According to two Russian soldiers interviewed by a pro-invasion blogger, if you wear a Russian military uniform on the metro in Moscow people distance themselves and give you dirty looks.

  • @[email protected]
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    4810 months ago

    Yeah, draft dodging means maybe losing your freedom and the ability to provide for your children, which is a shit situation to be put in.

    But the choice is between poverty and fucking murder. Your choice sucks, but you choose to be a monster. I spare my sympathy for those who choose to be not-murderers.

    • @[email protected]
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      2210 months ago

      But at the same time, they are absolutely being fed propaganda and don’t have an accurate view of what is going on in Ukraine.

      • @[email protected]
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        510 months ago

        That is a valid point. I personally can’t accept it changing the situation, but I won’t hold it against anyone that do.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        I wanted to say they know how things are in reality, but suddenly remembered teacher in my school. Yep, some of them are completely brainwashed. Mostly those who will not be drafted. Either by being too old or having non-draftable sex(it would be funny if I’ll get banned for this).

        As Ekaterina Schulman says: this is unusual war. War is what Yong do, but this one is war of Old/Elders.

        • @[email protected]
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          510 months ago

          I read an interview of locals from an Ukrainian village that got invaded - the Russians rolled in and asked the locals “where are the Nazis? Lead us to them!”, and were surprised that the locals just asked them to leave, instead of cheering for their "liberation ".

          So the propaganda certainly reached the military, at least.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            You mean in early days? Haven’t served myself(and hopefully won’t), but what I know is in Russian army your only sources of information are your commander and your peers whoose only sources of information is same commander and you. This sounds like an excellent ground for propaganda.

            But:

            1. Different audience

            A lot of people were from poor regions.

            1. Different context

            They are in the middle of nowhere.

      • @[email protected]
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        -110 months ago

        So Russians are dumb and their phones don’t get internet? Nah. Bullshit. Russians are fucking cowards. The whole world knows it. It’s been on display for over a year.

        The dumb die. So it is and always has been.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          According to Wiki only 3.5% of Russians have good English proficiency. I also saw numbers between 5% and 10%. Even if it’s 10% of Russian population, 90% can only read and understand Russian. They go to the internet and what do they see? Russian fucking propaganda! Now imagine yourself in their shoes.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            They go to the internet and what do they see? Russian fucking propaganda!

            And whose fault it is? You go on the internet speaking English, and what do you see? Russian fucking propaganda! Where is the Russian-speaking Western propaganda machine when you need it?

            • @[email protected]
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              210 months ago

              When you understand English at a good level you’re able to find multitude of opinions and make up your own mind. If you fail for Kremlin propaganda at this point - it’s on you. But if you don’t know English, you don’t have access to alternative opinions at all. That’s a VERY BIG difference.

              • @[email protected]
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                010 months ago

                Duh, that’s my point! Why isn’t there Western propaganda in Russian?

                How is it the Kremlin can pay a bunch of people to write fake news in English and turn Western social media to shit, but the White House can’t do the same to write fake news in Russian? So much CIA, MI6, all the EU agencies… what, you telling me they don’t have the money, or what?

                • @[email protected]
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                  110 months ago

                  Information in Russia is tightly controlled. All independent media outlets of any kind were forcefully closed in 2022. If you want to create a Western propaganda outlet today, you have to have some people doing stuff in Russia. But once they’re there they will go straight to jail.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    010 months ago

                    Well, don’t do it in the open. I know the whole world and their uncle let RT run their media freely for like forever, but I can’t believe Russia’s information infrastructure is so tight that a well organized task force couldn’t infiltrate it without being detected.

                    Like, maybe in 2020 they could have me fooled, but after what they did in the Kyiv assault of 2022, when they fried their own comms, ECMd their own missile defenses, kept selling tank fuel for cigarettes and drinking the cooling liquid… that whole country must be a freaking clown town.

                    What, do they need to send some clowns to blend in? Then do it, start some pirate news stations, get to the people and let them have an alternate point of view.

                    Back during the Cold War, the East had Radio Free Europe to listen to. You could get arrested if they caught you, but people still did it. Tech has changed since then, but Radio Free Europe is still working, so they must have some infrastructure still in place. Use that, or whatever modern equivalent.

              • @[email protected]
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                -110 months ago

                Right, porn… that’s why all the Russian horny bastards can write in English!

                I know, we need to turn PornHub to Russian only! Force the kids to learn by searching for some hot бабушка porn, then they’ll know something more than typing “CYKA BLYAT” in CSGO chat. The counter information task force of tomorrow is just a few faps away!

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          Bro half of the fediverse is loaded up with communists and fascists, respectively.

          Kind of weird to pretend Russians have a monopoly on being dumb.

              • @[email protected]
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                010 months ago

                From what I can tell, around 99% of the time people use the word communism, they don’t really know what it means. You seem to know there is a difference between communism and fascism, so, maybe you do.

                But, to suggest half is communist, and the other fascist. Is kinda silly. Silly to such an extent that “proving you wrong” is likely to be a futile and unpleasant endeavour. You do you.

                • @[email protected]
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                  10 months ago

                  There are literally two massive instances lemmy.world had to defederate from, and one is fascist and one is full of communists and tankies.

                  I wasn’t even counting the communists all over this instance.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    10 months ago

                    That’s… that wasn’t what you said. You said

                    “Bro half of the fediverse is loaded up with communists and fascists, respectively.”

                    Which is read as “half of the fediverse is loaded up with communists, the other half fascists”. Now, I don’t know what instances you are talking about, since I’m on lemmy.world, and I have not encountered anything to the effect you are suggesting. Lemmy.world is 129k/391k, the next two largest are lemmy.ml with 46k/391k, then hexbear with fewer. So, yeah… are lemmy.ml communists, or fascists?

                    If your point was to comment to someone on lemmy.world who said (paraphrasing) “Russians are dumb for getting enough information that it is cowardly to still support the war”, saying that well, half of the fediverse is communist and half is fascist. Which, first of all, communism isn’t necessarily dumb. Americans think it is, but they don’t know what it is, so who gives a shit. But, to what you where saying, and “Tell me I’m wrong”. Well, I don’t know. You seem to be intelligent enough to figure out which part of the stuff you said is incorrect.

                    I’ve bitten the bullet enough to explain this to you, and, I’m not keen on being patient with the deliberate obtuse or those who argue in bad faith.

                    EDIT: I took a look at hexbear, and that seems very fascist indeed. But, it’s still just 10%. I’ll admit that’s significantly higher than what I thought made sense. The contents exceptionally dumb.

    • @[email protected]
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      010 months ago

      Would you rather kill your own children, or kill someone else’s children? At least they aren’t shooting refugees for refusing to rape each other, that’s the Saudis…

      Ain’t the world a nice place?

      • @[email protected]
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        110 months ago
        1. That’s nowhere near the dillemma they are facing.

        2. Russians are already torturing, kidnapping and executing civilians so not even a valid whataboutism.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          Having your children or parents/grandparents, starve or freeze to death, can easily kill them. Maybe it’s not 100% certain like shooting someone to death, but still, most people value their own people’s lives more than someone else’s.

          And it’s not whataboutism, just a qualification on a scale: I haven’t heard (yet) of Russians forcing civilians to torture each other, so they’re like a step less depraved than the Saudis.