Like a bad smell, it washes in with the tide every morning.
More Scutter.
Scutter
‘Without fear of repercussion’ - I doubt very much. All it needs is a camera at the front gate and pick out a few for ‘SPECIAL ATTENTION and follow up with an intimidating phone call and the word spreads. So if that happened to you , would you continue on attending? You would want to be a very brave person knowing what the Russians are capable of
Accident or targeted?
Either way (if true) Russia will blame Ukraine for this.
It is, if someone wants easy jingoistic responses to complex things or wants to transmit their IQ struggles to hit triple digits.
It's how wars start and continue and unlike heroes and gamechangers it's not a rare or small percentage in a population and it's a percentage that is all too easily swayed.
We (the collective West) overwhelmingly approve of what our governments are doing in our name, to support the democratic state of Ukraine which has been illegally invaded by a fascist aggressor state which not only wants to murder Ukraine out of existence but also seeks to assert malign influence over our democracies.
Yep. Let's face it Russia lost the war last year when they "feinted" from Kiev. They lost the wider European and NATO geopolitic when the sanctions hit and more lined up to join NATO and increase their borders with the foe they claimed they were trying to stop. They lost the war when they tried to take the country. If they had "just" gone for Donbas, did a Crimea Part 2, I reckon they likely would have gotten away with it. Oh there would have been mutterings and some sanctions, but going back to Always Follow The Money, said money would likely have figured it's not worth cutting off energy supplies for just that.
Looking at some recent footage of Ukrainian tanks doing solo runs blasting Russian positions, our own resident tank chappie Manic Moran noted that this was not good practice at all and they were doing what Russians have been doing and it was equally daft. And I obviously take his far more informed and experienced opinion as read. Though one thing stood out about those engagements and where they differ from similar Russian ones; Ukrainian tanks weren't taking hits from AT weapons. In some engagements they were sitting in the open blasting positions over time. This suggests to me, at least in those particular engagements, that the Russians didn't have the wherewithal and the weapons to hit back at what were unsupported tanks, AKA sitting ducks. That and the Ukrainian tankers knew this.
Well you're aping the vast majority of Ukrainians then too
I agree they certainly could do with the laugh although it might be more beneficial if you contacted your inlaws and your wife's friends and told them about the raping torturing and murdering that their soldiers (some of which are probably their relations) are carrying out in Ukraine. Or perhaps they already know and like most Russians don’t give a f**k!
I agree with your point in principal. BUT the problem is that one cannot ‘trust’ even ONE russian because all of them can be used By Putin ans his supporters AGAINST THEIR WILL. they can be , for example, just asked for information by the police and god only knows what might happen to them if they do not comply and they know the consequences.
Did you notice when someone is being interviewed on the street by a western reporter - they look around first to see who might be listening. some examples - look at the teacher that was reported to the police when she said something about the current mission or the elderly lady who was dragged off the bus for spouting something about the mission or the mother who lost a son on the submarine - the akirsh- incident. . The whole population is caught in a real dilemma. All Russians do not know who might report them re their actions or utterances, who they socialise with, what are they reading, etc, etc, etc. look at the way Putin ‘REELS’ in those oligarcs who he has fallen out with . He - his selected judiciary- come up with a list of trumped up charges and away we go
Yes we do, but that wasn't the point I was making. The vast majority of those appalled by what they see on their TVs most evenings won't act any further. Plus EU and NATO governments while supporting and supplying Ukraine with weapons also want the conflict contained within it's current constraints. This makes the level of support being offered very much conditional.
They don't need to 'act', in terms of actually doing anything. They just need to give their governments (who are the actors that matter, remember) political cover to keep doing what they are doing. And they are doing just that.
If I remember correctly one lad was dragged off by a snatch squad while saying positive things about the regime to a reporter.
Not many believe that it's easy for the Russian people to overthrow Putin. It's not, and yes, many will die in doing so. But the Russian people, by choosing not to rise up and stay safe, are saying that they prefer the Ukrainians to die instead of them. In a war of the Russians making, not the Ukrainians. Morally, that position cannot be excused or defended.
The time to stop Putin was 15 years ago when it would have been much easier. But the Russian people chose not to do so then, instead entering a Faustian pact with Putin, trading democratic freedoms for economic benefits.
...
And unfortunately also Russia's abundant resources means that Putin and his oligarchs and the state can plunder that for wealth and power and don't need to really depend on its citizens in the same way as the US or Germany. They can also use this money for 'bread and circuses' and foreign adventures.
Ultimately the Russian people are losers too, even before the Ukraine war...
In what is a classic illustration of the “resource course”, abundant natural assets have inhibited the Kremlin from trying to create a modern diverse economy. The proceeds from selling fossil fuels go directly to the Kremlin’s coffers, liberating Putin from any reliance on domestic or external support. As a result, it is the regime rather than the average individual that is well-resourced, and when it comes to the quality-of-life Russia lags far behind. The typical Russian man, for example, lives to just 67 years of age, behind Libya, North Korea, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bangladesh (in Ireland, the figure is 81).
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/opinion-putin-state-of-the-nation-speech-6001372-Feb2023/
I understand the point of view that someone may fear for the safety of loved ones back in Russia. I have children and I want them to healthy and happy at all times.
But there is the possibility that by silence and inaction today, I could cause them unending pain and grief in the future.
This is the unenviable choice that Russians have to make. Personally, I think the majority of them have made the wrong choice.
Now, if their choices only affected them, I think they're perfectly at liberty to carry on. But when their choices affect others, others have the right to take steps.
Very easy for posters to pontificate from on high about the guilt that ordinary Russian citizens bear for the actions of their authoritarian regime, when said posters are at 0 risk and have nothing to lose themselves from it.
If your friends or family were living under such a regime you'd be the first to tell them to stay shtum
It'll be one year to the day in a few short hours.
Maybe we should use this unfortunate anniversary to try and summarise what Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine has 'achieved':
Not exactly the most well executed strategy of all time.
Calling on Russians to do what citizens of many countries, including our own, have done down through the years is not pontificating it's called rebelling. Staying shutm as you call it is at best cowardice and at worst acquiescing .
But yet we had people on blaming the Ukrainians for the Russian invasion and the slaughter of their population,if only the Ukrainans gave up on land to Putin,if only they got rid of their neo Nazi leader,
But wait he's Jewish....
Ehhhh ehhhh its NATOs fault,it's everyone elses but not the Russians.
BS
Probably covers it.....
Mick Wallace is still banging the 'NATO warmonger' drum.
I wonder exactly how much he gets paid for pretending to be a Socialist anyway.
A Russian motivational speech. (Joke). It's not from a Russian. Russian peaceful. Russian superior beings. Russian apathetical. Russian non caring. Russian selfish. Russian high nazi rulers to take back Berlin. Russia Putin.
You clearly have some kind of imagined victim complex on behalf of the 'ordinary Russians'.
You may wish to examine who is actually being murdered, raped and tortured by Russians at this point in time. They're the real victims.
Dan have you ever visited or lived in Russia? Well I did, for several years in fact, and I can tell you that not all Russians are murderous raping ardent followers of Putin. But to be born in Russia is to be born in a prison, a gigantic open air prison, but a prison nevertheless. You carry documents with you all the time, a kind of internal passport, (plus the "normal" international passport ) do not leave home without it. You are liable to be stopped by anyone from variety of different police, some in uniform, some not, at any time, day or night, on the street or at home, in the bar, on the metro etc. Break any one of Putin's laws, ( constitutional Law went out the window, unless it suits Putin) and you go to the real prison, or Ukraine, and life will become immeasurably worse for you. As a kid and by the time you become a teenager, you will have become very familiar with the Police and how life works in Russia. An incident, a tiny tiny incident in a public place will draw wagon loads of Police dressed in full riot gear on top of of the instigators, and we have seen many examples of this, especially this time last year in the beginning of the invasion. They did not last very long though, did they? Putin clamps down massively on protests, because its the one thing that he really fears. At this stage although there are faint signs of revolt and anti-war-Putin sentiment starting to show, it will take an organized block ( Military, Oligarch's, Silovicki) or from one of the republics to break the ice. Then you could see a massive show of anti Putin protests, enough to bring him down. Asking why ordinary Russians why they don't do like other Country's have done ( and are doing presently, Iran being a case in point) and revolt, are forgetting that there are country's like China, N Korea and Iran etc which have held their people in a grip of Iron for many years and still do. Its not so easy to get rid of a dictator.
The Chinese have already proved their not afraid to protest and force policy change from atop.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63855508.amp
Could it be because that while protesting outside the Russian embassies, the people inside are busy taking pics of the protesters and sending them back to Moscow FSB ( or others) who are identifying them and preparing nice fat files about them and their relatives. Putin's criminal state apparatus octopus has many long reaching tentacles.
In my view, the 'ordinary Russian' is somewhat of an irrelevant factor in this war - they have clearly demonstrated that they are willing to line up behind whatever fresh lunacy their government instigates, up to and including sending their men off to die by the thousand for a lie. They're not going to end the war, they're not going to topple Putin.
Yes, they are repressed and yes they fear their state (with good reason) but they are not going to do anything decisive. So who knows what they think in the privacy of their inner minds, they are irrelevant in terms of stopping the war.
Its a bit difficult to organise mass protests when a single person holding a blank piece of paper is bundled into an unmarked truck to be taken god knows where. Multiple people, one after the other, were arrested for laying flowers at a memorial.
Its like asking why Chileans didn't "just" overthrow the clearly unpopular Pinochet.
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