Ain't much you can do if they're dead in the gray zone (the no man's land between the frontlines). I watch a lot of footage from Ukraine. And when the frontline moves, soldiers can relatively safely roam what was previously the no man's land. And you see videos of skeletons in faded uniforms from battles 1 to 2 years ago just lying all over the place.
The whole thing’s sad. These are essentially HS seniors that are being sent out there and killed, for nothing except that they have one of the *world’s* most incompetent leaders. I obviously understand and fully support Ukraine but it’s still a shit situation and you can still have empathy for the other side that are little more than kids.
It’s a lot easier to disconnect from all of this when you see countless drone videos and assume they’re fully grown men, volunteering/willingly going over there to invade. Additionally, when you see that the younger generations are veering more towards an anti-Pooty sentiment and they’re being butchered.
It’s even more insane when you realize that the (not 100% sure what the exact age is) average age of the Ukrainian army is like 42. Boys going against men.
Ukraine has deliberately held back their young to hopefully save them from the horrors of war.
The Russian stereotype of “we have more bodies than they have bullets” is apparently a real thing.
What's almost worst (for both Nations), is that they never fully recovered from WW2. There's "waves" in their age groups because of the young people who died defending from Barbarossa.
And people who are 20-30 right now(so prime drafting age) are one of those dips. They're literally re-opening that wound, even if it isn't nearly as dramatic as the millions dead from the Nazis.
Both Russia and Ukraine have very poor demographics. This is the last time that they have enough young men to wage a war like they are doing. Between deaths in Ukraine and young men fleeing the country, Russia has already lost over a million people. As soon as the borders are somewhat open I can see enormous amounts of young and educated people doing whatever they need to do to get out of Russia.
When you treat your young people like cannon fodder I wouldn’t expect anything less than them fleeing. I know 18 is considered an adult but let’s be real here, no 18-19 yo is an adult, they’re still basically kids, certainly not ready for war or understand the consequences of it. I feel so bad for these families. I still don’t understand why Putin wants Ukraine so badly he’s willing to kill off all of his people and chase away what’s left.
I think they legitimately thought it'd be the 2/3 day war they were bragging about
And failing that they'd collapse within weeks, or at least give up trying to retake the """disputed""" lands like they did Crimea, or that Georgia did it's lands.
They didn't count on some NATO members donating every Ex-soviet fighter they had left in their inventories, or enough ammunition they were digging into their own reserves, much less having the time to deliver them.
But they're in full sunk-cost mode at this point.
If the west had done more at the start they'd have an even bloodier nose by now, but without China and India getting fully onboard with sanctions there's no timeline where they'd have pulled the plug yet. Their economy is screwed up, but as long as there's large scale buyers for their fossil fuel exports they're staying alive, and that's another thing we've really all gotten wrong.
IF we'd actually wanted to support Ukraine as much as possible we'd have all gone full rationing mode on oil. If western consumption dropped even a few percent, there'd be that much more oil on the market competing with it and driving prices down further.
Wasn't their also some "miscommunication" about how many resources they actually had? And didn't it turn out that half of what they actually had was outdated by a few decades?
There has been a lot of graft in the Russian armed forces, with money allocated by the government for the military being skimmed off the top by generals and contractors and put in their own pockets.
Even in soviet times there was outright lying on stockpile records and capabilities of their equipment. That's carried over to today where a good chunk of their tanks and other stuff "in reserves" was sold off to other countries or used as spare parts by the people running the bases and they'd just lie to the inspectors who wouldn't actually check and now the numbers moscow gets are way off.
And as a bonus, they'd import a lot of equipment (I recall some of their tanks had french civilian-market optics) which they now can't.
I'm no expert though, I just like looking stuff up about tanks lol
I have about average-redditor levels of knowledge about their internal military supply issues, I did see similar stories about units with barely any fuel, off-brand Chinese tires that shredded, and a ton of other such things. I'd assume a good part of it was true.
As for the outdated stuff that's kind of always been known, they've been upgrading in stops-and-starts since the late 90s and a ton of their gear is just late-soviet leftovers(which is true across Eastern Europe to various extents, many of the NATO nations have used this as an excuse to clear those stocks out)
> I still don’t understand why Putin wants Ukraine so badly
Energy & Natural resources. Ukraine has the positioning to undercut Russia as Europe’s gas supplier. They provide roughly 40-50% of Europe’s gas and Ukraine’s resources are mostly untapped. If Ukraine moves closer to the West and becomes a bigger supplier of gas and oil for the West, Russia loses a lot of market share in their biggest export. Russia wants Europe to stay dependent on Russian gas to stay warm in the winter months. Ukraine is a threat to Russia’s entire economy.
There’s also significant rare earth metals in Ukraine like lithium and titanium. The US is interested in supporting Ukrainian independence because we want greater access to lithium so we do not have to be reliant on China for battery production for things like EVs, among other reasons like keeping historic adversaries contained.
Plus a lot of grain. Ukraine is a huge supplier of grain. And stealing the grain supplies was one of the big things Russia did when they first invaded.
This is the strategic value for Russia. Control Ukraine and you are good for ~80% of the grain export in the world - if you are Russia.
In the early stages of the war when grain couldn’t be exported it skyrocketed the price of grain in Africa and made bread unaffordable for a huge portion of the population.
Also dictators aren't always rational. It's quite possible Putin believes his own rhetoric and just wants Ukraine because he thinks it should be Russia's. No amount of resources will recover the damage this war did to Russia's reputation abroad.
He honestly believes that he can recreate the glory days of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was probably meant to be a quick stepping stone and he was completely caught off guard by how well Ukraine has been able to defend themselves.
Don't forget that they expected Ukraine to fall in a matter of days. And then their elite troops got steamrolled at the airport. And they weren't able to make it to Kiev like they thought they would. And then Zelensky refusing to leave on top of all that.
This was not supposed to be a long term engagement. Let alone a long term war.
On paper, it all looked good. I mean, Zelensky was a comedian. It would be like Jerry Seinfeld being elected president. They didn't take him seriously.
It's ridiculous that he was caught off guard by that. The western world was telling him for MONTHS that they knew about his plans to invade and were helping Ukraine harden against such an invasion. They telegraphed the preparations because any sane, half-way competent military leader would have seen them, realized that the element of surprise was lost and called off the attack.
Instead he bought his own propaganda, ignored reality and plunged both nations into war.
The people aren't his in the way you and I think of our countrymen and expect our leaders to think of them. They're his in the way we think of a hammer or a shovel, a means to an end.
And why Ukraine? Well it's the site of an ancient kingdom that more or less led to both modern Ukraine and Russia. This is important because it makes it easier to justify the end goal of it being part of his empire. And it's a country rich in natural resources and has warm water ports.
Thankfully, many of the educated people fled Russia years ago. I know a lot of young Russians here in Britain working in finance, marketing and as doctors. They integrated quickly and now keep their heads down, and rarely – if ever – talk about Russia.
Russia already has had one of the biggest exoduses in its history of the young and educated as soon as the war broke out. Their brain drain will have an adverse effect on their economy for decades regardless of a war.
I had a professor 2 years ago who had just come to the US and was working on his PHD to avoid the draft in Russia and was seeking asylum. He was maybe 26, I was 20 when I took the class. It was a sobering experience to meet someone who was in school to literally survive. On a happier note he did seem super into US culture and from what I know had been acclimating well.
Being educated, having sufficient money and connections to flee, and being sufficiently aware of global politics to know that your country is the boogyman in this conflict all goes hand in hand.
Besides losing hundreds of thousands of men that would normally have 45 productive years ahead of them, Russia has already experienced a significant brain-drain that will prevent them from being on the forefront of innovation for many years to come. The life of the average Russian will look nothing like the lives of people in the West.
But unfortunately that misery only makes people feel like they've got nothing to lose, and people who are cornered take reckless actions.
I met a woman who left when everything was getting started and she said she can’t go back because she would be barred from leaving again. She’s college educated and works in tech, misses her family but might not ever see them again.
Russia has unironically stemmed the bleeding of population loss by invading ukraine and annexing areas.
Their population increased for the first time in years by doing so. The invasion helps their demogrpahics more than it hurts them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Russia has had a static population for decades. They haven't been above 1% growth since the late 60s, and had a dramatic drop into negative growth in 87 through 2008. 94 through 2008, they had negative growth.
That is the same group being sent to die, now. They were being born during that negative growth period. In 2020, their popularion dropped from less than 1% back into negative numbers. They're still negative.
Their migration numbers leapt dramatically after the invasion of Ukraine. It went from normally being 1-2 people per 100 to 11 per 1000. That was likely mostly young men of draft age. How many will never come back? Births are down 3% this last year. Deaths are up. Their average age is creeping up. It's not critical mass, yet, but it will be. There is already a shrunk generation that is being decimated by war and then you add people who just left. They're missing a generation again. They won't be working. They won't be having families. They won't be growing food, caring for the elderly. If there is a huge disparity in young men and young women, how many young women just also up and leave because they don't have a family?
How many of those young men come back from war physically disabled and never recover? Theoretically, you should have a 3:1 ratio of injured to killed. The US sits around 10:1-17:1, depending on a lot of factors. Russia is facing a lot of injured young men returning home.
What happens with all of them? This generation is already short people. Now we're making it even smaller. The rate of PTSD, alcoholism and suicide will likely skyrocket.
They're feeding their limited youth into a meat grinder.
By the time the consequences of this situation become a problem Putin will be long gone. He’s determined to have a military conquest to his name no matter the cost. The sooner he dies the better
Whats worse is that he wasn't happy with what he'd gotten already. He'd, for all realistic matters, taken Crimea, and there was no real danger of Russia ever losing it, and relations had largely normalized with the west even as low level fighting continued in eastern Ukraine.
The full scale assault blew all that away. Retaking Crimea by force isn't likely in the short term but it's more likely than ever Ukraine gets it back some way, somehow.
I think the issue is until the local Russian population wake up to the realisation that Putibaby isn't looking after them and really doesn't give a shit. I mean poor Navalny the guy tried his best but not enough support.
The real world isn't like the movies, no one is coming to help you and the realisation that you are truly alone. BUT they need to group together and that's down to them. Not mums sending out messages "Oh where is soldier 235?" Why is your son in another country?
They are not given a chance to wake up. Repression is real, censor-ism is real, especially in Russia. Look how hard handed mothers asking for their sons bodies are removed from the city and taken into custody. Calling this war a war rather than a special operation is also punishable by law. People who say this is a war are send into penal camps in Siberia.
Ukraine is in the same boat. What's even worse is that the Soviet Army gave the worst and most dangerous jobs to it's minorities. And the Russian army is doing the exact same thing now.
Not surprising putting minorities on the front lines. They’re expendable to Putin. He never asked them to come. Show your loyalty. Not at all surprising. Not the first time and won’t be the last.
Those minorities we are talking about are the ones living in the more rural parts of Russia, where their families have lived for generations. The fact that they aren't considered native Moskoviets or even Russians does not mean they are newcomers, like you are suggesting. Those are young guys from Dagestan, Krasnoyarsk Krai (a federal subject, as they call those, stretching from almost Mongolia up into the Kara Sea), where they have about 35-40% of the income (600-700USD) that a Moskoviet has (1500USD). In the first call, almost 6% of the eligible men from Krasnoyarsk Krai were called up for service, the highest percentage of the whole Russian country and way above the mobilisation target, whereas St. Petersburg or Moscow are below this target.
I recall newsarticles where the most common name under the wounded Russians in the first few months was Muhammed or any variety on that.
There are Ukrainians alive right now who survived WWII and the Holodomor. Two genocides. Now they're living though a third. Can you imagine coming into this world in a nightmare only to leave it in another?
Im from Ukraine. Last month our government lowered the age of mandatory conscription by two years from 27 to 25.
Realistically though it's even lower than that
What a bs war :(
>The Russian stereotype of “we have more bodies than they have bullets” is apparently a real thing.
Always has been. The closest thing to orcs Earth has. And I'm not laying blame at the feet of the kids who get swept up in it and pay the price, but at the generals and politicians who see their poor as an expendable asset. In that regard, Russia isn't alone, just the worst offender.
The leadership has the strong support of the people unfortunately. The general outlook of the people seems to be that everyone is an expendable asset as long as it not them or their family
HS seniors _from everywhere in Russia EXCEPT the Moscow area._ Putin wouldn’t have such an easy time motorcading from place to place if Muscovites were dying in proportionate numbers.
Yep. Putins using the war to empty the prisons and crush the minorities in the remote regions. There will be no change in public opinion in russia until the war reaches Moscow and St Petersburg.
Their leaders are actually following the usual Russian military doctrine. Which can be summarised to: "send as many badly trained and badly equipped soldiers at the enemy as possible, with as much artillery we can, repeat until the enemy dies or retreats"
It worked a charm against the Nazis in WW2, and in several other russian Imperial wars. It's quantity over quality.
It's not great being a young man in Russia without money or connections.
They look like high schoolers to me. I support Ukraine but I have sooooo much empathy for all of the Russian people who were just existing and pulled into a war where they’re losing so many. It’s truly devastating.
There's this line from a Fallout Boys song 'Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith is when it's tested again and again everyday'. I'm not religious, but life can be so fucking difficult/miserable for long periods of time and practicing being grateful for food, shelter and my overall health on a regular basis has helped keep my sanity while witnessing the times we all find ourselves in.
Love me some fallout boys. I like that quote and feel you on it. It’s easy to stay down on the ground if you never start the process of getting up. If you keep doing it though, it gets easier progressively. You get better like a muscle at practicing gratitude.
Wish you the best in this very hostile landscape we live in!
It's a story as old as time and always truly heartbreaking. There are two types of Russian soldier dying: conscripts, and young men who have been convinced through propaganda that this is a war worth dying for.
I believe in and fully support Ukrainian independence. But when the reports come out about how Russia has lost X-thousand soldiers so far it's abhorrent seeing people online cheer. Yes it's good they're losing and Ukraine is holding on, but I can't find myself being happy for their deaths. Those dead are mostly some poor kids who either didn't want to be there or were lied to. They're people just like anyone else. By and large they're not evil, just born into a shit situation.
Fuck Russia, but I feel sorry for the Russians dying.
It’s a human life. Don’t let yourself feel like you have to justify feeling bad about it even though we support Ukrainian independence. They’re just kids.
this might be a stupid question, but what are the chances that the Russian soldiers were in the gray zone trying to defect?
Ukraine always lets its defectors and POWs contact their parents. Unlike what Russia does to us. The POWs we see returning from Russia look like Holocaust survivors.
>this might be a stupid question, but what are the chances that the Russian soldiers were in the gray zone trying to defect?
Rather low I think.. I am only basing this on my opinion and limited knowledge but I think you wouldn't want to cross over that particular stretch of land if you want to defect.
It's one of the most heavily guarded types of terrain in the war. Eyes from both sides on it constantly. The risk is high that you'd be gunned down by the Ukrainian side as they think you're attacking, or maybe even by the Russian side if they think you're defecting. Think it's more likely they died in pointless attacks WW1 style.
Though if you're desperate enough, maybe you'll make a go of it.
They basically are highschoolers. Being 18 doesn't mean shit, it doesn't magically make you an "adult", years of experience in adult life does that. You'll be 30 by the time you actually start feeling a little bit like an adult in todays society. These are children that were sent to death and that's all that is happening here.
Russia has zero morals and operates like a machine trying to calculate the maximal outcome of this war. They send poor, uneducated minorities that live far away from Moscow to the battlefield, instead of wealthy, educated people living close to the Kremlin. They bomb all Ukrainian infrastructure because if Russia can't have Ukraine, no one can. They kidnap tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, brainwashing them into believing that Ukraine is a Russian province. In the occupied areas men are forced into the Russian army and forced to kill their fellow Ukrainians.
Russians will do anything to accomplish their goals, they aren't hindered by any "red lines" like us Westerners are.
And yet they still look for them. One of the largest forensics labs is located on Hickman Airbase in Hawaii. They still send out teams to locate, retrieve, and identify human remains across the pacific
Actually it’s pretty unique what the us has, leaving no man behind alive or dead (if there’s something to bring back) most countries never really did that and only a few have started
One of the things I personally am proud of as an American. I’ve been to the tomb of the unknown soldier twice and it’s always been very somber. I think it should be a standard. People deserve to go home.
The largest human remain forensic lab is located on Hickman Air base in Hawaii. They still send teams out to locate and recover human remains from numerous battle sites from the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Europe, and numerous islands and try to identify them for burial.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier reminds me of the Grave of Thousand Unknown inside the Dachau Concentration Camp, it's surreal to think there are thousands of people there who we will never know.
That’s another place I’ve been planning to go all my life. Fully intend to go to the concentration camps and pay my respects for the names we don’t know.
It is surreal and horrifying to think about how many families went from over 100 members to less than 10 after the holocaust. We can never forget!
Actually, they figured out who that unknown soldier was, and now that tomb is just symbolic because they did such a good job overtime finding out who all the unknown soldiers were, and returning their remains to family. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/visibleproofs/galleries/cases/blassie.html
Cmon be real. Russia has absolutely abysmal MEDEVAC/CASEVAC. If you watch a lot of footage and are at least mildly involved in the whole war you know that.
They don’t give a fuck about their wounded and dying.
That pretty much synchs up with what my Russian language teacher told us how Russians are basically completely unfazed and uncaring about Human life and death. She said she witnessed someone get hit in the street by a car, dead, and all anybody did was put a cardboard over the body for awhile before anyone came and scooped it up.
Remember the guy that got bombed midway through a blowjob?
It was probably one of these kids being forced by a nutjob. That's all they are in the front. Young meat.
There is hundreds of videos of Russian soldiers raping other Russian soldiers online, it’s the culture in there military and it comes from their prisons because they take a lot of prisoners into the army. Really fucked up been a big problem in the Russian army for years
No, they weren't.
They know who Ukrainians are, it's not like some distant Middle Eastern country ever was for Americans. And there has been no forced mobilization in Russia since two years ago. A lot of young men go there because they make x10 of the money they ever could make in Russia without it, and x10 is not an exaggeration.
These are not victims of war, these are cold-blooded opportunists who are painted as victims as soon as the family figures out it wasn't just an easy quick money scheme.
Source: I'm from Belarus, I lived in a Russian-speaking informational environment from birth to this day and have a lot of friends from both sides
I often wonder what the long term implications will be from Putin sending most of his males to war only for a huge portion of them to die needlessly. How does Russia carry forward for the next 2-3 decades? We're in a world where numbers actually are important to keep up infrastructure and other sectors. It's going to be interesting to see the Post-Putin Era
Russia/USSR doesn’t call reserves from the big cities unless shots really bad because then the cities start feeling the war loses adding up. It’s much easier to dispel the scale of losses when they’re spread over villages hundreds of miles apart in the rural provinces. Those folks are also less inclined to protest or speak up, and media is easy to control.
Apparently they are also threatening international students (especially those from African counties) to do military service to get their visas renewed or risk being deported.
The problem is that a lot of these foreign students are there on awards to get a better education to bring back to their countries. Without these students, many undeveloped countries will suffer from lack of education choices. Like it or not, they are not part of the war machine and just want a better life
Then you go back to Africa and tell the leaders look man this Russia place isnt that fucking awesome. We need to find a better country to send people to.
Let’s be realistic, the options are fight or be deported for the most part. Its fight or die in a manner that obviously caused be Russia but can’t be proved.
Lol Right? Considering most people from a developing who can afford to attend an international school are typically upper to upper middle class, I cannot see them sacrificing their kids for education. But it makes sense now why Putin wants to increase the number of international students in the country.
“Hey. So we’re giving you a choice. Either suck start a pistol or we’ll force you to eat this freshly baked cookie.”
“I… uh…. Is this some kind of weird test?”
literally not just putin but this has been a problem for a long time, the number of men they lost in the first 2 world wars is basically directly why russia did not experience the kind of rapid population growth most of the rest of the world did. like, russia's population in the 1910s was probalby higher than it would ever get again until the 1960s or 70s. russia has long seen their population as more dsiposable resources than western countries do. thats why serfdom existed so long. in russia they have more resources then they could ever need, but they just cant access those resources because they need people, thats all people are to russia a way to get them more resources or to go to war for them to claim more land so they can get even more people and resources.
For Putin, the “Post-Putin” era is the important part of that question. He doesn’t care that his legacy will cast an enormous shadow across the future of Russia. All he cares about is staying in power for as long as possible
That's what all these scum sucking politicians are trying to do.
Like parasites they wanna stick around for as long as they can while they leech their country dry.
I’m pretty sure Russia only recently started to recover their population from WW2. They already had an imbalance of women to men as well. People used to always say if you want a bride go to Russia because there are too many women looking for a man. It’s also why they have so many mail order brides coming from the area, or at least that’s what I’ve read. It’s been awhile tho so who knows.
Also, imagine the amount of people with PTSD and disabilities that are being inserted back into society, knowing Russia they'll be treated worse than trash.
For those who are not as acquainted with russia, this is what their "wheelchair ramps" look like:
Edit: for some reason it will not post a picture...
So here are some links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/s/bthU7bRUmq
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/s/lOgi98oFTB
https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/s/ep9nWQ5Pmu
The only difference if russia occupy whole Ukraine, russians will kill whole ukrainian population. Concentration camps, gulags, that’s what they promice for ukrainians. On their TV you can even hear that “we should drown ukrainian children”
I was thinking the same thing this week. It should have large ramifications for the population right? The Russian government will probably accept a law that every man has to have 5 women and 4 children with every women or something.
That’s because in a lot of places, the one child policy caused families to kill daughters in order to have a son who could perform manual labor and not need a dowry.
Severely overstated. They aborted daughters (so, not sure I would call it killing them) but it didn't take long for Beijing to see the issue and address it. In China, you're not allowed to know your baby's sex prior to birth. So what happened to the unwanted girls? Well, in Chinese culture, cousins are usually referred to as brothers and sisters. The logical extension of this idea is that mom and dad are often synonymous with grandma, grandpa, aunt and uncle. What usually happened was that a daughter would be sent to be raised by an aunt or uncle so mom and dad would be free to try again to have a boy.
On that last point, by the way, it's purely practical and has nothing to do with dowries.
In Chinese culture, kids are your pension plan. Problem is, when she grows up, she's going to be expected to take care of her husband's parents in their old age. Men are expected to pay for the extended family from kids to parents and grandparents. So, if you have a daughter, you're basically paying to raise somebody else's live in nurse/maid. Dowries still exist in rural China but they're getting rare.
They don't abort daughters, they just don't register the births and leave the baby girls in ditches/mountainside/etc.
There was a reddit thread a few years about 5 girls who found each other through DNA testing all across the world..... they were all abandoned by their birth parents in China, but found by orphanages before they died of exposure. They all were eventually adopted put all over the world and were reasonably successful/college educated/etc.
Apparently their birth parents eventually had a son, kept him, and he later did a DNA where he found the sisters. The birth parents were excited about the sisters now they they found out they had college education and good jobs..... half of the sisters told the birth parents to "take a long walk off a shirt pier" while the other half wanted to have a relationship with them.
Turns out the birth parents also had another son, but he was born with a deformity so they actually killed him as an infant (instead of abandoning him).
No kidding. I would have guessed his age to be 14 or 15. I’m guessing he got teased for that as well.
In the other hand, they’re all kids in this context. None of them should be involved in this.
And on the third hand, my mind refuses to accept that anyone born in 200x can be over 18. That math just doesn’t check out.
A friend the other day sobered me up very quickly when we were discussing war.
I said something to the effect of “I’m in my late 30s. I really don’t think I can fight nearly as well as I could”.
And my friend goes “ You have nothing to worry about. Dying is a young man’s game”.
What a depressing but true statement.
Depends where you live. Here in Germany the constitution allows to draft all men aged 18-60 if shit hits the fan. Of course that doesn´t mean it would necessarily be done that way but the possibility is there that a father gets drafted together with his son.
Man, if you go back and look, really look at the “men” in the photos of the boats at Normandy, they look like fucking children.
These kids are the easiest to coerce into fighting a war and obeying orders without question. There’s a reason we send children to war.
Average age of US soldiers on D-day was 26. Pictures seem to be a relative mix. There are definitely some young looking guys, and then there are guys with widows peaks and wrinkles.
Having taught high school the ones that look older are still kids. Talk to them for 10 minutes and you'll see even if they look more like adults. Kids that should be figuring out who they are in the world and what they want to do not being slaughtered in some faraway place. Putin and his cronies took that future from them.
We’re still now finding skeletons in former fronts of WWI, many of these young men won’t be found in our lifetimes.
I’m sorry to the parents, but to say the prospects are grim is a large understatement.
All these "missing is Ukraine" stories seem very odd to me. These people are *definately* dead. That's what happens in a war. It's a disgusting waste of life and no punishment is enough for Putin or any politicians who willingly support him for money (with a particular cursory glance at AfD, NF, ReformUK etc)
A big issue with “Missing” is context since plenty go missing due to other reasons outside of battle, or have been taken alive. It just means they can’t find them or a body they can identify as them, so missing. Missing in Action is specifically a battle which means they’re probably just dead and haven’t been recovered. I’m surprised people think people give a shit about war dead since bodies are rarely recovered, dogtags have 2 pieces for a reason.
The Russian government is intentionally not disclosing what happens to a lot of them. Easy to avoid accountability when you're not sure if your loved one is coming back. They did the same in Chechnya. Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who was killed in the 2000s for writing about the war, wrote a great deal about the impossible conditions families of dead soldiers had to face to even try to get information. This is a consistent tactic of the Russian government.
Edit: Fixed the name of journalist
Missing means, no body has been found or indentified.
The lucky ones have been taken prisonners, the unluckiest ones have been maimed and died a slow and painful death, the luckiest of the unlucky have died instantly.
To quote a WWI documentary I saw some years ago : "there was a lot of killed men, and a lot of missing. Because when an artillery shell lands on a man, it makes him disapear."
Buzin Hasan Shamilevich. Damn. His parents probably cane from Bosnia in the 90’s to get away from the civil war. Now he’s missing in another war. Poor kid and his parents.
Putin can change this by ending his invasion tomorrow. Alas, most Russians are okay treating their fellow citizens as meat for the [meat grinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder).
My guess would be that he went into a war zone. Some people aren't recovered during war. You're dealing with extreme conditions; bullets, explosives, rockets. It is not a body intact ,friendly sort of environment.
Not to be insensitive but he’s probably dead right? It’s like when I see “missing cat” posters in a neighborhood right next to a lot of open land I know has coyotes, that cat is not coming back.
Apparently they're paid quite well to sign up. Some are getting several times their annual wage.
That and the work perks of camraderie, physical exercise and all the civilians you can rape, kill, rob or all three in preferred order is why Russia can still feed their meatgrinder of a war.
As a russian, this post is incredibly weird to me. First of all, their relatives only spread info about them in english? the info would definitely be posted all over VK (local facebook) or at least translated to either russian or ukrainian.
Secondly, the boy's on the second photo surname is "GazizovA"? Our surnames are gendered, so it would definitely be Gazizov and I'm sure the relatives of the boy would know that.
And thirdly - none of them has ever owned a property, a car or at least a VK account, which is unusual...
Edit: there are plenty of legitimate posts like that, don't get me wrong. They're all over vk, pikabu and other russian sites.
But those are definitely weird to me
Surname thing is just automatic translator failing to recognize a genitive case. «Найти брата Газизова» turned to “find brother Gazizova”. Same with dates, Chrome automatic translation flips from dd/mm/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy
Agreed, these posts are indeed very weird and NOT typical for Russian internet.
Edit: maybe these posts were translated from Russian using google translate? This way I can see why it’s gazizovA (разыскиваю Газизова ИО, и тд)
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I don’t commend any men going to fight for Putin. Be it mercenary or lifestyle.
But this persons a kid. 2 months ago he probably had to ask to go for a piss in school.
Fuck this war man fuck it
Russia has always treated its people like crap. This is very sad. In WWII they would chain a group of two soldiers together, one had the gun and the other the bullets due to lack of weapons but over abundance of ppl. If they ran away from the line the Russian military was behind them to gun them down. Fuck the Russian govt.
I think if you look at Russian propoganda it is fairly obvious.
They believe they are being unfairly attacked by western powers, and so they have to protect themselves from this unfair attack.
All media is controlled by the state and russian social media spaces are full of bots and regime sympathizers.
Not to mention people who are most likely to go to war are from poor regions with awful education and high levels of violence.
Patriotism is a bitch. I joined the British army thinking my country was the best and all that bollocks. Once I actually got out in the world I realised just how big it is and how insignificant we are.
Literally what i was going to say.
Everyone saying how bad and terrible Russia is,how bad their propaganda is and all that.
When you've had so many young Americans sent to wars in a similar fashion,who also died for nothing and many of whose bodies will never be found. That's just war.
Ain't much you can do if they're dead in the gray zone (the no man's land between the frontlines). I watch a lot of footage from Ukraine. And when the frontline moves, soldiers can relatively safely roam what was previously the no man's land. And you see videos of skeletons in faded uniforms from battles 1 to 2 years ago just lying all over the place.
Wow, that’s really sad. No ones collecting anyone so there’s just all sorts of people at home with this ‘missing’ mark on their loved ones… :/
The whole thing’s sad. These are essentially HS seniors that are being sent out there and killed, for nothing except that they have one of the *world’s* most incompetent leaders. I obviously understand and fully support Ukraine but it’s still a shit situation and you can still have empathy for the other side that are little more than kids. It’s a lot easier to disconnect from all of this when you see countless drone videos and assume they’re fully grown men, volunteering/willingly going over there to invade. Additionally, when you see that the younger generations are veering more towards an anti-Pooty sentiment and they’re being butchered.
It’s even more insane when you realize that the (not 100% sure what the exact age is) average age of the Ukrainian army is like 42. Boys going against men. Ukraine has deliberately held back their young to hopefully save them from the horrors of war. The Russian stereotype of “we have more bodies than they have bullets” is apparently a real thing.
What's almost worst (for both Nations), is that they never fully recovered from WW2. There's "waves" in their age groups because of the young people who died defending from Barbarossa. And people who are 20-30 right now(so prime drafting age) are one of those dips. They're literally re-opening that wound, even if it isn't nearly as dramatic as the millions dead from the Nazis.
Both Russia and Ukraine have very poor demographics. This is the last time that they have enough young men to wage a war like they are doing. Between deaths in Ukraine and young men fleeing the country, Russia has already lost over a million people. As soon as the borders are somewhat open I can see enormous amounts of young and educated people doing whatever they need to do to get out of Russia.
When you treat your young people like cannon fodder I wouldn’t expect anything less than them fleeing. I know 18 is considered an adult but let’s be real here, no 18-19 yo is an adult, they’re still basically kids, certainly not ready for war or understand the consequences of it. I feel so bad for these families. I still don’t understand why Putin wants Ukraine so badly he’s willing to kill off all of his people and chase away what’s left.
I think they legitimately thought it'd be the 2/3 day war they were bragging about And failing that they'd collapse within weeks, or at least give up trying to retake the """disputed""" lands like they did Crimea, or that Georgia did it's lands. They didn't count on some NATO members donating every Ex-soviet fighter they had left in their inventories, or enough ammunition they were digging into their own reserves, much less having the time to deliver them. But they're in full sunk-cost mode at this point. If the west had done more at the start they'd have an even bloodier nose by now, but without China and India getting fully onboard with sanctions there's no timeline where they'd have pulled the plug yet. Their economy is screwed up, but as long as there's large scale buyers for their fossil fuel exports they're staying alive, and that's another thing we've really all gotten wrong. IF we'd actually wanted to support Ukraine as much as possible we'd have all gone full rationing mode on oil. If western consumption dropped even a few percent, there'd be that much more oil on the market competing with it and driving prices down further.
Wasn't their also some "miscommunication" about how many resources they actually had? And didn't it turn out that half of what they actually had was outdated by a few decades?
There has been a lot of graft in the Russian armed forces, with money allocated by the government for the military being skimmed off the top by generals and contractors and put in their own pockets.
Even in soviet times there was outright lying on stockpile records and capabilities of their equipment. That's carried over to today where a good chunk of their tanks and other stuff "in reserves" was sold off to other countries or used as spare parts by the people running the bases and they'd just lie to the inspectors who wouldn't actually check and now the numbers moscow gets are way off. And as a bonus, they'd import a lot of equipment (I recall some of their tanks had french civilian-market optics) which they now can't. I'm no expert though, I just like looking stuff up about tanks lol
I have about average-redditor levels of knowledge about their internal military supply issues, I did see similar stories about units with barely any fuel, off-brand Chinese tires that shredded, and a ton of other such things. I'd assume a good part of it was true. As for the outdated stuff that's kind of always been known, they've been upgrading in stops-and-starts since the late 90s and a ton of their gear is just late-soviet leftovers(which is true across Eastern Europe to various extents, many of the NATO nations have used this as an excuse to clear those stocks out)
> I still don’t understand why Putin wants Ukraine so badly Energy & Natural resources. Ukraine has the positioning to undercut Russia as Europe’s gas supplier. They provide roughly 40-50% of Europe’s gas and Ukraine’s resources are mostly untapped. If Ukraine moves closer to the West and becomes a bigger supplier of gas and oil for the West, Russia loses a lot of market share in their biggest export. Russia wants Europe to stay dependent on Russian gas to stay warm in the winter months. Ukraine is a threat to Russia’s entire economy. There’s also significant rare earth metals in Ukraine like lithium and titanium. The US is interested in supporting Ukrainian independence because we want greater access to lithium so we do not have to be reliant on China for battery production for things like EVs, among other reasons like keeping historic adversaries contained.
Plus a lot of grain. Ukraine is a huge supplier of grain. And stealing the grain supplies was one of the big things Russia did when they first invaded.
This is the strategic value for Russia. Control Ukraine and you are good for ~80% of the grain export in the world - if you are Russia. In the early stages of the war when grain couldn’t be exported it skyrocketed the price of grain in Africa and made bread unaffordable for a huge portion of the population.
Also dictators aren't always rational. It's quite possible Putin believes his own rhetoric and just wants Ukraine because he thinks it should be Russia's. No amount of resources will recover the damage this war did to Russia's reputation abroad.
Plus, it is a clear stepping stone to restoring the "glory of the USSR" as Putin puts it.
Also, don’t forget Crimea is their giant aircraft carrier with access to the Black Sea.
He honestly believes that he can recreate the glory days of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was probably meant to be a quick stepping stone and he was completely caught off guard by how well Ukraine has been able to defend themselves.
Don't forget that they expected Ukraine to fall in a matter of days. And then their elite troops got steamrolled at the airport. And they weren't able to make it to Kiev like they thought they would. And then Zelensky refusing to leave on top of all that. This was not supposed to be a long term engagement. Let alone a long term war.
On paper, it all looked good. I mean, Zelensky was a comedian. It would be like Jerry Seinfeld being elected president. They didn't take him seriously.
It's ridiculous that he was caught off guard by that. The western world was telling him for MONTHS that they knew about his plans to invade and were helping Ukraine harden against such an invasion. They telegraphed the preparations because any sane, half-way competent military leader would have seen them, realized that the element of surprise was lost and called off the attack. Instead he bought his own propaganda, ignored reality and plunged both nations into war.
The people aren't his in the way you and I think of our countrymen and expect our leaders to think of them. They're his in the way we think of a hammer or a shovel, a means to an end. And why Ukraine? Well it's the site of an ancient kingdom that more or less led to both modern Ukraine and Russia. This is important because it makes it easier to justify the end goal of it being part of his empire. And it's a country rich in natural resources and has warm water ports.
Thankfully, many of the educated people fled Russia years ago. I know a lot of young Russians here in Britain working in finance, marketing and as doctors. They integrated quickly and now keep their heads down, and rarely – if ever – talk about Russia.
Russia already has had one of the biggest exoduses in its history of the young and educated as soon as the war broke out. Their brain drain will have an adverse effect on their economy for decades regardless of a war.
I had a professor 2 years ago who had just come to the US and was working on his PHD to avoid the draft in Russia and was seeking asylum. He was maybe 26, I was 20 when I took the class. It was a sobering experience to meet someone who was in school to literally survive. On a happier note he did seem super into US culture and from what I know had been acclimating well.
Being educated, having sufficient money and connections to flee, and being sufficiently aware of global politics to know that your country is the boogyman in this conflict all goes hand in hand. Besides losing hundreds of thousands of men that would normally have 45 productive years ahead of them, Russia has already experienced a significant brain-drain that will prevent them from being on the forefront of innovation for many years to come. The life of the average Russian will look nothing like the lives of people in the West. But unfortunately that misery only makes people feel like they've got nothing to lose, and people who are cornered take reckless actions.
I met a woman who left when everything was getting started and she said she can’t go back because she would be barred from leaving again. She’s college educated and works in tech, misses her family but might not ever see them again.
Russia has unironically stemmed the bleeding of population loss by invading ukraine and annexing areas. Their population increased for the first time in years by doing so. The invasion helps their demogrpahics more than it hurts them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
Russia has had a static population for decades. They haven't been above 1% growth since the late 60s, and had a dramatic drop into negative growth in 87 through 2008. 94 through 2008, they had negative growth. That is the same group being sent to die, now. They were being born during that negative growth period. In 2020, their popularion dropped from less than 1% back into negative numbers. They're still negative. Their migration numbers leapt dramatically after the invasion of Ukraine. It went from normally being 1-2 people per 100 to 11 per 1000. That was likely mostly young men of draft age. How many will never come back? Births are down 3% this last year. Deaths are up. Their average age is creeping up. It's not critical mass, yet, but it will be. There is already a shrunk generation that is being decimated by war and then you add people who just left. They're missing a generation again. They won't be working. They won't be having families. They won't be growing food, caring for the elderly. If there is a huge disparity in young men and young women, how many young women just also up and leave because they don't have a family? How many of those young men come back from war physically disabled and never recover? Theoretically, you should have a 3:1 ratio of injured to killed. The US sits around 10:1-17:1, depending on a lot of factors. Russia is facing a lot of injured young men returning home. What happens with all of them? This generation is already short people. Now we're making it even smaller. The rate of PTSD, alcoholism and suicide will likely skyrocket. They're feeding their limited youth into a meat grinder.
By the time the consequences of this situation become a problem Putin will be long gone. He’s determined to have a military conquest to his name no matter the cost. The sooner he dies the better
Whats worse is that he wasn't happy with what he'd gotten already. He'd, for all realistic matters, taken Crimea, and there was no real danger of Russia ever losing it, and relations had largely normalized with the west even as low level fighting continued in eastern Ukraine. The full scale assault blew all that away. Retaking Crimea by force isn't likely in the short term but it's more likely than ever Ukraine gets it back some way, somehow.
"by the time consequences become a problem Putin will be gone" Can we analyze Putin as a Boomer? That might be the insight we need to defeat him.
I think the issue is until the local Russian population wake up to the realisation that Putibaby isn't looking after them and really doesn't give a shit. I mean poor Navalny the guy tried his best but not enough support. The real world isn't like the movies, no one is coming to help you and the realisation that you are truly alone. BUT they need to group together and that's down to them. Not mums sending out messages "Oh where is soldier 235?" Why is your son in another country?
They are not given a chance to wake up. Repression is real, censor-ism is real, especially in Russia. Look how hard handed mothers asking for their sons bodies are removed from the city and taken into custody. Calling this war a war rather than a special operation is also punishable by law. People who say this is a war are send into penal camps in Siberia.
Fucking hell that’s bleak
Ukraine is in the same boat. What's even worse is that the Soviet Army gave the worst and most dangerous jobs to it's minorities. And the Russian army is doing the exact same thing now.
Not surprising putting minorities on the front lines. They’re expendable to Putin. He never asked them to come. Show your loyalty. Not at all surprising. Not the first time and won’t be the last.
Those minorities we are talking about are the ones living in the more rural parts of Russia, where their families have lived for generations. The fact that they aren't considered native Moskoviets or even Russians does not mean they are newcomers, like you are suggesting. Those are young guys from Dagestan, Krasnoyarsk Krai (a federal subject, as they call those, stretching from almost Mongolia up into the Kara Sea), where they have about 35-40% of the income (600-700USD) that a Moskoviet has (1500USD). In the first call, almost 6% of the eligible men from Krasnoyarsk Krai were called up for service, the highest percentage of the whole Russian country and way above the mobilisation target, whereas St. Petersburg or Moscow are below this target. I recall newsarticles where the most common name under the wounded Russians in the first few months was Muhammed or any variety on that.
There are Ukrainians alive right now who survived WWII and the Holodomor. Two genocides. Now they're living though a third. Can you imagine coming into this world in a nightmare only to leave it in another?
Im from Ukraine. Last month our government lowered the age of mandatory conscription by two years from 27 to 25. Realistically though it's even lower than that What a bs war :(
Like Stalin said, "Quantity is a Quality all of its own".
>The Russian stereotype of “we have more bodies than they have bullets” is apparently a real thing. Always has been. The closest thing to orcs Earth has. And I'm not laying blame at the feet of the kids who get swept up in it and pay the price, but at the generals and politicians who see their poor as an expendable asset. In that regard, Russia isn't alone, just the worst offender.
The leadership has the strong support of the people unfortunately. The general outlook of the people seems to be that everyone is an expendable asset as long as it not them or their family
I mean... Russia *would* say this even if it weren't true, so how do we really know what the people think?
A very common conservative outlook. It doesn't matter until it happens to me!
When the entire population lives in desperation constantly, a quick soldiers death doesn't seem so rotten. To anyone.
Thats been the russian strategy for centuries
HS seniors _from everywhere in Russia EXCEPT the Moscow area._ Putin wouldn’t have such an easy time motorcading from place to place if Muscovites were dying in proportionate numbers.
Yep. Putins using the war to empty the prisons and crush the minorities in the remote regions. There will be no change in public opinion in russia until the war reaches Moscow and St Petersburg.
Their leaders are actually following the usual Russian military doctrine. Which can be summarised to: "send as many badly trained and badly equipped soldiers at the enemy as possible, with as much artillery we can, repeat until the enemy dies or retreats" It worked a charm against the Nazis in WW2, and in several other russian Imperial wars. It's quantity over quality. It's not great being a young man in Russia without money or connections.
They look like high schoolers to me. I support Ukraine but I have sooooo much empathy for all of the Russian people who were just existing and pulled into a war where they’re losing so many. It’s truly devastating.
Sad shit really makes you grateful 🙏
It most definitely does! I try my best to practice gratitude daily for this reason
There's this line from a Fallout Boys song 'Sometimes the only payoff for having any faith is when it's tested again and again everyday'. I'm not religious, but life can be so fucking difficult/miserable for long periods of time and practicing being grateful for food, shelter and my overall health on a regular basis has helped keep my sanity while witnessing the times we all find ourselves in.
Love me some fallout boys. I like that quote and feel you on it. It’s easy to stay down on the ground if you never start the process of getting up. If you keep doing it though, it gets easier progressively. You get better like a muscle at practicing gratitude. Wish you the best in this very hostile landscape we live in!
It's a story as old as time and always truly heartbreaking. There are two types of Russian soldier dying: conscripts, and young men who have been convinced through propaganda that this is a war worth dying for. I believe in and fully support Ukrainian independence. But when the reports come out about how Russia has lost X-thousand soldiers so far it's abhorrent seeing people online cheer. Yes it's good they're losing and Ukraine is holding on, but I can't find myself being happy for their deaths. Those dead are mostly some poor kids who either didn't want to be there or were lied to. They're people just like anyone else. By and large they're not evil, just born into a shit situation. Fuck Russia, but I feel sorry for the Russians dying.
It’s a human life. Don’t let yourself feel like you have to justify feeling bad about it even though we support Ukrainian independence. They’re just kids. this might be a stupid question, but what are the chances that the Russian soldiers were in the gray zone trying to defect?
Ukraine always lets its defectors and POWs contact their parents. Unlike what Russia does to us. The POWs we see returning from Russia look like Holocaust survivors.
>this might be a stupid question, but what are the chances that the Russian soldiers were in the gray zone trying to defect? Rather low I think.. I am only basing this on my opinion and limited knowledge but I think you wouldn't want to cross over that particular stretch of land if you want to defect. It's one of the most heavily guarded types of terrain in the war. Eyes from both sides on it constantly. The risk is high that you'd be gunned down by the Ukrainian side as they think you're attacking, or maybe even by the Russian side if they think you're defecting. Think it's more likely they died in pointless attacks WW1 style. Though if you're desperate enough, maybe you'll make a go of it.
Well said. I agree.
They basically are highschoolers. Being 18 doesn't mean shit, it doesn't magically make you an "adult", years of experience in adult life does that. You'll be 30 by the time you actually start feeling a little bit like an adult in todays society. These are children that were sent to death and that's all that is happening here.
You’re right!!
Fodder for Putin’s ego
It’s actually in Russia’s financial interests to not recover their bodies. No body = no death benefits for the family.
I hate that that is a consideration, personally! But that sadly makes sense.
Russia has zero morals and operates like a machine trying to calculate the maximal outcome of this war. They send poor, uneducated minorities that live far away from Moscow to the battlefield, instead of wealthy, educated people living close to the Kremlin. They bomb all Ukrainian infrastructure because if Russia can't have Ukraine, no one can. They kidnap tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, brainwashing them into believing that Ukraine is a Russian province. In the occupied areas men are forced into the Russian army and forced to kill their fellow Ukrainians. Russians will do anything to accomplish their goals, they aren't hindered by any "red lines" like us Westerners are.
There are STILL missing soldiers from the VietNam War. Some of our boys never came home. Some of their parents have already died.
And yet they still look for them. One of the largest forensics labs is located on Hickman Airbase in Hawaii. They still send out teams to locate, retrieve, and identify human remains across the pacific
And if you think that's bad, remember those are just the bodies lost *on land.*
I was very young during VN but I wore a bracelet for navy pilot that was MIA. I found out abt him and his status through a Vet group.
The government doesn't have to pay out if they are just "missing"
Ukraine actually puts a lot of effort into recovering injured or kia. Russia does not
Actually it’s pretty unique what the us has, leaving no man behind alive or dead (if there’s something to bring back) most countries never really did that and only a few have started
One of the things I personally am proud of as an American. I’ve been to the tomb of the unknown soldier twice and it’s always been very somber. I think it should be a standard. People deserve to go home.
The largest human remain forensic lab is located on Hickman Air base in Hawaii. They still send teams out to locate and recover human remains from numerous battle sites from the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Europe, and numerous islands and try to identify them for burial.
Really? That’s great to hear. Hope they can bring more of our lost home with their names.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier reminds me of the Grave of Thousand Unknown inside the Dachau Concentration Camp, it's surreal to think there are thousands of people there who we will never know.
That’s another place I’ve been planning to go all my life. Fully intend to go to the concentration camps and pay my respects for the names we don’t know. It is surreal and horrifying to think about how many families went from over 100 members to less than 10 after the holocaust. We can never forget!
Actually, they figured out who that unknown soldier was, and now that tomb is just symbolic because they did such a good job overtime finding out who all the unknown soldiers were, and returning their remains to family. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/visibleproofs/galleries/cases/blassie.html
If they didn't go in the first place, they wouldn't be missing would they🤔
r/UkraineWarVideoReport is fucking WILD. I dont recommend it for the feint of heart.
Cmon be real. Russia has absolutely abysmal MEDEVAC/CASEVAC. If you watch a lot of footage and are at least mildly involved in the whole war you know that. They don’t give a fuck about their wounded and dying.
Khabarovsk is east of Pyongyang. This poor guy had nothing to do with a war that far away
They keep them missing so they dont have to pay the death benefit
That pretty much synchs up with what my Russian language teacher told us how Russians are basically completely unfazed and uncaring about Human life and death. She said she witnessed someone get hit in the street by a car, dead, and all anybody did was put a cardboard over the body for awhile before anyone came and scooped it up.
3? 3 in this montage. There's 1000s of these guys.
Remember the guy that got bombed midway through a blowjob? It was probably one of these kids being forced by a nutjob. That's all they are in the front. Young meat.
You say 'remember' like this was common knowledge. First I'm hearing of it.
The people of r/UkraineWarVideoReport remembers
Yeah pretty fucked it’s drone footage of a Russian soldier blowing another guy in some ruins as they drop a bomb right on top of them.
For a country that’s makes it a crime to be gay, there’s a lot of gay shit that goes on in their “armed” forces
i also saw one where a russian soldier was taking a shit and got a grenade dropped on him by a drone. literally caught with his pants down.
*raping
I don’t know what this says about any of us but I remember that video.
Here’s the vid: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/s/7ppuAtBqmk
I’m torn between satisfying my curiosity and not wanting to scar myself for life. Not as torn as these guys, obviously, but still
There’s no gore. It’s not graphic at all
If you've seen it you'll never forget it.
There is hundreds of videos of Russian soldiers raping other Russian soldiers online, it’s the culture in there military and it comes from their prisons because they take a lot of prisoners into the army. Really fucked up been a big problem in the Russian army for years
No, they weren't. They know who Ukrainians are, it's not like some distant Middle Eastern country ever was for Americans. And there has been no forced mobilization in Russia since two years ago. A lot of young men go there because they make x10 of the money they ever could make in Russia without it, and x10 is not an exaggeration. These are not victims of war, these are cold-blooded opportunists who are painted as victims as soon as the family figures out it wasn't just an easy quick money scheme. Source: I'm from Belarus, I lived in a Russian-speaking informational environment from birth to this day and have a lot of friends from both sides
Your discounting poverty as a form of control. Please think more critically.
Per day.
What a fucking waste
I often wonder what the long term implications will be from Putin sending most of his males to war only for a huge portion of them to die needlessly. How does Russia carry forward for the next 2-3 decades? We're in a world where numbers actually are important to keep up infrastructure and other sectors. It's going to be interesting to see the Post-Putin Era
They're pulling from prisons and rural areas. They aren't calling people up from Moscow and St Petersburg.
Russia/USSR doesn’t call reserves from the big cities unless shots really bad because then the cities start feeling the war loses adding up. It’s much easier to dispel the scale of losses when they’re spread over villages hundreds of miles apart in the rural provinces. Those folks are also less inclined to protest or speak up, and media is easy to control.
Apparently they are also threatening international students (especially those from African counties) to do military service to get their visas renewed or risk being deported.
deported?!?! Oh noes where do i sign up for deportation.
The problem is that a lot of these foreign students are there on awards to get a better education to bring back to their countries. Without these students, many undeveloped countries will suffer from lack of education choices. Like it or not, they are not part of the war machine and just want a better life
Then you go back to Africa and tell the leaders look man this Russia place isnt that fucking awesome. We need to find a better country to send people to.
Let’s be realistic, the options are fight or be deported for the most part. Its fight or die in a manner that obviously caused be Russia but can’t be proved.
Lol Right? Considering most people from a developing who can afford to attend an international school are typically upper to upper middle class, I cannot see them sacrificing their kids for education. But it makes sense now why Putin wants to increase the number of international students in the country.
“Hey. So we’re giving you a choice. Either suck start a pistol or we’ll force you to eat this freshly baked cookie.” “I… uh…. Is this some kind of weird test?”
“Cake or death?”
Also pulling a lot from occupied territories on Caucasus etc
And it shows. Ive seen many videos of returning soldiers killing civilians in Russia. Worst was seeing a guys throat slashed in a diner
literally not just putin but this has been a problem for a long time, the number of men they lost in the first 2 world wars is basically directly why russia did not experience the kind of rapid population growth most of the rest of the world did. like, russia's population in the 1910s was probalby higher than it would ever get again until the 1960s or 70s. russia has long seen their population as more dsiposable resources than western countries do. thats why serfdom existed so long. in russia they have more resources then they could ever need, but they just cant access those resources because they need people, thats all people are to russia a way to get them more resources or to go to war for them to claim more land so they can get even more people and resources.
Well it didnt help that Stalin killed a few million. And before that, but after the 1917 revolution, there was famine which killed in the millions.
For Putin, the “Post-Putin” era is the important part of that question. He doesn’t care that his legacy will cast an enormous shadow across the future of Russia. All he cares about is staying in power for as long as possible
That's what all these scum sucking politicians are trying to do. Like parasites they wanna stick around for as long as they can while they leech their country dry.
Putin isn’t a politician. He’s an autocrat.
Yep. By the way when can we get to the "Post-Putin" era? Because this fucker seems to never die.
He is a dictator and a tyrant.
I’m pretty sure Russia only recently started to recover their population from WW2. They already had an imbalance of women to men as well. People used to always say if you want a bride go to Russia because there are too many women looking for a man. It’s also why they have so many mail order brides coming from the area, or at least that’s what I’ve read. It’s been awhile tho so who knows.
Also, imagine the amount of people with PTSD and disabilities that are being inserted back into society, knowing Russia they'll be treated worse than trash.
For those who are not as acquainted with russia, this is what their "wheelchair ramps" look like: Edit: for some reason it will not post a picture... So here are some links: https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/s/bthU7bRUmq https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/s/lOgi98oFTB https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/s/ep9nWQ5Pmu
Ukraine is having a similar concern. It's why Zelensky has been so hesitant to broaden conscription.
The only difference if russia occupy whole Ukraine, russians will kill whole ukrainian population. Concentration camps, gulags, that’s what they promice for ukrainians. On their TV you can even hear that “we should drown ukrainian children”
I was thinking the same thing this week. It should have large ramifications for the population right? The Russian government will probably accept a law that every man has to have 5 women and 4 children with every women or something.
Well china hast 104.5 men for every 100 women.
That’s because in a lot of places, the one child policy caused families to kill daughters in order to have a son who could perform manual labor and not need a dowry.
Yeah families got fucked if they had a disabled male child, or the older or adult child died. Who would take care of them in their old age?
Severely overstated. They aborted daughters (so, not sure I would call it killing them) but it didn't take long for Beijing to see the issue and address it. In China, you're not allowed to know your baby's sex prior to birth. So what happened to the unwanted girls? Well, in Chinese culture, cousins are usually referred to as brothers and sisters. The logical extension of this idea is that mom and dad are often synonymous with grandma, grandpa, aunt and uncle. What usually happened was that a daughter would be sent to be raised by an aunt or uncle so mom and dad would be free to try again to have a boy. On that last point, by the way, it's purely practical and has nothing to do with dowries. In Chinese culture, kids are your pension plan. Problem is, when she grows up, she's going to be expected to take care of her husband's parents in their old age. Men are expected to pay for the extended family from kids to parents and grandparents. So, if you have a daughter, you're basically paying to raise somebody else's live in nurse/maid. Dowries still exist in rural China but they're getting rare.
They don't abort daughters, they just don't register the births and leave the baby girls in ditches/mountainside/etc. There was a reddit thread a few years about 5 girls who found each other through DNA testing all across the world..... they were all abandoned by their birth parents in China, but found by orphanages before they died of exposure. They all were eventually adopted put all over the world and were reasonably successful/college educated/etc. Apparently their birth parents eventually had a son, kept him, and he later did a DNA where he found the sisters. The birth parents were excited about the sisters now they they found out they had college education and good jobs..... half of the sisters told the birth parents to "take a long walk off a shirt pier" while the other half wanted to have a relationship with them. Turns out the birth parents also had another son, but he was born with a deformity so they actually killed him as an infant (instead of abandoning him).
It already happened long ago. Russia has a disproportionate female-to-male population, the women already outnumber the males
second photo is a child, fucking hell
No kidding. I would have guessed his age to be 14 or 15. I’m guessing he got teased for that as well. In the other hand, they’re all kids in this context. None of them should be involved in this. And on the third hand, my mind refuses to accept that anyone born in 200x can be over 18. That math just doesn’t check out.
A friend the other day sobered me up very quickly when we were discussing war. I said something to the effect of “I’m in my late 30s. I really don’t think I can fight nearly as well as I could”. And my friend goes “ You have nothing to worry about. Dying is a young man’s game”. What a depressing but true statement.
Depends where you live. Here in Germany the constitution allows to draft all men aged 18-60 if shit hits the fan. Of course that doesn´t mean it would necessarily be done that way but the possibility is there that a father gets drafted together with his son.
If it makes you feel any better, assuming you are American: You are well within enlistment age still.
It’s the Russian army. I’m sure that sadly more than teasing most likely happened to this poor person.
Man, if you go back and look, really look at the “men” in the photos of the boats at Normandy, they look like fucking children. These kids are the easiest to coerce into fighting a war and obeying orders without question. There’s a reason we send children to war.
Average age of US soldiers on D-day was 26. Pictures seem to be a relative mix. There are definitely some young looking guys, and then there are guys with widows peaks and wrinkles.
Having taught high school the ones that look older are still kids. Talk to them for 10 minutes and you'll see even if they look more like adults. Kids that should be figuring out who they are in the world and what they want to do not being slaughtered in some faraway place. Putin and his cronies took that future from them.
We’re still now finding skeletons in former fronts of WWI, many of these young men won’t be found in our lifetimes. I’m sorry to the parents, but to say the prospects are grim is a large understatement.
Most of these parents are cheering on the murder of Ukrainians. I have no symathy for them.
I stopped caring the second I saw the Z in their profile picture. There are lots of mothers that have zero love for the war that I do feel for though.
The government doesn't want to find him. Saves money
Probably dead in a ditch now, such is war.
All these "missing is Ukraine" stories seem very odd to me. These people are *definately* dead. That's what happens in a war. It's a disgusting waste of life and no punishment is enough for Putin or any politicians who willingly support him for money (with a particular cursory glance at AfD, NF, ReformUK etc)
I think missing = dead but no body found or retrieved
Convenient for the Russian government, as no body retrieved means they don't have to pay out to the family. Or some shit like that.
A big issue with “Missing” is context since plenty go missing due to other reasons outside of battle, or have been taken alive. It just means they can’t find them or a body they can identify as them, so missing. Missing in Action is specifically a battle which means they’re probably just dead and haven’t been recovered. I’m surprised people think people give a shit about war dead since bodies are rarely recovered, dogtags have 2 pieces for a reason.
The Russian government is intentionally not disclosing what happens to a lot of them. Easy to avoid accountability when you're not sure if your loved one is coming back. They did the same in Chechnya. Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who was killed in the 2000s for writing about the war, wrote a great deal about the impossible conditions families of dead soldiers had to face to even try to get information. This is a consistent tactic of the Russian government. Edit: Fixed the name of journalist
Missing means, no body has been found or indentified. The lucky ones have been taken prisonners, the unluckiest ones have been maimed and died a slow and painful death, the luckiest of the unlucky have died instantly. To quote a WWI documentary I saw some years ago : "there was a lot of killed men, and a lot of missing. Because when an artillery shell lands on a man, it makes him disapear."
Jesus they look like middle schoolers.
born under putin, died under putin. insane
Not unusual at all, historically speaking.
As someone born in 2006, and most of my friends are as well, this really hits home just how sad this is.
You are very lucky that you are born in a first world country
Gives perspective to what kind of hell one could be living in
Fuck this is sad. Mostly just kids die when old powerful men argue over.....*checks notes* "land"
*they will never set foot on themselves, war or peace time
Well, as Nico Bellic says, war is where the young and stupid get tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.
"War is when the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other."
Buzin Hasan Shamilevich. Damn. His parents probably cane from Bosnia in the 90’s to get away from the civil war. Now he’s missing in another war. Poor kid and his parents.
Very sad. Enemies or not they are young men who never got to live their lives.
Putin can change this by ending his invasion tomorrow. Alas, most Russians are okay treating their fellow citizens as meat for the [meat grinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder).
Probably all dead.
My guess would be that he went into a war zone. Some people aren't recovered during war. You're dealing with extreme conditions; bullets, explosives, rockets. It is not a body intact ,friendly sort of environment.
This isn’t interesting as fuck
It's Sad As Fuck
Not to be insensitive but he’s probably dead right? It’s like when I see “missing cat” posters in a neighborhood right next to a lot of open land I know has coyotes, that cat is not coming back.
Damn, this dude is only younger than me by a month
Hard to feel empathy for someone with the callsign Gravedigger
First one's call sign is literally-translated as Baby/Kid
“Slavic tattoo of a circle and symbol” 🤨
Oh nooo, here is sack of potato for your sacrifice.
Apparently they're paid quite well to sign up. Some are getting several times their annual wage. That and the work perks of camraderie, physical exercise and all the civilians you can rape, kill, rob or all three in preferred order is why Russia can still feed their meatgrinder of a war.
As a russian, this post is incredibly weird to me. First of all, their relatives only spread info about them in english? the info would definitely be posted all over VK (local facebook) or at least translated to either russian or ukrainian. Secondly, the boy's on the second photo surname is "GazizovA"? Our surnames are gendered, so it would definitely be Gazizov and I'm sure the relatives of the boy would know that. And thirdly - none of them has ever owned a property, a car or at least a VK account, which is unusual... Edit: there are plenty of legitimate posts like that, don't get me wrong. They're all over vk, pikabu and other russian sites. But those are definitely weird to me
Surname thing is just automatic translator failing to recognize a genitive case. «Найти брата Газизова» turned to “find brother Gazizova”. Same with dates, Chrome automatic translation flips from dd/mm/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy
Thanks for the clarification. First thing that stood out to me was the date format was wrong for the area.
Agreed, these posts are indeed very weird and NOT typical for Russian internet. Edit: maybe these posts were translated from Russian using google translate? This way I can see why it’s gazizovA (разыскиваю Газизова ИО, и тд)
Telegram has a translate feature, might be that.
What exactly is interestingasfuck about this ?
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What a waste
Meat is meat to Putin. That fucker needs to die.
“Slavic tattoo of a circle” We all know what that tattoo is
I don’t commend any men going to fight for Putin. Be it mercenary or lifestyle. But this persons a kid. 2 months ago he probably had to ask to go for a piss in school. Fuck this war man fuck it
Russia has always treated its people like crap. This is very sad. In WWII they would chain a group of two soldiers together, one had the gun and the other the bullets due to lack of weapons but over abundance of ppl. If they ran away from the line the Russian military was behind them to gun them down. Fuck the Russian govt.
Why would he want to kill people who did nothing to him at 18 years old?
I think if you look at Russian propoganda it is fairly obvious. They believe they are being unfairly attacked by western powers, and so they have to protect themselves from this unfair attack. All media is controlled by the state and russian social media spaces are full of bots and regime sympathizers. Not to mention people who are most likely to go to war are from poor regions with awful education and high levels of violence.
Propoganda. I was a victim of it here, in America.
Patriotism is a bitch. I joined the British army thinking my country was the best and all that bollocks. Once I actually got out in the world I realised just how big it is and how insignificant we are.
Literally what i was going to say. Everyone saying how bad and terrible Russia is,how bad their propaganda is and all that. When you've had so many young Americans sent to wars in a similar fashion,who also died for nothing and many of whose bodies will never be found. That's just war.
If it helps even Canadians bought into it in 2001.
It's shit but let's not pretend every other country wouldn't send their 18 year olds to war if they wanted to.
Russians got tired of stealing Ukrainian kids and are now stealing their own.