Hacker News Reader

Comment by skinnymuch | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

Presumably innocent Russian men are being kidnapped and forced to fight for a dictator just as much. So let’s stop blaming the victim when Russia is clearly the aggressor and started this whole ordeal.

Surprisingly the Russian army is mostly volunteer since the average pay right now is quite high by Russian standards. There are also standard conscripted soldiers as part of the country’s required service. Allegedly the conscripts are kept away from front lines since the death of conscripted young men in Afghanistan was part of the political death knell that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately Ukraine is having to rely more on involuntary conscription to fill the ranks as volunteer numbers have dwindled. There are many documented cases of TASS “kidnapping” military age men.

I don’t see the parent poster blaming anybody. Maybe you can say they provided a one-sided view but what they wrote was factual.

As the other person responded. You are not correct.

The west started this. They couped in Ukraine in 2014. They accelerated tensions with the DPR and LDR. This reminds me of people who say Oct 7 is when things began in Palestine.

Most countries have some form of selective service. We're all barbarians...

It is barbarism within the context of elites in Ukraine sitting around taking money of cowards in Europe and the Five Eyes funneling money and weapons in. A war that could not be won. It was wrong to not cease fire in 202. A proxy war is not the same as most situations

Educate yourself.

Look up the Minsk agreements, that Putin wants to take control of all of Ukraine. And Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And parts of Finland.

This does not stop with a few towns in Eastern Ukraine, this is existential for many countries of the Free World.

Funny Europeans and westerners don’t care when existential threats are around for so much of the world because of the west. No one cares when my parents country existence is screwed and we lose democracy because of the west. The victim mentality of westerners is quite something.

Putin can say what he wants. He is a politician. Russia has no ability to do all of that.

“Free world”. westerners always try to push their capitalist “freedom” onto the world as the one “free” way. When it isn’t freedom. Also another point of western chauvinism to refer to the primary colonizers and exploiters of the world as the “free world”

It doesn't seem to bother Trump when it comes to arming Israel, there no competition but more civilians died there than in Ukraine so far in absolute number, and the ratio of civilian to military deaths isn't even close.

If you want to play that card you have to be somewhat consistent. I don't think Trump can play the human rights card, and it's been a looong time

Instead they'll be kidnapped by the Russian invaders. Genius!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com