Also, it’s 68196-65871=2325 km since September 3.

I like the one with “are you sure how this evening will end?” It gives some funny spy vibes.

Idk where you get that from, you can check the map that is updated every day here: https://deepstatemap.live/ I just checked total occupied territory month ago and today and it’s 68196-67889=307 km in a month.

That’s not how Ukraine does it, is it?

It is how Ukraine does it, too. Currently I don’t think you can go for contract when you already have to be mobilized according to databases (on “Wanted” list in apps like “Reserve+” or “Dija”). And payment is laughable anyway. It would be really easy to boost morale if government decided to end forced conscription and paid to volunteers more than russia does. And it also could probably help to stabilize the frontlines. Given how much they steal I’m pretty sure they have more than enough money to pay more than russians 22k$ to volunteers as a single-time payment.

why he thinks NATO uses the “contract soldier” vs “conscripts” distinction

Too bad if they doesn’t. What they gonna do when the time comes. In EU conscious objection is supposed to work, so people can decline en masse (did you know that includes personal beliefs, not necessarily religion?). They’d better start using that distinction asap and consider soldier as a full-time work even in peace time. So that enough people will be paid to be soldiers like a job but in case of war they and only they will go fight and no one else.

I agree. I wanted to say it’s kind of immoral to write that propaganda when you’re not even fighting yourself. And it’s twice as immoral when you know that no one wants to fight anymore and people are forced against their will. Not that something should be banned.

Some of what he’s saying is clearly total bullshit (“Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships” “ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder” “a worse dictatorship than russia is”)

There are thousands of videos like this: https://streamable.com/lzh27n

If you want to check the scale of this and find more videos and news of how this is going, you can check this telegram channel: https://t.me/+MUx169gobDtjZjJh

Many of our videobloggers compare this to Holodomor due to the fact that those who were executing those orders back then were also locals.

“Military is terribly mismanaged”

Military commandment is very bad. A lot of soldiers escape from there (AWOL/deserting), everybody is talking about this, even the most patriotic bloggers that oppose ceasefires etc.

“US/EU giving money to Ukraine is basically sponsoring kidnapping/torturing/killing people who don’t want to fight”

How are regular ukrainian soldiers responsible for any of this? It’s the fault of our corrupt government. Most soldiers are also very unhappy with this mismanagement and and ask to not send people who will most likely desert from battlefield to their brigades.

“it’s not like they can’t go to Ukraine-controlled territories and mobilize there and go to the frontlines if they really care for this country so much”

Sure because that whole article is bullshit propaganda by people who will never have to fight in war themselves. Is it even moral to be allowed to have a voice in question of whether to continue the war when they aren’t even subject to conscription?

Sorry, what? How is EU allocating money to defend themselves from Russia is for my sake? That’s for the sake of their own people. They should watch closely what it does to people morale here in Ukraine when civilians are forcefully conscripted and try hard to make sure they never have to do the same to their civilians.

this will happen sooner or later regardless.

EU should allocate more spending on their military so that when the day comes, they will have more than enough professional soldiers to fight Russia and have no need to mobilize civilians. If EU was one country it would be hard, but when there is NATO, contract soldiers from many NATO states might be enough without additional conscripts.

People are dying to keep your apartment building safe,

Just open the borders and there’s no need to protect me personally.

trashing them

I’m not trashing ukrainian soldiers. Conscription officers are not soldiers and never were. Neither are politicians.

It sounds like that’s really important to you.

It’s just that russians lives now supposedly valued way more than ukrainians while it was part of propaganda that russian lives worth nothing and ukrainians are part of civilized world and share its values.

Women and ukrainians who live outside of Ukraine, especially those who left before May 2024, have a very different mental image of Ukraine. For me the main turning point is the scale of unlawful forced conscription really. Simple as that. I stopped paying taxes, stopped donating, and stopped mentally supporting Ukraine. I just care for borders to open at this point. Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships to me.

So why don’t you go get conscripted and give up to russian soldiers? If Ukraine is a worse dictatorship, surely that will be a step up.

Just one “step up” from ukrainian levels of shittiness isn’t enough. This is too unsafe compared to giving up to EU. Russians will definitely want to trade you to some of their captured people even if you don’t want to go back. EU will most likely not trade you back if you ask them.

and on social media

Maybe those people are there to create a picture for you. Now that USAID and similar projects are stopping, we might see less of those.

every so often they bring up what the bonus amount is for people signing up for armed forces in Moscow

You all look at this literally as battle of good vs evil, the reality: ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder, while russia stopped forced conscription and pays 22k$ to motivate their conscripts. The propaganda image of ukraine as good or democratic is absurd. It’s just a meat shield of west at best, and it rapidly becomes more and more inefficient.

If you want to check current ukrainian inside discourse, watch independent ukrainian bloggers, a few for a start:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0GhCkrcX0
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFupMbqaF-k
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R0YGBMAz7s

our safety is for Ukraine to win the war

It’s impossible and it was obvious to anyone who bothered to check basic arithmetic from the very beginning. My best hope is for some kind of ceasefire, elections, peace deal, which all give some little chance that maybe mobilization will stop and borders will open.

you won’t get conscripted into the russian army the moment Kyiv gets occupied

And sent where, to Baltic or Poland? Okay, I’ll proceed to give up to NATO soldiers immediately.

And the least we can do for that is to stop pretending russian government has any sort of moral advantage

It’s not that they’re nice, it’s just that ukrainian government turned country into a worse dictatorship than russia is, and it really uncovered some truths about democracies, media, how european are ukrainian values and how helpful UN is, and many other things.

I said it has open borders which is factually true. Also, last summer they paid their conscripts in Moscow 22k$ for a contract. Regarding “human rights”, well, lets try to count human rights. We don’t have the right to criticise our government and we don’t have the right to leave the country. Russians don’t have the right to criticize their government but they do have the right to leave the country. They also pretty much free to walk their cities and participate in whatever activities present there unlike our conscription-aged men who are only really allowed to participate in war.

Since it’s Kyiv it would mean it’s finally over I guess. Russia has open borders so if we eventually end up in Russia we can just leave.

You can, like you said about the girls, just leave if you don’t like the Ukrainian government’s conduct of the war.

I wish I could. It’s very hard. All cities are full of blockposts that check docs of all men, there are conscription officers with police at subway station entraces/exits, at bus/train stations, etc. It’s hard to even get out of city, it’s hard to travel between cities, and borders is a whole different story. EU borders from Ukrainian side are patrolled with night-vision drones, photo-trap cameras, even some helicopters. It takes extraordinary skills and luck to cross the border. And regarding Crimea, can you open the map and tell me how I’m supposed to travel there from Ukraine even if there were no blockposts? I mean, it requires crossing the battlefields. Those who are in Crimea though, they can leave through Russia and go wherever the fuck they want, even go back into Ukraine through basically any intermediate country after leaving Russia.

You don’t understand the situation in Ukraine. Military is terribly mismanaged and nobody wants to fight anymore. Since the last spring conscription offices started kidnapping people on the streets, beating, torturing them and forcefully delivering them to polygons. That’s why I’m (and many other men who can afford it) not leaving appartment for 10 months already. So it’s not only the borders, we can’t even leave our homes. Our government doesn’t do anything about that terrible mismanagement at battlefields or corruption or about crimes conscription officers commit daily, they only leech help from west and sacrifice people unwilling to fight in return without even trying to win or to fight war efficiently. So US/EU giving money to Ukraine is basically sponsoring kidnapping/torturing/killing people who don’t want to fight. Articles like this is pure propaganda.

I’m sorry girls, that’s all cool and I like the vibe, but I’m not going to fight for you (I would never fight for people I don’t even know personally tbh). Currently I’m not leaving my appartment and waiting for it to be over to be able to leave this country in peace. Those girls though, it’s not like they can’t leave the Crimea. And actually, it’s not like they can’t go to Ukraine-controlled territories and mobilize there and go to the frontlines if they really care for this country so much.

Do you consider the right to give up a basic human right? I do. Military service should never be mandatory. Also, the whole concept of nation-states is obsolete and harmful and humanity should try to move to stateless/borderless forms of society.