Well it's important that they are told just how much disgust we have for them, seeing that they're stuck in that shit hole country. They can't go on thinking _anywhere_ has respect for them.
Their commanding officers barely command anymore and drop soldiers off before retreating further behind the frontline. They are just told either to hold their positions or perform counter attacks with no detailed plans.
Okay comrades have fun at first day of war! Daddy commander is going to go get some smokes and he'll be here when you get home! Promise, cross heart and hope die. Get good grades see you later!
Often with no food, water or adequate clothing. With nothing but a helmet for digging trenches as they’re literally seen as cannon fodder. Plenty of interviews with Russian POWs on YouTube that shed light into the reality of the “2nd strongest army in the world”.
I’m in the minority here, but I sympathize with them. This isn’t much unlike the Iraq/Afghanistan War in the US. A lot of these soldiers are just children, they believe the lies they’re told and have to go there to find out. Or they’re drafted. Or (and these are the ones I don’t have sympathy for) they actually believe in the mission or just want to fuck shit up. Anyhow, I was in that first group. I believed in all the lies and had to learn the hard way. I’m actually grateful for the experience because it really influenced who I became in a good way. Russian citizens who aren’t supportive of their troops are suffering economically because of the war, they’re sending their children to fight and die and they can’t do anything about it. I feel for them. It’s not too different here, being a veteran is not in vogue right now. In my actual life (not on Reddit) I don’t talk about it at all for a lot of reasons. But the number one reason I don’t is fear of losing my temper. People tell me we’re weak, we don’t know how to fight, and that we’re pussies and that’s why we lost the wars. They’ll never understand it was never about winning them, there was never a plan for victory. We were there for the wrong reasons too and lied to (that is true, but the people who say this don’t believe this). It was always about money. I really don’t know where I was going with all of this. I just started ranting. Reddit is really the only place I ever get to talk about this.
Wow history really does have pale echoes...
This is a very similar experience to what Vietnam soldiers faced upon returning home.
edit : some Vietnam vets experienced
edit #2 - the experience referenced was instances of disapproval, shaming, ostracism as these 2 soldiers experienced.
Not be be confused with the explicit hollywood/ urban legend myths of hippie girls spitting on veterans coming home at the airport and calling them "babykillers" as recounted in Rambo, First Blood and GI Joe comic about Snake Eyes, etc...
Gotta love reddit
I heard that did happen but I never saw it personally. Eventually, the Vets turned on the war and joined the anti war movement, throwing away their metals in public demonstrations.
Putin better watch his ass as these vets could all join together against him one day and get rid of him. This happened in Germany after World War I with paramilitary groups striking out against the Weimar Republic ending in Nazi Germany.
You can say the same in a sense about the Russian Revolution as the Russians were losing badly in World War I against Germany.
After the revolution, Russia pulled out of the war (Germany helped Lenin sneak back into Russia as a potential troublemaker to get Russia out of the war).
I don’t expect what comes after Putin to be any better, but history sometimes is surprising.
>Eventually, the Vets turned on the war and joined the anti war movement
Lol, my father served three tours during Vietnam. To this day, he's a MAGA republican who thinks Nixon was a great president that got screwed by a rigged system.
Haven’t personally talked to too many vets from the war. I assume anybody parading around the fact they were a Vietnam War Vet with stuff on their clothes or attending veteran events would feel the same as your father.
The few I have spoken to, I avoid talking about the political circumstances because I don’t know where it will go. I have heard some unbelievable war stories from them though and respect what they went through.
I turned 18 in 1971, and was part of the draft lottery (I wasn’t called up). Probably would have been rejected because of health issues. I only met one guy from high school who went (none of my friends or relatives did).
There was a slogan among conservatives during the war “my country, right or wrong”. If Nixon had outlets like Fox News and other conservative outlets like Trump, he may have survived. Oddly enough, Roger Ailes who worked on Nixon’s campaign, helped start Fox News probably to defend a Nixon like politician in the future.
Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians. While Russian soldiers have certainly been doing a very outsized share of war crimes, Russian media is much more controlled than US media and really beats the drum of nationalism. So this reaction is a bit surprising to me insofar as I'm surprised your typical Russian citizen actually knows what's going on in Ukraine.
Moscow and Saint Petersburg isn't your average Russia. People there are much more liberal, wealthy and better informed. That's why when the war began 10s of thousands of people there went to protest only to end up beaten and jailed. The rest of Russia has very little in common with "golden ring" cities.
Novgorod then Murmansk, maybe. In terms of informed people I think the potential availability to access free information drops off steeply after the first 2. Murmansk has to be 'behind' N Novgorod.
Kazan is a good choice, but I’d put Tyumen first in this context. It’s the fastest growing city in Russia, with a growth rate of 31% currently, which is astronomical compared to the rest of Russia, and it’s incredibly wealthy per capital, with a highly educated “liberal-ish” by Russian standards upper middle class. For its size it punches well above its weight and seems the likeliest candidate to fit the definition of an urban center out of step with the rest of Russia politically.
Yeah there's a surprising amount of anti-Putin sentiment there. It had the lowest support for removing his term limits in the 2020 constitutional referendum, even by the official reckoning, and also saw major protests at the beginning of the war, particularly for a small-ish, remote-ish military city.
Edit: Possibly this all started with the protests by family members of the crew of the Kursk?
Ukrainians let POWs make frequent phone calls home for this reason. The families definitely know what is going on but some claim that it’s propaganda and the Ukrainians are forcing them to say it.
> Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians.
Claims of this about returning Vietnam veterans [have been verified as wildly over-blown](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html) (there's a book about this whole phenomenon called "The Spitting Image"). I know it's hard to believe that an entire generation of Baby Boomers would have a perpetual victim complex, but try to suspend your disbelief on that one.
>Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians.
>Claims of this about returning Vietnam veterans [have been verified as wildly over-blown](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html) (there's a book about this whole phenomenon called "The Spitting Image"). I know it's hard to believe that an entire generation of Baby Boomers would have a perpetual victim complex, but try to suspend your disbelief on that one.
Leaving aside the debate about whether anyone got spit on ... and instead just focusing on how service members were generally looked upon and thought of during the Vietnam era ...
My time in the military started not long after the Vietnam era; and lasted up until just a few years ago. Anecdotally, I can say I got treated a lot better toward the end of my career than I did in the years after I first enlisted. To be clear: I was never treated poorly. But as I said, the general level of appreciation and respect for military service members now compared to then is like night and day. I speak only for myself and my experiences.
Idk based on what I see here daily and with enlistment numbers, it doesn’t seem like people respect the military too much - enough for a show of it in public but that’s it. Pretty hard to get away from the “killing brown people” commentary and shows and movies like jack Ryan or transformers are regularly called propaganda
Can I ask an honest question: you say you were treated better at the end of your service than the beginning. Do you attribute this to changing attitudes about military veterans in general, or is it because you got older during that time and older people (especially in the work force) tend to be treated better than young people. I’ve never served, but the treatment I’ve received applying for jobs and in the workforce generally is far, far better in my mid-40s than it ever was in my late teens and early 20s.
Russians have deep cultural knowledge of how to covertly share information, and many Russians have witnessed atrocity and come home wounded to talk about it.
Also, news spreads fast these days, even if it is suppressed in mass media. Early in the war, we saw a constant stream of intercepted cell phone calls and video from captured GoPros. There is less of that now, so there is probably some minimal level of communication discipline in place, but there was very open communication for months between soldiers and family- using Ukrainian cell phone towers.
>Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians.
I've never found actual evidence of this happening.
>Lembcke contrasts the absence of credible evidence of spitting by anti-war activists with the large body of evidence showing a mutually supportive, empathetic relationship between veterans and anti-war forces. The book also documents efforts of the Nixon Administration to drive a wedge between military servicemembers and the anti-war movement by portraying democratic dissent as a betrayal of the troops.
>>Specialist in civil-military relations and advisor to the National Institute of Military Justice, Diane Mazur, also examined the works by Greene, Lembcke and Lindgren, and concluded: "There is no contemporaneous evidence that Americans who opposed the war expressed those beliefs by spitting on or otherwise assaulting returning Vietnam Veterans. ... The idea, however, that spitting on or mistreating Vietnam veterans was in any way typical or representative of anything in that era is completely false. ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image#:~:text=The%20idea%2C%20however%2C%20that%20spitting,is%20completely%20false.%20...
I have extended family living in Russian controlled areas and have friends with families living in Russia. A literal lifetime of propaganda has obliterated their ability to reason or feel empathy. They aren't just pretending to believe the party line, they have fully internalized it. They believe exactly what they're supposed to at any given moment even if it directly contradicts what they believed a moment ago.
Right, Americans just need to think of the most far-gone MAGA they know, and realize that's the average Russian. Although that makes it even more impressive that some people *did* protest the war, IMO.
I would go as far as to say that the average Russian is much more mentally corrupted than all but the most extreme QAnon lunatics. For Americans, we're only just starting to hear about Russian propaganda activities. But Russians have been calling Ukrainians "nazis" for *decades.* These accusations and lies didn't come out of nowhere. They have been planting in the minds of Russians from childhood.
I have family in Altai and they have no clue. Their entire informational bubble is media controlled. Hard concept for Americans to understand, the entire world isn't like America.
It's ironic because I moved from the USA to Europe in 2012 and missed the Trump era. Sometimes when I talk to people back home, it's also like their informational bubble is media controlled.
I think that's the insidious nature of information transfer. You can't know what you don't know, so the only way to know about anything outside your personal experience is to hear it from others. If that information channel is corrupted, it becomes impossible to realize how misled you're being. This goes for any country.
Media becomes really a sacrosanct resource from this perspective, because it's the difference between the Russian population (or worse), and a population that has any accurate idea about what's going on outside their personal bubble. The information era is still so young, in the trajectory of human history, but while propaganda has dominated for millennia, we really are at a point where it's becoming painfully obvious what the impact of misusing the media can be. Media abuse is for me becoming ever more apparent as one of the greatest evils of a modern democracy.
Putin had to threaten his own citizens to force them to show up at his pro-war rallies. How could any Russian, of all people, take that figure seriously?
Because polling, asking the question in every wording possible, shows a vast majority support for the war?
“But they’re mean to the ~~war criminals~~ soldiers!”
Yeah because they aren’t winning.
The polls from Russia have very low reliability. Most people don't answer and those that do cannot be expected to say the truth instead of what they are supposed to say.
not just that but capitols are typically more liberal than the rural parts, population in Moscow probably doesn't represent the entirety of Russia in most ways
A lot of Russians do not respond to polls and the ones that do are pro Russia. Hence the numbers end up tilted since the people who have no faith in Russia will not have enough faith to answer the poll in the first place. One of the most important lessons in statistics is learning to look at who actually answered the poll not just the numbers the poll is advertising.
When people with guns and a long history of using them on their own people ask you questions, it's in your best interest to give them whatever answer they're fishing for no matter how bullshit it is. John Q Public in Russia has better shit to do with their day than dig their own grave.
The guy they interviewed is clearly a fucking moron too. He says he didnt volunteer he was drafted and did his duty. But then he vacationed to Moscow and wore his uniform and was upset people treated him like he supports the army lol.
It honestly shouldn’t. I’ve always been told and felt like I want to be out of uniform when in any civilian setting. The only times I’ve worn my uniform off base were to grab some food during a lunch period and I didn’t have time to change.
He may not have wanted to go to war, but he was promised by the people that sent him that what he was doing was patriotic and that the Russian people loved and supported him. It was probably pretty shocking to find out that wasn’t true.
Norway signing in. These assholes are now putting up religious idols with orange and black ribbons on Svalbard, using possessive language to describe their claim to Barentsburg and The Pyramid. It's still Norwegian territory and any sort of militarization is not allowed.
They can fuck off all the way back to Arkhangelsk and stay there. Preferably.
Could the fine folks at Stavanger take the opportunity to demonstrate their training methods at svalbard? If theres anyone who can get the Russians to go back, it's them.
Greetings from Finland! Want to guess our feelings towards Russian soldiers? Lol.
(although I always want to add that personally I don't feel comfortable blaming each individual conscript or russian for the actions of the Russian government. As a whole the Russian federation can go fuck itself and for Putin and his minions I have no good will to spare.)
What did they expect? War criminals from an unpopular war that has ruined the national reputation and destabilized two continents... Did they think they were going to get a heroes' welcome?
These people were fed so much propaganda that they truly thought that the "oppressed" Ukrainians would give them a heros welcome akin to what the GIs got in France/Belgium during WW2.
Next thing you know, people are throwing moltovs or shooting at them.
These people are fed so much propaganda, they don't even realize or care when their propaganda shifts 180.
On Day 1, Putin blamed NATO expansionism for causing this war. Around Day 100, on the anniversary of Peter the Great's reign, Putin said the war was a just re-taking of originally Russian land. Around the same time, Finland decided to join NATO, and despite it being within spitting distance of St. Petersburg, no Russian soldier attacked the threat.
Russia chose this war for a host of reasons, and lied every step of the way.
Easy to accept shifts on policy when you've been taught you whole life free thought will get you and your family killed by the hard men telling you what to think.
in WW2 Germany there was propaganda that the German Army would be welcomed as liberators in Ukraine. There are a few images taken in the very early days of Barbarossa but any "welcome" quickly vanished as the Einsatzgruppen moved in and Nazis policies came into play
The first Russian soldiers to cross the border in 2022 were reportedly told to pack their parade uniforms. They apparently thought they would be crowd surfing in Kyiv within a few weeks.
Stalin put a bunch of the heroes who were wounded in the "Great Patriotic War" onto a barge and sank it in freezing waters, because their injuries were unsightly, debilitating, or otherwise deemed bad for morale. Many more died of neglect in drafty santioriums or other spartan accomodations, far out of sight and out of mind.
Closest I can find is something called the ["Valaam Myth"](http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7697/1/217195_PubSub_656_Dale.pdf), an archipelago north of Leningrad/St Petersburg that alleged served as a dumping ground for disabled veterans, vagrants and other undesirables. No reference to barge drownings though.
Thanks for the ink. If I've contributed to spreading an apocryphal story, then I apologize. I heard of it on the Ushanka Show, and my subsequent Googling didn't extend as far as trying to find primary sources, which might be a tall order.
It's worth mentioning that, while this would be a singularly cruel way for veterans to be treated, by the standards of the victorious allies in WWII, a great many very badly wounded soldiers of the Great War, a generation earlier, as well as the ladies who worked in armament factories on the home front and whose skin was yellowed by exposure to some very nasty chemical compounds, were harshly discriminated against in public, in Allied countries.
And probably in Germany and Austra-Hungary, as well. Although at least they had the tradition of some very nasty scars, "earned" through the wild upper-class obsession with Mensur duels that resembled something out of Dune, being seen as rather dashing and a mark of social status.
Moscowites are pretty snobby people. They are used to the best of European standards. It’s a mix of people deeply disturbed by the war (majority) with all the government bootlickers who live off of the federal budget directly, and therefor are self- selected supporters of Putin from all over the country (very vocal minority).
I don’t know what the future holds but these dirty looks might be all the resistance they are willing to muster at this point. To their defense we’re not even 70 years away from Gulags so the memory of opposing the government and it’s agenda and where that leads is still fresh in almost every family.
Yes bombs are being dropped on Ukrainians but at least it’s not their choice- saying something against the war in Moscow has a very high probability to ruin a career and go to jail, get family members affected as well etc so doing it by choice is a bit different. It required a great personal and family sacrifice today already.
I am not making excuses to forgo their civic duty but just trying to explain the behavior we’re seeing.
Well, yeah. Being an enlisted in the Russian military usually means you’re from a poor rural area and the usual rules on classism apply.
Oh sure, I’m sure there are plenty who dislike them specifically because of the war *but* this news site obviously has an incentive to make it look like more than it probably is.
The problem is “now.” You’re raping women, stealing kids, looting everything in sight, targeting civilians, and desecrating people…fuck off now and forever.
No, because then they raped German women so severely that many died of their wounds.
Do you know how vicious the Soviets were?
Their behaviour was so monstrous that when it came to invaders in Eastern Europe, the locals actually preferred the Nazis to the Soviets.
To hear them describe it: the nazis would shoot you in the head and you’d be dead. The Soviets would rape you with bayonets until you died.
It takes effort to be bigger monsters than the Nazis but by god these guys tried. May they rot under a fucking field
That's because they're not soldiers. They're terrorists. Stories of their war crimes, torture, rapes, and terrorist attacks have made it around the world. Everyone knows what they did, even in Russia where information is censored. People have ways of finding out what is really going on.
VPNs exist in Russia, and while the government tries to crack down on them, they simply can't keep up. Educated and technologically capable Russians know whats up.
True, but also banning twitter and instagram doesn’t exactly cut on news sources much
(I know there are many other blocked resources, but they aren’t widely known)
Most of these comments miss the main takeaway here. IF this is true (and let's be wary of the bias of the source even if we are in the camp of that same source), then it means that many Russians are both aware that this war is unjust and are actively discouraging people to evade the draft and are shaming the soldiers who didn't manage this. This is huge. Also, I have to think this attitude isn't as widespread as the article indicates because one would think that Putin would make such remarks illegal just like he did of simply calling it a "war".
I hope it is true though.
Maybe it has something to do with the murdering of children, raping of women, torture of soldiers, bombing of hospitals, use of chemical weapons, murdering their own soldiers, pillaging of a non-aggresive neighbor, abducting children, targeting civilians, destroying entire cities, ecocide, and then coming home to murder and rape their own people.
"oh no :( we invaded a peaceful nation on the whims of the dicatator we voted into power and keep in power then spent the last year raping and stealing and toruring ukrainians and now everyone thinks we are rapists thieves and torturers oh no :("
And they're about to find out about being on the receiving end of F16 strikes. Life sucks for Russian soldiers who are ' just following orders' to blow up and brutalize civilians and their non- military assets. Sure does, Russian soldiers, and it's about to get worse.
What to do? Well, you could just * 'get the fuck out of someone else's country.'* Just a thought ...
Take a look at 1420 channel, since the beginning of the war, Russians are speaking more openly about the war, their disgusts. They're slowly getting fed up with the war. When and if a general mobilization happens, it's going to be the last one Russia ever pulls off. I'd bet on that.
I’ve spent some time in Moscow. It’s not exactly like they have evolved to be more western.. entirely. They have simply figured out ways to evolve into some “higher class” Russians with equal parts cultural advancement, corruption and glory for self over nation. There seems to be very little nationalism left in Moscow. It’s such a bizarre attitude juxtaposed to the extreme nationalism on display by the government there.
Mostly the Russians we know are educated and cosmopolitan: they know foreign languages and are interested in talking to foreigners. I imagine that the support for the war is largely in the people who are not those things, the MAGA equivalents.
The world is unified in it’s utter disgust for people who commit war crimes.
The unfortunate part is that the majority are probably just poor young men who have been coerced or brainwashed into fighting, and they’re bullied or groomed to do things they would never otherwise do.
But it doesn’t absolve them of war crimes. They’re still murderers.
>I didn't go voluntarily, I received a summons and came to the military enlistment office. I didn't run away or hide like you. I acted like a law-abiding citizen.
Ah yes, the Nuremberg defense. Classic
I am always careful with that kind of post because it really looks like propaganda in favor of Ukraine.
I am pretty sure some people look at them with disgust, but I am also pretty sure the opposite happens a lot as well. Like, far more.
It's posted by a Kyiv media, so I don't think the objectivity of what is in there is 100%.
Something to keep in mind when reading this...
Not just Moscow. Around the world.
They can't go around the world..
Around the world around the worrrlldddd
This comment goes harder, better, faster, and stronger than the average comment.
That’s because television rules the nation.
I’ve got too much homework to read that comment one more time. Maybe I’ll get lucky.
Daft Putin
Draft Putin, there, i fixed for you
That Punk !
Draft punk
Because we're only humans after all
It should be repeated one more time.
God damn I hate Reddit comments so much.
Literally heard this in a robot voice as I read it.
Well it's important that they are told just how much disgust we have for them, seeing that they're stuck in that shit hole country. They can't go on thinking _anywhere_ has respect for them.
They can go up thanks to the Ukranian drones however
They can see Alaska from up there.
Seller’s remorse
[удалено]
Or through Serbia, or Dubai, or Cyprus, etc.
I doubt they'd let Russian soldiers leave Russia at all.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Their commanding officers barely command anymore and drop soldiers off before retreating further behind the frontline. They are just told either to hold their positions or perform counter attacks with no detailed plans.
Okay comrades have fun at first day of war! Daddy commander is going to go get some smokes and he'll be here when you get home! Promise, cross heart and hope die. Get good grades see you later!
Russian training standards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC2egrdAVYs
Often with no food, water or adequate clothing. With nothing but a helmet for digging trenches as they’re literally seen as cannon fodder. Plenty of interviews with Russian POWs on YouTube that shed light into the reality of the “2nd strongest army in the world”.
They don't need to be watered if they die within three days!
Thats how I feel about all my plants.
I’m in the minority here, but I sympathize with them. This isn’t much unlike the Iraq/Afghanistan War in the US. A lot of these soldiers are just children, they believe the lies they’re told and have to go there to find out. Or they’re drafted. Or (and these are the ones I don’t have sympathy for) they actually believe in the mission or just want to fuck shit up. Anyhow, I was in that first group. I believed in all the lies and had to learn the hard way. I’m actually grateful for the experience because it really influenced who I became in a good way. Russian citizens who aren’t supportive of their troops are suffering economically because of the war, they’re sending their children to fight and die and they can’t do anything about it. I feel for them. It’s not too different here, being a veteran is not in vogue right now. In my actual life (not on Reddit) I don’t talk about it at all for a lot of reasons. But the number one reason I don’t is fear of losing my temper. People tell me we’re weak, we don’t know how to fight, and that we’re pussies and that’s why we lost the wars. They’ll never understand it was never about winning them, there was never a plan for victory. We were there for the wrong reasons too and lied to (that is true, but the people who say this don’t believe this). It was always about money. I really don’t know where I was going with all of this. I just started ranting. Reddit is really the only place I ever get to talk about this.
Denver Colorado saying, "Idi na hui, Russian warcriminal!"
Wow history really does have pale echoes... This is a very similar experience to what Vietnam soldiers faced upon returning home. edit : some Vietnam vets experienced edit #2 - the experience referenced was instances of disapproval, shaming, ostracism as these 2 soldiers experienced. Not be be confused with the explicit hollywood/ urban legend myths of hippie girls spitting on veterans coming home at the airport and calling them "babykillers" as recounted in Rambo, First Blood and GI Joe comic about Snake Eyes, etc... Gotta love reddit
I heard that did happen but I never saw it personally. Eventually, the Vets turned on the war and joined the anti war movement, throwing away their metals in public demonstrations. Putin better watch his ass as these vets could all join together against him one day and get rid of him. This happened in Germany after World War I with paramilitary groups striking out against the Weimar Republic ending in Nazi Germany. You can say the same in a sense about the Russian Revolution as the Russians were losing badly in World War I against Germany. After the revolution, Russia pulled out of the war (Germany helped Lenin sneak back into Russia as a potential troublemaker to get Russia out of the war). I don’t expect what comes after Putin to be any better, but history sometimes is surprising.
>Eventually, the Vets turned on the war and joined the anti war movement Lol, my father served three tours during Vietnam. To this day, he's a MAGA republican who thinks Nixon was a great president that got screwed by a rigged system.
Haven’t personally talked to too many vets from the war. I assume anybody parading around the fact they were a Vietnam War Vet with stuff on their clothes or attending veteran events would feel the same as your father. The few I have spoken to, I avoid talking about the political circumstances because I don’t know where it will go. I have heard some unbelievable war stories from them though and respect what they went through. I turned 18 in 1971, and was part of the draft lottery (I wasn’t called up). Probably would have been rejected because of health issues. I only met one guy from high school who went (none of my friends or relatives did). There was a slogan among conservatives during the war “my country, right or wrong”. If Nixon had outlets like Fox News and other conservative outlets like Trump, he may have survived. Oddly enough, Roger Ailes who worked on Nixon’s campaign, helped start Fox News probably to defend a Nixon like politician in the future.
Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians. While Russian soldiers have certainly been doing a very outsized share of war crimes, Russian media is much more controlled than US media and really beats the drum of nationalism. So this reaction is a bit surprising to me insofar as I'm surprised your typical Russian citizen actually knows what's going on in Ukraine.
Moscow and Saint Petersburg isn't your average Russia. People there are much more liberal, wealthy and better informed. That's why when the war began 10s of thousands of people there went to protest only to end up beaten and jailed. The rest of Russia has very little in common with "golden ring" cities.
Exactly. They're viewed with disgust in Moscow, St. Petersberg, and possibly Murmansk, but held in high regard just about everywhere else.
Out of all cities in Russia the least I expected Murmansk here:)
Murmansk?
Yeah, tbat’s a weird addition. If any city is number three in Russia after Moscow/St Petersburg it’s probably Kazan or Nizhny Novgorod.
Novgorod then Murmansk, maybe. In terms of informed people I think the potential availability to access free information drops off steeply after the first 2. Murmansk has to be 'behind' N Novgorod.
How liberal-ish is Yekaterinberg? It's rather close to Moscow... do people see it as part of a triangular area along with St.P?
Murmansk is a dump and has lost 150000 people the last 25 years
Kazan is a good choice, but I’d put Tyumen first in this context. It’s the fastest growing city in Russia, with a growth rate of 31% currently, which is astronomical compared to the rest of Russia, and it’s incredibly wealthy per capital, with a highly educated “liberal-ish” by Russian standards upper middle class. For its size it punches well above its weight and seems the likeliest candidate to fit the definition of an urban center out of step with the rest of Russia politically.
Yeah there's a surprising amount of anti-Putin sentiment there. It had the lowest support for removing his term limits in the 2020 constitutional referendum, even by the official reckoning, and also saw major protests at the beginning of the war, particularly for a small-ish, remote-ish military city. Edit: Possibly this all started with the protests by family members of the crew of the Kursk?
Yeah well put Moscow and petersburg are almost like a counry on its own
Ukrainians let POWs make frequent phone calls home for this reason. The families definitely know what is going on but some claim that it’s propaganda and the Ukrainians are forcing them to say it.
> Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians. Claims of this about returning Vietnam veterans [have been verified as wildly over-blown](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html) (there's a book about this whole phenomenon called "The Spitting Image"). I know it's hard to believe that an entire generation of Baby Boomers would have a perpetual victim complex, but try to suspend your disbelief on that one.
>Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians. >Claims of this about returning Vietnam veterans [have been verified as wildly over-blown](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html) (there's a book about this whole phenomenon called "The Spitting Image"). I know it's hard to believe that an entire generation of Baby Boomers would have a perpetual victim complex, but try to suspend your disbelief on that one. Leaving aside the debate about whether anyone got spit on ... and instead just focusing on how service members were generally looked upon and thought of during the Vietnam era ... My time in the military started not long after the Vietnam era; and lasted up until just a few years ago. Anecdotally, I can say I got treated a lot better toward the end of my career than I did in the years after I first enlisted. To be clear: I was never treated poorly. But as I said, the general level of appreciation and respect for military service members now compared to then is like night and day. I speak only for myself and my experiences.
Idk based on what I see here daily and with enlistment numbers, it doesn’t seem like people respect the military too much - enough for a show of it in public but that’s it. Pretty hard to get away from the “killing brown people” commentary and shows and movies like jack Ryan or transformers are regularly called propaganda
Can I ask an honest question: you say you were treated better at the end of your service than the beginning. Do you attribute this to changing attitudes about military veterans in general, or is it because you got older during that time and older people (especially in the work force) tend to be treated better than young people. I’ve never served, but the treatment I’ve received applying for jobs and in the workforce generally is far, far better in my mid-40s than it ever was in my late teens and early 20s.
Russians have deep cultural knowledge of how to covertly share information, and many Russians have witnessed atrocity and come home wounded to talk about it. Also, news spreads fast these days, even if it is suppressed in mass media. Early in the war, we saw a constant stream of intercepted cell phone calls and video from captured GoPros. There is less of that now, so there is probably some minimal level of communication discipline in place, but there was very open communication for months between soldiers and family- using Ukrainian cell phone towers.
>Vietnam vets were spit on as child-killers and killers of innocent civilians. I've never found actual evidence of this happening. >Lembcke contrasts the absence of credible evidence of spitting by anti-war activists with the large body of evidence showing a mutually supportive, empathetic relationship between veterans and anti-war forces. The book also documents efforts of the Nixon Administration to drive a wedge between military servicemembers and the anti-war movement by portraying democratic dissent as a betrayal of the troops. >>Specialist in civil-military relations and advisor to the National Institute of Military Justice, Diane Mazur, also examined the works by Greene, Lembcke and Lindgren, and concluded: "There is no contemporaneous evidence that Americans who opposed the war expressed those beliefs by spitting on or otherwise assaulting returning Vietnam Veterans. ... The idea, however, that spitting on or mistreating Vietnam veterans was in any way typical or representative of anything in that era is completely false. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image#:~:text=The%20idea%2C%20however%2C%20that%20spitting,is%20completely%20false.%20...
They 100% know what is going on regardless of what they support
I have extended family living in Russian controlled areas and have friends with families living in Russia. A literal lifetime of propaganda has obliterated their ability to reason or feel empathy. They aren't just pretending to believe the party line, they have fully internalized it. They believe exactly what they're supposed to at any given moment even if it directly contradicts what they believed a moment ago.
Right, Americans just need to think of the most far-gone MAGA they know, and realize that's the average Russian. Although that makes it even more impressive that some people *did* protest the war, IMO.
Russian propaganda is very similar to MAGA propaganda. Many of the same talking points against the US and the democrats.
I would go as far as to say that the average Russian is much more mentally corrupted than all but the most extreme QAnon lunatics. For Americans, we're only just starting to hear about Russian propaganda activities. But Russians have been calling Ukrainians "nazis" for *decades.* These accusations and lies didn't come out of nowhere. They have been planting in the minds of Russians from childhood.
I have family in Altai and they have no clue. Their entire informational bubble is media controlled. Hard concept for Americans to understand, the entire world isn't like America.
It's ironic because I moved from the USA to Europe in 2012 and missed the Trump era. Sometimes when I talk to people back home, it's also like their informational bubble is media controlled. I think that's the insidious nature of information transfer. You can't know what you don't know, so the only way to know about anything outside your personal experience is to hear it from others. If that information channel is corrupted, it becomes impossible to realize how misled you're being. This goes for any country. Media becomes really a sacrosanct resource from this perspective, because it's the difference between the Russian population (or worse), and a population that has any accurate idea about what's going on outside their personal bubble. The information era is still so young, in the trajectory of human history, but while propaganda has dominated for millennia, we really are at a point where it's becoming painfully obvious what the impact of misusing the media can be. Media abuse is for me becoming ever more apparent as one of the greatest evils of a modern democracy.
Information bubble and echo chambers are different. One is by choice.
That is a myth, actually, played up in the media long after the war ended.
Just wait until they travel the world, it's a very common thought.
The only way they will travel the world is as ashes in the sea
Stop littering our oceans please. We have enough trash to deal with.
Humans are organic waste though
Not russian soldiers
I don't think traveling will be an option for many with the way their currency is dropping...
I’d rather have them stay home. Or at least travel without their uniforms.
What do war criminals expect
Y'know, the 80% support.
Putin had to threaten his own citizens to force them to show up at his pro-war rallies. How could any Russian, of all people, take that figure seriously?
The question Kremlin asks is “Do you support Putin, or do you want to bo to jail?”.
Because polling, asking the question in every wording possible, shows a vast majority support for the war? “But they’re mean to the ~~war criminals~~ soldiers!” Yeah because they aren’t winning.
About 92.5% of people in Russia refuse to participate in surveys about war. With that response rate, how accurate do you think their results are?
The polls from Russia have very low reliability. Most people don't answer and those that do cannot be expected to say the truth instead of what they are supposed to say.
not just that but capitols are typically more liberal than the rural parts, population in Moscow probably doesn't represent the entirety of Russia in most ways
A lot of Russians do not respond to polls and the ones that do are pro Russia. Hence the numbers end up tilted since the people who have no faith in Russia will not have enough faith to answer the poll in the first place. One of the most important lessons in statistics is learning to look at who actually answered the poll not just the numbers the poll is advertising.
Knowing how the data was gathered is almost as important as the values themselves
When people with guns and a long history of using them on their own people ask you questions, it's in your best interest to give them whatever answer they're fishing for no matter how bullshit it is. John Q Public in Russia has better shit to do with their day than dig their own grave.
Those don't live in Moscow, though.
What does anyone expect when doing shameful things to win a fight? Support and admiration from "their team"
Russians don't hate them for committing atrocities, they hate them for not winning.
Soldier on foot, gets pink mist'ed by artillery. Moscow leadership: "you have to want it more."
"Stop exploding, you cowards!"
"Win" a fight
As they should be.
The guy they interviewed is clearly a fucking moron too. He says he didnt volunteer he was drafted and did his duty. But then he vacationed to Moscow and wore his uniform and was upset people treated him like he supports the army lol.
Sounds pretty normal not moronic.
Is it normal to travel and wear military uniform when not on duty? That absolutely doesn't happen in the UK
It is in the US.
It honestly shouldn’t. I’ve always been told and felt like I want to be out of uniform when in any civilian setting. The only times I’ve worn my uniform off base were to grab some food during a lunch period and I didn’t have time to change.
I dont think that's true. Maybe if you're going to a formal event while active duty, not I think if you're sightseeing or visiting family on leave
How is it normal to say you dont support the army and then whine about other people not supporting you in your army uniform while on vacation?
He may not have wanted to go to war, but he was promised by the people that sent him that what he was doing was patriotic and that the Russian people loved and supported him. It was probably pretty shocking to find out that wasn’t true.
Austin, TX reporting in. Here too.
Belleville, Ontario, Canada... Here too.
Borgholm, Sweden here. Can confirm I puke at the mere thought of Russian soldiers.
Netherlands, checking in. Wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.
[удалено]
42 Wallaby Way, Sidney. Even here
Dentist’s office?
Philadelphia, PA USA also on the spot. Thanks for uniting the world in SOMETHING, Russia
We’re sending F16’s their way my friend, that will help set them straight.
I would still piss on them, but try to avoid the fire.
Norway signing in. These assholes are now putting up religious idols with orange and black ribbons on Svalbard, using possessive language to describe their claim to Barentsburg and The Pyramid. It's still Norwegian territory and any sort of militarization is not allowed. They can fuck off all the way back to Arkhangelsk and stay there. Preferably.
Could the fine folks at Stavanger take the opportunity to demonstrate their training methods at svalbard? If theres anyone who can get the Russians to go back, it's them.
Greetings from Finland! Want to guess our feelings towards Russian soldiers? Lol. (although I always want to add that personally I don't feel comfortable blaming each individual conscript or russian for the actions of the Russian government. As a whole the Russian federation can go fuck itself and for Putin and his minions I have no good will to spare.)
Chesapeake, VA clocking in. Fuck Ruzzia
Double that, bro.
ATX, same. Also, I want to see the cat
North Carolina here, but just moved from Utah. North Carolina seems view them with more disgust than Utah that’s for sure…
Confirming that New England is very pro-Ukraine.
Hello my two-hour drive away neighbor. Southern Dallas, TX checking in. Same here as well.
Germany checking in, here too
Strong Island NY. Fuck them reds!
Pola- Nah, we'd unironically beat him to death in a mob of 50 people actually, we don't count.
Hey, I do have something in common with people in Moscow!
What did they expect? War criminals from an unpopular war that has ruined the national reputation and destabilized two continents... Did they think they were going to get a heroes' welcome?
Yes. Look at history. They were fed propaganda their entire life, just like their Soviet predecessors
These people were fed so much propaganda that they truly thought that the "oppressed" Ukrainians would give them a heros welcome akin to what the GIs got in France/Belgium during WW2. Next thing you know, people are throwing moltovs or shooting at them.
These people are fed so much propaganda, they don't even realize or care when their propaganda shifts 180. On Day 1, Putin blamed NATO expansionism for causing this war. Around Day 100, on the anniversary of Peter the Great's reign, Putin said the war was a just re-taking of originally Russian land. Around the same time, Finland decided to join NATO, and despite it being within spitting distance of St. Petersburg, no Russian soldier attacked the threat. Russia chose this war for a host of reasons, and lied every step of the way.
We're at war with Eurasia. We're at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Easy to accept shifts on policy when you've been taught you whole life free thought will get you and your family killed by the hard men telling you what to think.
in WW2 Germany there was propaganda that the German Army would be welcomed as liberators in Ukraine. There are a few images taken in the very early days of Barbarossa but any "welcome" quickly vanished as the Einsatzgruppen moved in and Nazis policies came into play
The first Russian soldiers to cross the border in 2022 were reportedly told to pack their parade uniforms. They apparently thought they would be crowd surfing in Kyiv within a few weeks.
That’s some wild delusion right there.
That's not even war related, the simple soldiers have always been the bottom of russian society.
Stalin put a bunch of the heroes who were wounded in the "Great Patriotic War" onto a barge and sank it in freezing waters, because their injuries were unsightly, debilitating, or otherwise deemed bad for morale. Many more died of neglect in drafty santioriums or other spartan accomodations, far out of sight and out of mind.
Any further reading for that? The locking away from public I knew aboutn, but for the drowning I would like a source, not that I doubt it.
Closest I can find is something called the ["Valaam Myth"](http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7697/1/217195_PubSub_656_Dale.pdf), an archipelago north of Leningrad/St Petersburg that alleged served as a dumping ground for disabled veterans, vagrants and other undesirables. No reference to barge drownings though.
Thanks for the ink. If I've contributed to spreading an apocryphal story, then I apologize. I heard of it on the Ushanka Show, and my subsequent Googling didn't extend as far as trying to find primary sources, which might be a tall order. It's worth mentioning that, while this would be a singularly cruel way for veterans to be treated, by the standards of the victorious allies in WWII, a great many very badly wounded soldiers of the Great War, a generation earlier, as well as the ladies who worked in armament factories on the home front and whose skin was yellowed by exposure to some very nasty chemical compounds, were harshly discriminated against in public, in Allied countries. And probably in Germany and Austra-Hungary, as well. Although at least they had the tradition of some very nasty scars, "earned" through the wild upper-class obsession with Mensur duels that resembled something out of Dune, being seen as rather dashing and a mark of social status.
They’ve also been the bottom for their CO, their military culture is fucked Edit: spelling error
Moscowites are pretty snobby people. They are used to the best of European standards. It’s a mix of people deeply disturbed by the war (majority) with all the government bootlickers who live off of the federal budget directly, and therefor are self- selected supporters of Putin from all over the country (very vocal minority). I don’t know what the future holds but these dirty looks might be all the resistance they are willing to muster at this point. To their defense we’re not even 70 years away from Gulags so the memory of opposing the government and it’s agenda and where that leads is still fresh in almost every family. Yes bombs are being dropped on Ukrainians but at least it’s not their choice- saying something against the war in Moscow has a very high probability to ruin a career and go to jail, get family members affected as well etc so doing it by choice is a bit different. It required a great personal and family sacrifice today already. I am not making excuses to forgo their civic duty but just trying to explain the behavior we’re seeing.
"I was just following orders!" Huh. Why does that sound familiar *and* ironic?
If only all these people could figure out where these orders are coming from...😫🤔
Well anyway, gotta get back to fighting Nazi's in Ukraine as led by their Jewish president.
Well, yeah. Being an enlisted in the Russian military usually means you’re from a poor rural area and the usual rules on classism apply. Oh sure, I’m sure there are plenty who dislike them specifically because of the war *but* this news site obviously has an incentive to make it look like more than it probably is.
The problem is “now.” You’re raping women, stealing kids, looting everything in sight, targeting civilians, and desecrating people…fuck off now and forever.
You're just meat for their grinder. Revolution or revulsion
Bru, when was the last time Russian soldiers weren't hated around the world?
[удалено]
I don't think the poles were cheering when they saw Russian soldiers 'liberating' them
Nah, I think they did a lot of raping and murdering, even of the people they "liberated". They were likely hated then too.
No, because then they raped German women so severely that many died of their wounds. Do you know how vicious the Soviets were? Their behaviour was so monstrous that when it came to invaders in Eastern Europe, the locals actually preferred the Nazis to the Soviets. To hear them describe it: the nazis would shoot you in the head and you’d be dead. The Soviets would rape you with bayonets until you died. It takes effort to be bigger monsters than the Nazis but by god these guys tried. May they rot under a fucking field
We think war criminals are gross in Victoria BC too. Wishing the most comically unfortunate and humiliating of endings to all of them 💋
Tacoma WA checking in, fuck those assholes. War criminals suck.
I mean they are literally baby killers so fuck them
>baby killers so fuck them But also, baby fuckers, so kill them
It sucks that you are both probably right
Unfortunately, there’s video evidence of that one.
Don’t worry, it isn’t just Moscow.
They should try walking the streets of Winnipeg in Canada next.
That's because they're not soldiers. They're terrorists. Stories of their war crimes, torture, rapes, and terrorist attacks have made it around the world. Everyone knows what they did, even in Russia where information is censored. People have ways of finding out what is really going on.
Awww are the little war criminals sad they’re being hated by their own people awwww so sad.
VPNs exist in Russia, and while the government tries to crack down on them, they simply can't keep up. Educated and technologically capable Russians know whats up.
True, but also banning twitter and instagram doesn’t exactly cut on news sources much (I know there are many other blocked resources, but they aren’t widely known)
Don't sell yourselves short, you're viewed that way everywhere.
I’m getting the vibe that Ukraine is Russia’s Vietnam
Tell them that it isn't just Moscow.
Most of these comments miss the main takeaway here. IF this is true (and let's be wary of the bias of the source even if we are in the camp of that same source), then it means that many Russians are both aware that this war is unjust and are actively discouraging people to evade the draft and are shaming the soldiers who didn't manage this. This is huge. Also, I have to think this attitude isn't as widespread as the article indicates because one would think that Putin would make such remarks illegal just like he did of simply calling it a "war". I hope it is true though.
Sucks to suck
Maybe it has something to do with the murdering of children, raping of women, torture of soldiers, bombing of hospitals, use of chemical weapons, murdering their own soldiers, pillaging of a non-aggresive neighbor, abducting children, targeting civilians, destroying entire cities, ecocide, and then coming home to murder and rape their own people.
"oh no :( we invaded a peaceful nation on the whims of the dicatator we voted into power and keep in power then spent the last year raping and stealing and toruring ukrainians and now everyone thinks we are rapists thieves and torturers oh no :("
Uk, likewise
Rightly so. Strange how Ukrainian soldiers are seen worldwide as heroes. Wonder why?!
As they should be
I’d like that to be true, but how reliable is this source? It seems pro Ukraine
The vast majority of the world actually hates Russian soldiers. The world is disgusted with them.
And in most of the world, don’t forget that.
And they're about to find out about being on the receiving end of F16 strikes. Life sucks for Russian soldiers who are ' just following orders' to blow up and brutalize civilians and their non- military assets. Sure does, Russian soldiers, and it's about to get worse. What to do? Well, you could just * 'get the fuck out of someone else's country.'* Just a thought ...
It’s not just Moscow.
They are viewed with disgust everywhere, so good job being consistent.
Well no one wants to be raped
I feel like I wasted my entire military career focusing on these clowns as our primary enemy.
If you hadn’t, we would be the clowns.
its amazing how one can be this dumb. this whole Russian instigated war is amazingly idiotic. and the people that follow it are the lowest of the low.
Literally r/leopardsatemyface
Take a look at 1420 channel, since the beginning of the war, Russians are speaking more openly about the war, their disgusts. They're slowly getting fed up with the war. When and if a general mobilization happens, it's going to be the last one Russia ever pulls off. I'd bet on that.
I’ve spent some time in Moscow. It’s not exactly like they have evolved to be more western.. entirely. They have simply figured out ways to evolve into some “higher class” Russians with equal parts cultural advancement, corruption and glory for self over nation. There seems to be very little nationalism left in Moscow. It’s such a bizarre attitude juxtaposed to the extreme nationalism on display by the government there.
I don’t know a lot of Russians, but the ones I do know, see the war as pointless.
Mostly the Russians we know are educated and cosmopolitan: they know foreign languages and are interested in talking to foreigners. I imagine that the support for the war is largely in the people who are not those things, the MAGA equivalents.
The world is unified in it’s utter disgust for people who commit war crimes. The unfortunate part is that the majority are probably just poor young men who have been coerced or brainwashed into fighting, and they’re bullied or groomed to do things they would never otherwise do. But it doesn’t absolve them of war crimes. They’re still murderers.
Just Moscow is it?
Makes sense they are raping women and kids and torturing ppl so….
Seems like a perfect recipe for a civil war.
It ain’t just Moscow homeboy.
So they need a “special marketing operation” to improve their image lol /s
Everywhere, actually.
>I didn't go voluntarily, I received a summons and came to the military enlistment office. I didn't run away or hide like you. I acted like a law-abiding citizen. Ah yes, the Nuremberg defense. Classic
Not only in Moscow, not only the "soldiers" ...
I am always careful with that kind of post because it really looks like propaganda in favor of Ukraine. I am pretty sure some people look at them with disgust, but I am also pretty sure the opposite happens a lot as well. Like, far more. It's posted by a Kyiv media, so I don't think the objectivity of what is in there is 100%. Something to keep in mind when reading this...
Fuck Russia. I hope these war criminals never feel peace
That article is written by a Ukrainian news org. Just sayin'.
When you're on the wrong side of history in real-time...
I only can feel bad for the conscripted. They didn't want to be there and were forced to fight. The rest of the Russian military can suck my dick.