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Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Somehow I doubt that in Russia young people "listen to state propaganda and prepare WW3". If you believe this you are probably victim of other state propaganda.

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I speak Russian and I read and watch Russian media from time to time.

I'm sure not all young people are buying into the official propaganda.

Unfortunately 80%+ approval rating for Putin shows that most of the people, including young ones, are believers in the same state-produced message: fear and caution, revisionism, nationalism, conservationism, etc, etc.

And the subject of WW3 is discussed quite frequently, on talk shows on state tv channels.

80%+ approval only saying that 60%+ of country population don't care about politics. At all. People have too many other problems to worry about: how to pay bills, where to work to get money for food and few others needs (like to buy expensive clothes / iphone / etc). Unfortunately very little percentage of country population have even rough understanding what things like "democracy" or "liberalism" mean, but this is expected because there was never democracy in Russia. Pretty sure that North Korea would have 100% approval rating for almost same reasons.

Also to be clear I don't mean that no one affected by propaganda. Pretty sure that like 70% of people may actually agree on many things shocking for average european.

Though very few of these brainwashed people will actually go defend Putin regime in case something happen. Likely it's about the same amount of people you may see participate protests in past years.

What kinds of things about WW3?

Russia still does conscription. So all, well at least all MALE young people, do listen to propaganda and prepare for WW3. They do not have a choice.

I was in a conscripted army too. Technically I was preparing for WW3 but in reality we drank a lot of beer and waited to get out again. We certainly didn't think about fighting a war.

I don't think Russian soldiers think differently.

Russian Army is like American Prison. Violence, a lot of violence.

It's more like boredom and stupidity, but that's probably universal between countries.

No, violence in Russian Army is institutionalized, it is called "dedovshina".

How do you know actually? A lot changed in past 4-5 years, having a soldier with a black eye is a whole lot of trouble for commanding officers and they sometimes take ridiculous measures to prevent that. Of course it's not same everywhere, but it's army after all.

Young people in Russia usually don't have a job and have a big issue getting one; even if they have a job they clearly don't have salary high enough (not talk about Moscow there) so they work a lot. As result they have limited amount of money or just live with parents for long time. Fortunatelly there is internet, computer games, series, films so in both cases these people don't have a time to watch propaganda TV.

Sadly I can't tell the same about other parts of country population because there is huge amount of older people that don't have a job (and have absolutely no way to get one because in Russia nobody need you once you're older than 40) and of course they have nothing else to do than get drunk and watch TV. It's also a lot easier brainwash people that had no life, have no money to live like in US / EU and have no future.

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