, and especially the armed forces of many countries, can play a legitimate role in military structures by enhancinggroup cohesion and esprit de corps. Initiation systems license the group to erase a certain degree of individuality in its members, and the possibility of abuse is inherent in that license.
While dedovshchina may once have served the purpose of initiation, it has in the past twenty years degenerated into a system in which second-year conscripts, once victims of abuse and deprivation themselves, enjoy untrammeled power to abuse their juniors without rule, restriction, or fear of punishment.The result is not enhanced esprit de corps but lawlessness and gross abuse of human rights.The collapse of dedovshchina as an initiation system has occurred at both the command level and at the conscript level.
Life is disgusting, I agree. Where would you go, if all rocky planets and moons were available? And maybe the stars systems withing 15ly? You just gonna homestead somewhere?
Honestly yeah, it would kind of be the dream. The problem is it’s awful lonely if your not bringing or creating family and that would be kind of cruel to bring someone into a planet with a human population of like let’s say 100 (you and a dozen or so other families who were crazy enough to do the same), where everyone is related, after only like two generations. You would basically force your descendants to have to take a massive voyage themselves or marry their cousin… and that doesn’t seem too fair. You also better hope at least a couple of those people are really great teachers, who packed basically the entire earth knowledge base, otherwise your going to have this weird agro society stranded on another planet.
It’s a little disgusting how we are cheering for people dying in cruel and needless wars.
That being said, I hear the Russian solders seem to be insane and go out or their way to cause misery and pain.
Honestly, I would leave this planet tomorrow if we had anywhere else to go. Earth is mental. It has crossed my mind that we are all in hell right now. People are so primitive and cruel.
It’s worth bearing in mind this war could be over in a single second, if the Russian army and its various mercenaries hoisted the white flag and proceeded to leave Ukraine and went back to Russia.
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You think Russia wants these people back? Why do you think they sent them to die in the first place?
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From the beginning, we’ve heard stories about Russian soldiers being shot for not following through. I’d like to think that I’d choose the right thing and walk away, but no one knows until they’re in that position
That not necessarily just a Russian Military thing thats just a military thing. “Desertion in the face of the enemy” is punishable by death under multiple military codes. Including the USs UCMJ.
Get shot for being a good slave soldier, or maybe get shot for being a good person.
Tough decision for a coward.
This is very easy to say on the Internet. Things change when bullets are cracking around you and stuff is blowing up all around. I’d also like to say I’d do the right thing in this case, but I’m also home, not being conscripted and pushed into the meat grinder.
They’re also easy to say for people that know they’re not baby raping murderers, but maybe you’re not so sure of your moral compass
Alas, Putin will never do that. He’ll need some kind of “win” before even considering a peace talk. It might be easier to force him to publicly kiss a gay man’s cheek than pulling out from Ukraine empty-handed.
Ok so then the next war is further away from us. It doesn’t stop.
Russian military abuses its soldiers pretty horribly even in peace time. Some fucked up people there I’m guessing. Not an excuse but context.
One reference (among others): https://www.hrw.org/report/2004/10/19/wrongs-passage/inhuman-and-degrading-treatment-new-recruits-russian-armed-forces
Quote —8<—
Throughout the first year of their military service, hundreds of thousands of new recruits in the Russian armed forces face grossly abusive treatment at the hands of more senior conscripts. Under a system called dedovshchina, or “rule of the grandfathers,” second-year conscripts force new recruits to live in a year-long state of pointless servitude, punish them violently for any infractions of official or informal rules, and abuse them gratuitously. Dozens of conscripts are killed every year as a result of these abuses, and thousands sustain serious-and often permanent-damage to their physical and mental health. Hundreds commit or attempt suicide and thousands run away from their units. This abuse takes place in a broader context of denial of conscripts’ rights to adequate food and access to medical care, which causes many to go hungry or develop serious health problems, and abusive treatment by officers.
This report, which documents these abuses, is based on three years of research that have allowed Human Rights Watch to analyze the dedovshchina system, its consequences for the physical and mental well-being of conscripts, and the extent to which treatment under dedovshchina is inconsistent with Russian and international human rights standards. During 2002 and 2003, we conducted research in seven regions across Russia, including Cheliabinsk, Moscow, Novokuznetsk, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, and Volgograd. We interviewed more than one hundred conscripts, their parents, officials, lawyers, NGO experts, and former military servicemen. The conscripts served on more than fifty bases in more than twenty-five of Russia’s eighty-nine provinces. We also extensively studied the archive files of several soldiers’ rights groups. In February 2004, we had a meeting to discuss our findings with officials of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow.
Dedovshchina exists in military units throughout the Russian Federation. It establishes an informal hierarchy of conscripts, based on the length of their service, and a corresponding set of rights and duties for each group of the hierarchy. As in militaries around the world, newcomers have essentially no rights under the system-they must earn them over time. At the beginning of their service, conscripts are “not eligible” to eat, wash, relax, sleep, be sick, or even keep track of time. Thus, any restrictions placed on these functions are considered permissible. The life of a new recruit consists of countless obligations to do the bidding of those conscripts who have served long enough-a year or more-to have earned rights in the informal hierarchy. Second-year conscripts, called the dedy[1],have practically unlimited power with respect to their junior colleagues. They can order them to do whatever they like, no matter how demeaning or absurd the task, while remaining beyond the strictures of the Military Code of Conduct or any other set of formal rules. If a first-year conscript refuses to oblige or fails in the assigned task, the senior conscript is free to administer whatever punishment he deems appropriate, no matter how violent.
Dedovshchina is distinguished by predation, violence, and impunity. During their first year of service, conscripts live under the constant threat of violence for failing to comply with limitless orders and demands of dedy. Many conscripts spent entire days fulfilling these orders, which range from the trivial, like shining the seniors’ boots or making their beds, to the predatory, such as handing over food items to them at meal time, or procuring (legally or illegally) money, alcohol or cigarettes for them. First-year conscripts face violent punishment for any failure-and frequently not only for their own individual failure, as punishment is often collective-to conform to the expectations of dedy. As a rule, punishment happens at night after officers have gone home. Dedy wake the first-year conscripts up in the middle of the night and make them perform push-ups or knee bends, often accompanied by beatings, until they drop. First-year conscripts also routinely face gratuitous abuse, often involving severe beatings or sexual abuse, from drunken dedy at night. Dedy sometimes beat new recruits with stools or iron rods.
Dedovshchina has all the trappings of a classic initiation system; indeed, it likely emerged as one several decades ago. Such systems, which exist in many social institutions around the world, including schools, athletic clubs, and especially the armed forces of many countries, can play a legitimate role in military structures by enhancinggroup cohesion and esprit de corps. Initiation systems license the group to erase a certain degree of individuality in its members, and the possibility of abuse is inherent in that license.
While dedovshchina may once have served the purpose of initiation, it has in the past twenty years degenerated into a system in which second-year conscripts, once victims of abuse and deprivation themselves, enjoy untrammeled power to abuse their juniors without rule, restriction, or fear of punishment.The result is not enhanced esprit de corps but lawlessness and gross abuse of human rights.The collapse of dedovshchina as an initiation system has occurred at both the command level and at the conscript level.
We cheer for killing the invaders. They are the reason killing is happening. It appears to be the only viable end to Moskovite aggression.
It’s not earth that causes these things. It’s humans. It’ll likely follow us wherever we go.
I hear you.
Just remember that we know so much more about everything that happens on the earth than even just a few decades ago.
Things have always been bad everywhere, we just didn’t all have to hear about it every single day.
I say this just so you can maybe temper some of your feelings to make sure you’re accounting for that difference.
Life is disgusting, I agree. Where would you go, if all rocky planets and moons were available? And maybe the stars systems withing 15ly? You just gonna homestead somewhere?
Honestly yeah, it would kind of be the dream. The problem is it’s awful lonely if your not bringing or creating family and that would be kind of cruel to bring someone into a planet with a human population of like let’s say 100 (you and a dozen or so other families who were crazy enough to do the same), where everyone is related, after only like two generations. You would basically force your descendants to have to take a massive voyage themselves or marry their cousin… and that doesn’t seem too fair. You also better hope at least a couple of those people are really great teachers, who packed basically the entire earth knowledge base, otherwise your going to have this weird agro society stranded on another planet.
Right now we have no options. Earth is too primitive to have met other civilizations.
And we still have wars ongoing constantly around the planet.
Yeah but they’re the bad guys. It’s like our team is winning, ya know? Like it or not, we celebrate winners.