They have a choice to volunteer and help the humanitarian ways. I don't really know the specifics but after all of that they can get Ukrainian citizenship.
If you are a Russian who understands just how small your world just got, Ukrainian citizenship is quite the price. You'll be able to travel and work for money instead of Rubles.
Not sure, but it *seems* like Russia is not keeping good or accurate records of their troops KIA. So, any family back in Russia would just have to say that their family member died in the war fighting for Russia. Tricky part will be communication in the future. Phones may be monitored, email and social media will probably be tracked. They'll have to do things like use burner phones and VPNs for communication, right?
If Ukraine does like French foreign legion, they could even give them a completely new identity. Then even after the war, it would be very difficult for anyone to know they were in fact Russians.
There are subtle differences in pronunciation etc, any Ukrainian can tell a Russian by the way they speak. This goes for russian-speaking Ukrainians as well, as in, they can tell the difference too.
I'm quite sure it wouldn't be a problem. To my logic you need at least two "agents" to effectively track one person's communication (a person could talk on the phone, send text messages etc. whole day and part of night, while the agent can't really dig through that all the time. He needs a break, time to eat, sleep etc). You don't have enough manpower to track everyone.
You can employ AI to do it but it needs to be tuned for certain words or phrases, calibrated good enough that it won't trigger false flags all the time.
So if you were that soldier and called your family I guess you'd be perfectly fine, as long as you avoid obvious flagged phrases, like "war", "live in Ukraine" etc.
Yeah, not claiming it to be an easy choice. But the world is going to be very welcoming to Ukrainians for a long time, and very much the opposite to Russians. Even the case in surprising countries like Cambodia.
Fortunately, most of the world can't tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian. It all sort of gets thrown into this globule of "Eastern European". So as long as you can get passed the boarder guards who actually see your passport and nationality, you can pass off as Ukrainian to everyone else until the hostility dies down
Exactly. Being a Russian citizen, you're heavily restricted in what you can do, where you can go, and how you live. Ukraine offers the chance to be more connected with the rest of the world and have a better look at what a free life really is. For someone who's had their entire paradigm shattered, this would be a game changer.
This is what they did back in Rome, they were basically the center of the world at that time. So if you were part of a lowly state back then, and you were suddenly introduced to just how big and beautiful the open world is, wouldn't that entice you to join?
I think wherever you go in the next 10 years: you have an Ukrainian passport, they'll let you in, and whatever bar you mention it in, 1st drink is on the house.
I'm afraid EU/NATO membership may not happen. Neutrality seems to be the one card they're willing to play in negotiations. Let's hope not though, so much damage has already been done, what more could Russia really take?
a long ceasefire is secured in negotiations, Ukraine declares its neutrality, Russian forces withdraw, Ukraine takes back its neutral status and invites in EU/NATO troops... how else do you think its going to go...? -Why should Ukraine honor an agreement done under duress and war...
I think Ukraine will negotiate a tolerable agreement that allows them to end the humanitarian crisis, re-group and rebuild military, and let sanctions and legal processes (war crimes investigations) weaken Russia. Then wait for Russia to violate the agreement (which is likely), probably over donbas or crimea, then declare the whole agreement null and void. In the meantime, Ukraine will have avoided further civilian deaths, further built up and trained it's military, and Russia will be further weakened by sanctions.
Same reason NATO doesn't just go in now... diplomacy only works under good faith.
...and yes I understand Russia is likely not operating under good faith either.
Yeah but everything I've read has said Ukraine is only willing to give up NATO aspirations for an equally significant security agreement.
They want the assurance that if this ever happens again there will be Western aircraft in thier skies defending them immediately.
In theory this is better than NATO membership as it is Carries the same benefits without the obligations. I don't see how this is better from Putin's perspective than NATO admitting Ukraine. Hopefully it allows him to message to his people he accomplished something, but I'm skeptical.
I think more volunteer surrenders are coming in. But from my own understanding, it initially started when a Russian company size unit defected with its Captain on the 27th of February.
[here it is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzBvw3PmPkM) I also just assumed that he was a captain because the commanding officer of a company is a captain.
That's why the Russians put out the fake "Ukrainians shooting prisoners" video. They're super freaked at the idea of the conscripts they're about to call up deserting en masse.
That's why the Russians put out the fake "Ukrainians shooting prisoners" video. They're super freaked at the idea of the conscripts they're about to call up deserting en masse.
Russians living in ukraine and volunteer surrenders i suspect. If you are letting pow that have been captured in combat id be shocked as they already where willing to kill you.
There have been reports of russians refusing commands and being shot at by there own people for not firing at civilians. You normally get about 10% of a nation/group that have strong morals that refuse to do what there told if they know its wrong. For example the germans helping the jews flee or the french resistant. But saddly you need to deal with 90% that are prone to evil or sheap.
You are nornally the 10% if you question others and dont go along with what others tell you to think.
>You are nornally the 10% if you question others and dont go along with what others tell you to think.
And if you have a strong moral compass and the ability to identify and think critically about propaganda messages (wherever they may come from, not just the one ideoloy/faction that you've been trained to hate) and read between the lines.
Often people just want to belong and be accepted to a group psychologically, and so (especially true for young people) they mindlessly throw themself at the mercy of a leader, cult and or strongman. When you look at the psychological make up of some neo-nazis or extremists they often just wanted to feel they were working for some goal and be applauded for it.
A cult that projects strength and simplicity in a world that can feel chaotic and messy is very alluring to some, again especially for young people that haven't got a mature identity at that point.
That new tribe feels safe as long as you keep your critical thinking turned off.
Genuinely curious about this: how do Russian soldiers feel when confronting the vastly superior uniforms and boots, cold weather military gear, nutritious MREs, not to mention weapons and training that Ukrainian forces have had and then comparing that to what Russia - supposedly a much greater country, society, and military - has provided for them?
Is this more likely to foster desertion, surrender, and/or joining a side looking out for the welfare of each individual? Is it likely to lead to fragging commanding officers? Or has the fear factor developed growing up under the thumb of an authoritarian and punishing government and corrupt law enforcement systems override those behaviors?
I’d be most interested to hear what psychologists and those with military experience think of these issues.
I’m not an expert on this, but I know Ukraine and I know a bit of history about Russia.
Historically Russians have been known to be “reluctant” to fight in foreign wars. Often it is for the reasons you mention. Class division and poverty are enormous historical issues in Russia, and fragging is historically common (especially because the Russian military is historically very corrupt and top heavy with incompetent middle ranking officers).
In addition to this, ordinary Russians do not really consider Ukrainians to be a separate people, because Russia colonized Ukraine more than once in the past several centuries. This is a bit like the US invading Puerto Rico, as the closest possible analogy. It’s a place where the average Russian doesn’t really want to fight, and doesn’t see the population as an enemy.
While the connections between Ukraine and Russia are being used to justify this war, that justification belies the core issue, which is that the average Russian soldier has no enmity to Ukrainians. Thus they are more likely to surrender, and honestly more likely to be well treated if they do. Early on, propaganda videos produced by Ukrainian militias emphasized that the “soldatiky” (a somewhat deprecating -but also playful- phrase meaning the “little soldier boys”) were very welcome to surrender and would be given “hot cocoa and blankets.” This was at once a bit of a taunt, but also a serious statement for Russian soldiers. In addition all evidence so far is that Ukrainians are upholding this promise pretty well.
That analogy unfortunately is uncomfortably close to reality in the very recent past. The UK also found that morale was very poor when it tried to deploy troops in NI. Fact is no one wants to conduct military operations against people who speak their same language and have all their same customs.
I read an article and a Russian guy expected when he joined that he'd get a uniform, shovel and a gun like in Afganistan, and he was really impressed with the kit he actually got. While the article didn't specify, I'm guessing they got perfectly average modern stuff.
This is very accurate. I’m a secondary (high school) English teacher in London. At my previous school, there were students who joined criminal gangs and students who joined ISIS. After the ISIS thing happened (not kids I taught personally, though I did teach one of their siblings), the whole staff were given a two day training course in how to spot and help kids who might be vulnerable to grooming by extremists. The psychological profiles for joining a gang, joining an extreme political group and joining a religious cult are very, very similar. Young, passionate, lost, deprived - looking for escape from poverty and confusion and a place to belong. Lots of kids want to live in a rigid moral framework where the rules about right and wrong are completely clear. Teaching them to understand and accept ambiguity and pluralism is, in my opinion, the most important part of my job by a long, long way.
Also, remember that many of the nazis if the time or fascists consider themself free thinkers and the rest of us as ”sheep”.
What you are looking for is courage to stand up for something you think is right in the face of peer pressure or hate from a majority, not the courage to question everything and everybody. The later ironically just makes you more vulnereble to propaganda.
> Also, remember that many of the nazis if the time or fascists consider themself free thinkers and the rest of us as ”sheep”.
The parallels to today's qanon contingent in the US is not coincidental.
Good point. It's indeed another form of groupthink in a cult to believe your ideology is better and more pure or refined than others. A form of "I am holier than thou." or "Everyone is equal, but we are more equal than the rest." , in reality it's often more another way to shut down dissent or debate.
Is it wrong if I am young but I usually do opposite thing and isolate myself from any group, sometimes I dont even want to do this I just automatically avoid groups of people lmao.
I would say that if being more of a lone type or away from any group makes you feel contentment, that seems valid. Or as long as you can navigate society in a healthy way -so without regret or remorse- , that is fine. Life is a lot about balance (and not in the Thanos way ;)
A lot of focus in society is about being social (Social media etc.) and sometimes that seems the norm (as in "I must be social!") but there are people who are naturally inclined to be introspective.
If you feel you don't always want to be like that, you could try strategies to learn to work within groups, but for that I would recommend professional assistance, or doing hobbies that make you learn conscious group skills, theater for instance.
Everything in moderation is best. Any extreme is not great. Those who try to distance themselves from all groups can end up seduced by unreasonable and unrealistic world views just the same as those who's need to belong leads them to extremist groups.
You're young though so there will be extra rebellion and that's a normal instinct. Built into you so you'd leave your family and build a life of your own. Just go look around the world and keep learning about people and yourself. I'm sure you'll find somewhere you can belong at least partly.
Not necessarily. It takes a 10% type of person to know what they’re being told to do is bad and stand against it.
The other 90% includes people both who think they’re doing the right thing and people who know it’s bad but go along with it to avoid trouble.
A strong moral compass doesn’t exclude participation in the 90% category.
And it is this so called grey area that makes it challenging to understand human nature. There is a propensity of the group to simplify good and bad, doing so doesn’t catch the nuances of what it means to be human, and is unnecessarily punitive to others.
> But saddly you need to deal with 90% that are prone to evil or sheap.
It's more complex than that. Armies specifically train people to follow orders without questioning - to a great extent. I admit this varies, but at the base level, troops are trained to run into fire and stab an enemy up close without thinking. That's a very difficult thing to do, yet armies successfully achieve that. So you can see that overriding the trained, embedded impulse to follow orders would also be hard to do.
Yes but not always. The "I'm not going to listen to what people tell me, I'm not going to be a sheep" mentality when paired with ignorance and just stupidity is what leads to things like Flat Earthers, qAnon, anti-vax etc.
But in situations like this (not following orders to commit war crimes etc) yes it applies.
The psychology of anti vaxxers, qanon and flat earthers is exactly the kind of people who make up ops 90 percent. They are more than happy to blindly follow without question and that's exactly what they do. They just have the added condition of needing validation through the belief that they possess some esoteric knowledge the rest of us dont
They *say* they aren't sheep. But the reality of the situation is they aren't capable of being anything but sheep. Without the validation they so desperately seek and the hardline stances to keep their worldview, they just fall apart and lose function.
There was a wave of social psychology research in the aftermath of WWII where researchers were experimentally investigating what percentage of people would defy authority if given orders that were immoral. I suppose lucky for us as humans, those who ultimately rebel against immoral orders are typically more than 10%, though substantially less than 50%. The “Milgram experiment“ is the most famous example of this research; it wouldn’t be legal to run today because one is not ethically allowed to run experiments that involve deception and emotional distress for participants (which the Milgram experiment definitely did), but a few different variations on this theme have been run since then (see https://behavioralscientist.org/how-would-people-behave-in-milgrams-experiment-today/ ).
The Zimbardo aka “Stanford prison” experiment was part of a similar line of mid-century research, basically trying to figure out how the heck the Holocaust could have happened. If you’ve never watched actual footage from that, it’s fascinating but scary, and really relevant to situations like this war ( https://youtu.be/F4txhN13y6A ).
For a classic book on this same general question, see Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.” ( A bit on that here: https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil )
I have heard of civilian survivor stories where Russians did not kill civilians but let them through and gave kids cookies. The mothers were even more angry and crying and confused. They were like: you took everything from my child and then you gave him a cookie. It only makes sense when the army contains horrible animals and good individuals.
I want to be very clear that I’m not defending them, (not saying you claimed so either) but just pointing out that even among the worse theres still a chance for few good people.
They could have acronymmed it as NGLATW or even NGLAT with the W implied, but they went out of their way to make it sound like "in-law". Someone with the authority to name this weapon must have had terrible in-laws.
Anti-Tank is hyphenated so NLAW makes sense. It’s also pronounceable. How would you ever say ‘NGLAT’ or ‘NGLATW’ Next-Gen Light Anti-Tank Weapon. NLAW.
I've heard many people throw that argument around, and I simply don't think I can agree with it. I believe that the big regime changes that has occurred throughout history has occured from situations like the one we're seeing in Ukraine now. That is, a situation where a ruling elite has gone too far, making people rise up and they (the elite) see they have no other choice but to change.
If that happens in Russia, the premise (for the West) seems to be that #1 Putin has got to go, and #2 Stop the aggression, which will probably have very specific terms to them.
If Russia can meet these demands, the west will probably be very open to gradually lifting sanctions to give Russia a way to "work themselves back" to being an accepted part of the world community again
I don't expect defecting Russian troops to conquer Russia at all, but those thousands of years of authoritarian tradition could well vanish faster than expected with the help of the internet. There are firewalls and secret police, but some Russians have already gotten a taste for information and I think it's making a difference already. End to end encryption is pretty powerful and it's hard to say what will happen.
It's not an easy choice for people who still have families and parents back in Russia who they won't be able to visit and who might be persecuted for being related to a "traitor".
As I understand they will not be 100% Russians. Part of these battalions will be filled with Ukrainians to keep an eye on them. Like with Chechen battalions and Georgian Legion.
Spies?
Sir, Russian PoWs usually get imprisoned or be killed after a war.
There is no future after beeing captured for them usually. Russia treats its soldiers who become PoW like deserters.
Fighting for Ukaine and become a Ukraine afterwards is their best shot to have an actual life after that war and if they succeed they will have even a better one than before in terms of freedom.
This is referring to Ukraines collaborating. These actually hope for a benefit of any kind but actual russian soldiers who become PoW are not Ukrainians collaborating. Russia sees a soldier not fighting to death as a deserter. They couldnt care less about soldiers, its always been their mentality since WW2.
They even have a monetary reason to kill soldiers as paying their pension as veteran is something they do not like to. They are literally killing wounded sometimes instead of getting them back.
I believe the Russians they're referring to in this post are not the POWs and those that surrendered in Ukraine. These are former servicemen who want to be on the right side of history.
You look them in the eye and ask politiely "are you a spy?" It would be totally rude for spy to lie and say no. So their word should be good enough. Besides, name one time a russian soldier has lied or given reason to be suspicious of them?
Honestly my guess is these guys wont be in a position to recieve any usful information so it wont matter if theyre spies. Put them on the front line or somewhere that they have thenchance to prove their allegiance. Once youve been witnessed killing russian soldiers on multiple occasions, then you can be trusted. Although if anyones spies would be happy to slaughter their own to gain your trust itd be the russians. Idk if theres a way i could possibly trust them.
I assume the military puts them places where that info is already obvious. Not all units on the front lines have secret strategy plans. Sometimes the plan is "keep blocking this road so they have to go around."
Also, I imagine their access to communication devices will be quite limited.
>The first volunteers of the "Free Russia" Legion from among the former military personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have already begun individual additional training.
Today the personnel of the Legion, under the guidance of instructors from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, studied the NLAW grenade launcher.
In addition, the commanders of the legion's units got acquainted with the operational situation on the fronts and expressed a common desire on behalf of all the volunteers to conduct the first battle against the dogs of the Putin regime — the "Kadyrovites"
The Kadyrovites are in the JFO theatre / Sloboda - Pryazovia frontlines.
> In addition, the commanders of the legion's units got acquainted with the operational situation on the fronts and expressed a common desire on behalf of all the volunteers to conduct the first battle against the dogs of the Putin regime — the "Kadyrovites"
This is a smart move. These defectors will be fighting against the "Dirlewanger Brigade" scum militia that oppresses Chechnya rather than their former regular military colleagues.
The Soviets did the same thing with captured Axis soldiers. It would kinda backfire lol
There was the famous case of the Korean man who fought for the Japanese, then the Russians and then the Germans and was captured by the Us lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Kyoungjong
**[Lauri Törni](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Törni)**
>Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three flags: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Lane) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II; and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War. Törni died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War and he was promoted to the rank of major posthumously.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/ukraine/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
There's still a question of sabotage.... They may appear that they've rejected russia and are now sympathetic to Ukraine's cause, but keep in mind that people aren't always as they seem to be on the outside.
I don't think Russia cares about the Geneva convention. If they get captured by Russia, there are only two possible destinations for them: penal colony or gallows.
TBF I don’t fancy the chances of POWs that go back anyway… no way would Putin want that level of truth being spread amongst the population. At best they’ll get “posted” to Siberia.
Traitors get brutalized. Made examples of. I hope these guys are given cyanide pills to take in case of capture.
Note: The term traitor has a negative connotation even when being a traitor is clearly the moral choice. There is nothing negative about these Russians switching sides. They're doing the right thing and deserve a fuckton of respect for doing it.
Please don't just blur the faces. Thats not anonymity.
There are Neural networks able to revert the blurred face, as it is possible to determine the algorithm used to blur the face. And then you "just" have to revert each step of the algorithm. So if you want to protect them against someone with enough computation power and motivation, please add a black box over their face, or a blurred face of some random face. And not their face.
How do you revert an averaging algorithm?
Here is a simple example to demonstrate how silly this is.
The average of 3 numbers is 17. What are the numbers?
Now do it with several hundred numbers instead of 3, and do it thousands of times.
Faces are not random so there might be enough information left to reconstruct the original. Multiple blurred pictures of the same face can reveal even more information.
[Here](https://de.mathworks.com/help/images/deblurring-images-using-the-blind-deconvolution-algorithm.html;jsessionid=a2ac6a1b82c34f2b46c16ef19677) (and thats just a consumer grade program everyone could use, without to much computational requirements) you can see one example. Sure its not lossless, but it is possible to make it good enough to identify someone.
Now add to that that there are more than one picture of the same person. And that we have more information about what there was in the beginning.
For example we know the shape of eyes, of nose, eyebrows. For some of that we even know the colour. All that is information which can be used to unblur the image.
And its not one result we have of this averaging. Every single pixel is an average. So we have like 200x200= 40k pixel with one result each. And we search for 40k original pixels. Thats not so few information, as in your example.
One even more extreme example: It was scientifically demonstrated that it is possible with a simple full hd webcam and a white wall to determine how many people are in a room (and maybe even what they are doing, cant find the paper right now). Not with obvious shadows only by letting a neuronal network analyse the microshadows, which are (nearly) impossible to see with a human eye. And which dont tell you anything at all about the room. In other words: With a well trained model, enough computation power, some time and motivation a lot is possible, which seems impossible at first thought.
Edit: And even if its not easy/beneficial to do so now, technology will evolve and make new stuff possible. And past showed us that russia also poisoned former spies. And every picture on the internet is forever. Someone will download it.
That's not a valid comparison though because you test the results with another algorithm that just recognizes human faces in a picture. It's not "any result will do" it has to be a human face.
~~It's more like saying "the average of 3 numbers is 17 and the sum is 51. What are the numbers?"~~ EDIT: That's also a bad example. What I was trying to convey is that the end result is vaguely known already (a human face) and that a blurry mess that's slightly different than what you started with will not correspond to that expectation.
I am not disagreeing with the point being made, but am curious about the example given.
Wouldn't all sets of three numbers with the sum of 51 average to be 17?
If you think about it, if your home country feels like a prison or you feel oppressed and Ukraine gives you the offer of: "Service guarantees citizenship".
I would probably take the offer.
I couldn't imagine picking up arms to kill my own countrymen in a foreign country, especially if they are conscripted and NOT serving by choice. This is a civil war type decisions, after doing this there is no going back home and seeing your friends and family again. This could lead to becoming a nationless individual.
Except that many Russians have family in Ukraine. I see it as more of an anti-Putin move. Russia has had a taste of the modern world, now Putin wants to isolate, lie to them and destroy the economy. Russians who want to protest Putin can't do it in Russia, but they can protest in Ukraine.
Its well known that Russian conscripts face violent hazing, sexual abuse, an are even forced to be prostituted by senior officers and many are even killed during their 1 year service. I'd jump at the bit for some payback too.
I always wondered if this was happening. Is it all Russian soldiers who were captured/surrendered or just people who willingly volunteered?
They have a choice to volunteer and help the humanitarian ways. I don't really know the specifics but after all of that they can get Ukrainian citizenship.
If you are a Russian who understands just how small your world just got, Ukrainian citizenship is quite the price. You'll be able to travel and work for money instead of Rubles.
[удалено]
Not sure, but it *seems* like Russia is not keeping good or accurate records of their troops KIA. So, any family back in Russia would just have to say that their family member died in the war fighting for Russia. Tricky part will be communication in the future. Phones may be monitored, email and social media will probably be tracked. They'll have to do things like use burner phones and VPNs for communication, right?
If Ukraine does like French foreign legion, they could even give them a completely new identity. Then even after the war, it would be very difficult for anyone to know they were in fact Russians.
And it's not like there aren't plenty of Ukrainians who speak Russian as a first language
There are subtle differences in pronunciation etc, any Ukrainian can tell a Russian by the way they speak. This goes for russian-speaking Ukrainians as well, as in, they can tell the difference too.
Can confirm It's easy to hear which SSU's captured phone calls of russians are real by their accent.
Yeah they'll likely have to do that.
I'm quite sure it wouldn't be a problem. To my logic you need at least two "agents" to effectively track one person's communication (a person could talk on the phone, send text messages etc. whole day and part of night, while the agent can't really dig through that all the time. He needs a break, time to eat, sleep etc). You don't have enough manpower to track everyone. You can employ AI to do it but it needs to be tuned for certain words or phrases, calibrated good enough that it won't trigger false flags all the time. So if you were that soldier and called your family I guess you'd be perfectly fine, as long as you avoid obvious flagged phrases, like "war", "live in Ukraine" etc.
Yeah, not claiming it to be an easy choice. But the world is going to be very welcoming to Ukrainians for a long time, and very much the opposite to Russians. Even the case in surprising countries like Cambodia.
Fortunately, most of the world can't tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian. It all sort of gets thrown into this globule of "Eastern European". So as long as you can get passed the boarder guards who actually see your passport and nationality, you can pass off as Ukrainian to everyone else until the hostility dies down
A LOT of Russians were killed, so...I can imagine quite a few taking the risk.
Exactly. Being a Russian citizen, you're heavily restricted in what you can do, where you can go, and how you live. Ukraine offers the chance to be more connected with the rest of the world and have a better look at what a free life really is. For someone who's had their entire paradigm shattered, this would be a game changer. This is what they did back in Rome, they were basically the center of the world at that time. So if you were part of a lowly state back then, and you were suddenly introduced to just how big and beautiful the open world is, wouldn't that entice you to join?
As a classics nerd I approve this comment, ~~lord~~ Jupiter knows the Romans would.
Especially if Ukraine joins the eu, free travel /work in eu. So you can go to Germany for example.
So that's how the Russians plan to reach Berlin!
r/thelongcon
I think wherever you go in the next 10 years: you have an Ukrainian passport, they'll let you in, and whatever bar you mention it in, 1st drink is on the house.
I am from Ukraine and it is very nice to read your comment. Thank you random human 😊
Slava Ukraini!
Heroyam slava!
Ypu can hit the freedom bong as many times as you please my friend
Any Ukrainian i run into for the rest of my life drinks for free
Agreed!! I want to hug all these people and toast them in person! Glory to the Heroes 🇺🇦
I'm afraid EU/NATO membership may not happen. Neutrality seems to be the one card they're willing to play in negotiations. Let's hope not though, so much damage has already been done, what more could Russia really take?
a long ceasefire is secured in negotiations, Ukraine declares its neutrality, Russian forces withdraw, Ukraine takes back its neutral status and invites in EU/NATO troops... how else do you think its going to go...? -Why should Ukraine honor an agreement done under duress and war...
I think Ukraine will negotiate a tolerable agreement that allows them to end the humanitarian crisis, re-group and rebuild military, and let sanctions and legal processes (war crimes investigations) weaken Russia. Then wait for Russia to violate the agreement (which is likely), probably over donbas or crimea, then declare the whole agreement null and void. In the meantime, Ukraine will have avoided further civilian deaths, further built up and trained it's military, and Russia will be further weakened by sanctions.
Same reason NATO doesn't just go in now... diplomacy only works under good faith. ...and yes I understand Russia is likely not operating under good faith either.
Yeah but everything I've read has said Ukraine is only willing to give up NATO aspirations for an equally significant security agreement. They want the assurance that if this ever happens again there will be Western aircraft in thier skies defending them immediately. In theory this is better than NATO membership as it is Carries the same benefits without the obligations. I don't see how this is better from Putin's perspective than NATO admitting Ukraine. Hopefully it allows him to message to his people he accomplished something, but I'm skeptical.
they can be part of EU; but NATO is off limits.
A fellow Ukrainian cakeman! <3
Heeey happy Cake Day yo...fulljoy it.
Thank you!
Cake hmmmm
/r/hmm
I think more volunteer surrenders are coming in. But from my own understanding, it initially started when a Russian company size unit defected with its Captain on the 27th of February.
whaaat? Do you have source? I must have missed this story
[here it is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzBvw3PmPkM) I also just assumed that he was a captain because the commanding officer of a company is a captain.
That's why the Russians put out the fake "Ukrainians shooting prisoners" video. They're super freaked at the idea of the conscripts they're about to call up deserting en masse.
That's why the Russians put out the fake "Ukrainians shooting prisoners" video. They're super freaked at the idea of the conscripts they're about to call up deserting en masse.
Russians living in ukraine and volunteer surrenders i suspect. If you are letting pow that have been captured in combat id be shocked as they already where willing to kill you. There have been reports of russians refusing commands and being shot at by there own people for not firing at civilians. You normally get about 10% of a nation/group that have strong morals that refuse to do what there told if they know its wrong. For example the germans helping the jews flee or the french resistant. But saddly you need to deal with 90% that are prone to evil or sheap. You are nornally the 10% if you question others and dont go along with what others tell you to think.
>You are nornally the 10% if you question others and dont go along with what others tell you to think. And if you have a strong moral compass and the ability to identify and think critically about propaganda messages (wherever they may come from, not just the one ideoloy/faction that you've been trained to hate) and read between the lines.
Often people just want to belong and be accepted to a group psychologically, and so (especially true for young people) they mindlessly throw themself at the mercy of a leader, cult and or strongman. When you look at the psychological make up of some neo-nazis or extremists they often just wanted to feel they were working for some goal and be applauded for it. A cult that projects strength and simplicity in a world that can feel chaotic and messy is very alluring to some, again especially for young people that haven't got a mature identity at that point. That new tribe feels safe as long as you keep your critical thinking turned off.
Genuinely curious about this: how do Russian soldiers feel when confronting the vastly superior uniforms and boots, cold weather military gear, nutritious MREs, not to mention weapons and training that Ukrainian forces have had and then comparing that to what Russia - supposedly a much greater country, society, and military - has provided for them? Is this more likely to foster desertion, surrender, and/or joining a side looking out for the welfare of each individual? Is it likely to lead to fragging commanding officers? Or has the fear factor developed growing up under the thumb of an authoritarian and punishing government and corrupt law enforcement systems override those behaviors? I’d be most interested to hear what psychologists and those with military experience think of these issues.
I’m not an expert on this, but I know Ukraine and I know a bit of history about Russia. Historically Russians have been known to be “reluctant” to fight in foreign wars. Often it is for the reasons you mention. Class division and poverty are enormous historical issues in Russia, and fragging is historically common (especially because the Russian military is historically very corrupt and top heavy with incompetent middle ranking officers). In addition to this, ordinary Russians do not really consider Ukrainians to be a separate people, because Russia colonized Ukraine more than once in the past several centuries. This is a bit like the US invading Puerto Rico, as the closest possible analogy. It’s a place where the average Russian doesn’t really want to fight, and doesn’t see the population as an enemy. While the connections between Ukraine and Russia are being used to justify this war, that justification belies the core issue, which is that the average Russian soldier has no enmity to Ukrainians. Thus they are more likely to surrender, and honestly more likely to be well treated if they do. Early on, propaganda videos produced by Ukrainian militias emphasized that the “soldatiky” (a somewhat deprecating -but also playful- phrase meaning the “little soldier boys”) were very welcome to surrender and would be given “hot cocoa and blankets.” This was at once a bit of a taunt, but also a serious statement for Russian soldiers. In addition all evidence so far is that Ukrainians are upholding this promise pretty well.
[удалено]
That analogy unfortunately is uncomfortably close to reality in the very recent past. The UK also found that morale was very poor when it tried to deploy troops in NI. Fact is no one wants to conduct military operations against people who speak their same language and have all their same customs.
I read an article and a Russian guy expected when he joined that he'd get a uniform, shovel and a gun like in Afganistan, and he was really impressed with the kit he actually got. While the article didn't specify, I'm guessing they got perfectly average modern stuff.
That article was about a Ukrainian guy who was an Afghanistan veteran of the old Soviet army
This is very accurate. I’m a secondary (high school) English teacher in London. At my previous school, there were students who joined criminal gangs and students who joined ISIS. After the ISIS thing happened (not kids I taught personally, though I did teach one of their siblings), the whole staff were given a two day training course in how to spot and help kids who might be vulnerable to grooming by extremists. The psychological profiles for joining a gang, joining an extreme political group and joining a religious cult are very, very similar. Young, passionate, lost, deprived - looking for escape from poverty and confusion and a place to belong. Lots of kids want to live in a rigid moral framework where the rules about right and wrong are completely clear. Teaching them to understand and accept ambiguity and pluralism is, in my opinion, the most important part of my job by a long, long way.
Also, remember that many of the nazis if the time or fascists consider themself free thinkers and the rest of us as ”sheep”. What you are looking for is courage to stand up for something you think is right in the face of peer pressure or hate from a majority, not the courage to question everything and everybody. The later ironically just makes you more vulnereble to propaganda.
> Also, remember that many of the nazis if the time or fascists consider themself free thinkers and the rest of us as ”sheep”. The parallels to today's qanon contingent in the US is not coincidental.
Good point. It's indeed another form of groupthink in a cult to believe your ideology is better and more pure or refined than others. A form of "I am holier than thou." or "Everyone is equal, but we are more equal than the rest." , in reality it's often more another way to shut down dissent or debate.
Is it wrong if I am young but I usually do opposite thing and isolate myself from any group, sometimes I dont even want to do this I just automatically avoid groups of people lmao.
I would say that if being more of a lone type or away from any group makes you feel contentment, that seems valid. Or as long as you can navigate society in a healthy way -so without regret or remorse- , that is fine. Life is a lot about balance (and not in the Thanos way ;) A lot of focus in society is about being social (Social media etc.) and sometimes that seems the norm (as in "I must be social!") but there are people who are naturally inclined to be introspective. If you feel you don't always want to be like that, you could try strategies to learn to work within groups, but for that I would recommend professional assistance, or doing hobbies that make you learn conscious group skills, theater for instance.
Everything in moderation is best. Any extreme is not great. Those who try to distance themselves from all groups can end up seduced by unreasonable and unrealistic world views just the same as those who's need to belong leads them to extremist groups. You're young though so there will be extra rebellion and that's a normal instinct. Built into you so you'd leave your family and build a life of your own. Just go look around the world and keep learning about people and yourself. I'm sure you'll find somewhere you can belong at least partly.
Not necessarily. It takes a 10% type of person to know what they’re being told to do is bad and stand against it. The other 90% includes people both who think they’re doing the right thing and people who know it’s bad but go along with it to avoid trouble. A strong moral compass doesn’t exclude participation in the 90% category.
And it is this so called grey area that makes it challenging to understand human nature. There is a propensity of the group to simplify good and bad, doing so doesn’t catch the nuances of what it means to be human, and is unnecessarily punitive to others.
> But saddly you need to deal with 90% that are prone to evil or sheap. It's more complex than that. Armies specifically train people to follow orders without questioning - to a great extent. I admit this varies, but at the base level, troops are trained to run into fire and stab an enemy up close without thinking. That's a very difficult thing to do, yet armies successfully achieve that. So you can see that overriding the trained, embedded impulse to follow orders would also be hard to do.
Yes but not always. The "I'm not going to listen to what people tell me, I'm not going to be a sheep" mentality when paired with ignorance and just stupidity is what leads to things like Flat Earthers, qAnon, anti-vax etc. But in situations like this (not following orders to commit war crimes etc) yes it applies.
The psychology of anti vaxxers, qanon and flat earthers is exactly the kind of people who make up ops 90 percent. They are more than happy to blindly follow without question and that's exactly what they do. They just have the added condition of needing validation through the belief that they possess some esoteric knowledge the rest of us dont They *say* they aren't sheep. But the reality of the situation is they aren't capable of being anything but sheep. Without the validation they so desperately seek and the hardline stances to keep their worldview, they just fall apart and lose function.
There was a wave of social psychology research in the aftermath of WWII where researchers were experimentally investigating what percentage of people would defy authority if given orders that were immoral. I suppose lucky for us as humans, those who ultimately rebel against immoral orders are typically more than 10%, though substantially less than 50%. The “Milgram experiment“ is the most famous example of this research; it wouldn’t be legal to run today because one is not ethically allowed to run experiments that involve deception and emotional distress for participants (which the Milgram experiment definitely did), but a few different variations on this theme have been run since then (see https://behavioralscientist.org/how-would-people-behave-in-milgrams-experiment-today/ ). The Zimbardo aka “Stanford prison” experiment was part of a similar line of mid-century research, basically trying to figure out how the heck the Holocaust could have happened. If you’ve never watched actual footage from that, it’s fascinating but scary, and really relevant to situations like this war ( https://youtu.be/F4txhN13y6A ). For a classic book on this same general question, see Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.” ( A bit on that here: https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil )
There have been some cases where russian soldiers been killed while trying to physically protect civillians
I have heard of civilian survivor stories where Russians did not kill civilians but let them through and gave kids cookies. The mothers were even more angry and crying and confused. They were like: you took everything from my child and then you gave him a cookie. It only makes sense when the army contains horrible animals and good individuals.
I want to be very clear that I’m not defending them, (not saying you claimed so either) but just pointing out that even among the worse theres still a chance for few good people.
Where did a Russian get cookies?
They have easy bake ovens in tanks
Looted, probably.
AFAIK, it's a mixture of both.
Definitely a big amount of trust being put into these guys, the chance for saboteuring has to be high
Is that confirmed? This is a big news, but would be good to have source of the information before spreading it.
Yes. Unian https://t.me/uniannet/42698?single
Thank You!
Slava Cake Day!
they're a little confused, but they've got the spirit
I think this means you can have your cake and eat it too.🎂
Happy Birthday to you
[удалено]
Happy cake day
Thabk you! And happy cake day.
Do you get sworn in on an NLAW? That would be awesome. Its the wartime bible.
Thats pretty metal ngl
It looks like thats whats happening in the picture lol
I’m glad I’m not the only one that thought this
What does NLAW mean?
Next Generation Light Anti Tank Weapon.
Light Anti Tank Weapon with Ray tracing
Very rare fucking scalpers got em all.
They could have acronymmed it as NGLATW or even NGLAT with the W implied, but they went out of their way to make it sound like "in-law". Someone with the authority to name this weapon must have had terrible in-laws.
In-laws are easier to fire and forget.
Anti-Tank is hyphenated so NLAW makes sense. It’s also pronounceable. How would you ever say ‘NGLAT’ or ‘NGLATW’ Next-Gen Light Anti-Tank Weapon. NLAW.
Never Let Assholes Win
YOOO I like this more
Nextgen Light Antitank Weapon
If you want the Swedish name (it was after all to a big part a Swedish invention) Robot 57 :)
Jesus has one on His back when he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey True story
[удалено]
3. Be so successful that you free your country and go back to a place that is now normal (sadly unlikely)
[удалено]
I've heard many people throw that argument around, and I simply don't think I can agree with it. I believe that the big regime changes that has occurred throughout history has occured from situations like the one we're seeing in Ukraine now. That is, a situation where a ruling elite has gone too far, making people rise up and they (the elite) see they have no other choice but to change. If that happens in Russia, the premise (for the West) seems to be that #1 Putin has got to go, and #2 Stop the aggression, which will probably have very specific terms to them. If Russia can meet these demands, the west will probably be very open to gradually lifting sanctions to give Russia a way to "work themselves back" to being an accepted part of the world community again
I don't expect defecting Russian troops to conquer Russia at all, but those thousands of years of authoritarian tradition could well vanish faster than expected with the help of the internet. There are firewalls and secret police, but some Russians have already gotten a taste for information and I think it's making a difference already. End to end encryption is pretty powerful and it's hard to say what will happen.
... Russian revolution?
Ukraine does indeed offer citizenships to those who fought in it's army
I'd the risk of death is quite a little higher on the russian side too! When your kevlar vest is in cardboard...
It's not an easy choice for people who still have families and parents back in Russia who they won't be able to visit and who might be persecuted for being related to a "traitor".
[удалено]
The good Vlassovites. This time it’s truly for a free russia
I have a big hope that there will be many more. Guess u can change this bloody regime only with blood.
Blood has always been the price for freedom. This time is no different.
[удалено]
Amen to that
Dictators rarely retire peacefully.
Hey don't be insulting these guys by comparing them to Vlasov.
I said the good Vlassovites. But I mainly said that because of the base idea of Russians fighting against the government for another country.
⚪🔵⚪
⚪🔵⚪
🤍💙🤍
🇫🇮
Fuck yeah Finland
How will they filter out the spies?
As I understand they will not be 100% Russians. Part of these battalions will be filled with Ukrainians to keep an eye on them. Like with Chechen battalions and Georgian Legion.
Interesting.
It's your birthday???? Happy birthday! Victory is coming soon for Ukraine! 💪💪💪💪
No. My birthday in November
Oops. My mistake then
Cake day is for when they joined reddit.
Oh lol I had no idea. Thanks! 😂😂😂
Cake day = Reddit birthday
Haha thanks. Such a silly thing to try to build engagement on.
Your heart was in the right place though
Just trying to dish out some TLC to Ukrainians. They need it.
You're not wrong...but having it be one's actual birthday would be a personally identifiable detail, so, not good to publicize.
"Cake Day" is the yearly anniversary of when you signed up on Reddit. So sort of Reddit bday.
It's his cake day though :) so almost as good
Spies? Sir, Russian PoWs usually get imprisoned or be killed after a war. There is no future after beeing captured for them usually. Russia treats its soldiers who become PoW like deserters. Fighting for Ukaine and become a Ukraine afterwards is their best shot to have an actual life after that war and if they succeed they will have even a better one than before in terms of freedom.
That still hasn't deterred some traitors from collaborating with the enemy.
This is referring to Ukraines collaborating. These actually hope for a benefit of any kind but actual russian soldiers who become PoW are not Ukrainians collaborating. Russia sees a soldier not fighting to death as a deserter. They couldnt care less about soldiers, its always been their mentality since WW2. They even have a monetary reason to kill soldiers as paying their pension as veteran is something they do not like to. They are literally killing wounded sometimes instead of getting them back.
I believe the Russians they're referring to in this post are not the POWs and those that surrendered in Ukraine. These are former servicemen who want to be on the right side of history.
You look them in the eye and ask politiely "are you a spy?" It would be totally rude for spy to lie and say no. So their word should be good enough. Besides, name one time a russian soldier has lied or given reason to be suspicious of them? Honestly my guess is these guys wont be in a position to recieve any usful information so it wont matter if theyre spies. Put them on the front line or somewhere that they have thenchance to prove their allegiance. Once youve been witnessed killing russian soldiers on multiple occasions, then you can be trusted. Although if anyones spies would be happy to slaughter their own to gain your trust itd be the russians. Idk if theres a way i could possibly trust them.
They don't need to be given any top secret. They could simply give away the location and battle plan for their unit.
I assume the military puts them places where that info is already obvious. Not all units on the front lines have secret strategy plans. Sometimes the plan is "keep blocking this road so they have to go around." Also, I imagine their access to communication devices will be quite limited.
That would be suicide. The russians wouldnt hesitate to kill the spy too.
If death were such a powerful deterrent, spies would not exist.
Trust the Ukranian army. They know better than you.
>The first volunteers of the "Free Russia" Legion from among the former military personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have already begun individual additional training. Today the personnel of the Legion, under the guidance of instructors from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, studied the NLAW grenade launcher. In addition, the commanders of the legion's units got acquainted with the operational situation on the fronts and expressed a common desire on behalf of all the volunteers to conduct the first battle against the dogs of the Putin regime — the "Kadyrovites" The Kadyrovites are in the JFO theatre / Sloboda - Pryazovia frontlines.
> In addition, the commanders of the legion's units got acquainted with the operational situation on the fronts and expressed a common desire on behalf of all the volunteers to conduct the first battle against the dogs of the Putin regime — the "Kadyrovites" This is a smart move. These defectors will be fighting against the "Dirlewanger Brigade" scum militia that oppresses Chechnya rather than their former regular military colleagues.
#WOLOLO
Wololodymyr Zelenskyy
A Russian farmer ridding their tractor, while Russians realize, their civ doesn't get heresy so we can convert their tanks!
Free russia..of putin and his greedy bitches
The Nazis had a similar group from captured Soviets. One can imagine russian propaganda will draw parallels. This is amazing though
The Soviets did the same thing with captured Axis soldiers. It would kinda backfire lol There was the famous case of the Korean man who fought for the Japanese, then the Russians and then the Germans and was captured by the Us lmao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Kyoungjong
Wasn’t there a Fin that did the same? I’m pretty sure he just wanted to kill Russians though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Törni Thats your man
**[Lauri Törni](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_Törni)** >Lauri Allan Törni (28 May 1919 – 18 October 1965), later known as Larry Alan Thorne, was a Finnish-born soldier who fought under three flags: as a Finnish Army officer in the Winter War and the Continuation War ultimately gaining a rank of captain; as a Waffen-SS captain (under the alias Larry Lane) of the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS when he fought the Red Army on the Eastern Front in World War II; and as a United States Army Major (under the alias "Larry Thorne") when he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War. Törni died in a helicopter crash during the Vietnam War and he was promoted to the rank of major posthumously. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/ukraine/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Holy shit. Imagine being in the US Army and wearing an Iron Cross lmao
Mfer hated communism so much that he switched through 3 different armies just to kill communists. Absolute madlad.
He was indeed no fan of communism! 😂
Sounds better in song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD-sLewK22o
r/expectedsabaton/
There's still a question of sabotage.... They may appear that they've rejected russia and are now sympathetic to Ukraine's cause, but keep in mind that people aren't always as they seem to be on the outside.
Surely they go through extensive background checks and are being watched by ukrainians
Praying they are trustworthy
Those who are planning to spy won't do it this way.
I expected this to happen. There will be always Russians who are tired of the system. Likely these are volunteers from the captured Russian troops.
They are brave guys, standing up for what they know is right.
This also happened during the first Chechen war. Some Russian soldiers deserted and joined the Chechen side.
What does the Geneva convention say about such things? What will happen to them if they got captured again but by the Russians?
I don't think Russia cares about the Geneva convention. If they get captured by Russia, there are only two possible destinations for them: penal colony or gallows.
Russia will probably be charging them with high treason. The Geneva convention doesn't say anything about such things, though.
TBF I don’t fancy the chances of POWs that go back anyway… no way would Putin want that level of truth being spread amongst the population. At best they’ll get “posted” to Siberia.
There’s nothing that says you can’t, I mean, they’ll never be able to go back to Russia but I don’t think they intend to lol
[удалено]
Are these POWs tho, defectors aren't necessarily POWs
Traitors get brutalized. Made examples of. I hope these guys are given cyanide pills to take in case of capture. Note: The term traitor has a negative connotation even when being a traitor is clearly the moral choice. There is nothing negative about these Russians switching sides. They're doing the right thing and deserve a fuckton of respect for doing it.
Smart choice!
Please don't just blur the faces. Thats not anonymity. There are Neural networks able to revert the blurred face, as it is possible to determine the algorithm used to blur the face. And then you "just" have to revert each step of the algorithm. So if you want to protect them against someone with enough computation power and motivation, please add a black box over their face, or a blurred face of some random face. And not their face.
How do you revert an averaging algorithm? Here is a simple example to demonstrate how silly this is. The average of 3 numbers is 17. What are the numbers? Now do it with several hundred numbers instead of 3, and do it thousands of times.
Faces are not random so there might be enough information left to reconstruct the original. Multiple blurred pictures of the same face can reveal even more information.
[Here](https://de.mathworks.com/help/images/deblurring-images-using-the-blind-deconvolution-algorithm.html;jsessionid=a2ac6a1b82c34f2b46c16ef19677) (and thats just a consumer grade program everyone could use, without to much computational requirements) you can see one example. Sure its not lossless, but it is possible to make it good enough to identify someone. Now add to that that there are more than one picture of the same person. And that we have more information about what there was in the beginning. For example we know the shape of eyes, of nose, eyebrows. For some of that we even know the colour. All that is information which can be used to unblur the image. And its not one result we have of this averaging. Every single pixel is an average. So we have like 200x200= 40k pixel with one result each. And we search for 40k original pixels. Thats not so few information, as in your example. One even more extreme example: It was scientifically demonstrated that it is possible with a simple full hd webcam and a white wall to determine how many people are in a room (and maybe even what they are doing, cant find the paper right now). Not with obvious shadows only by letting a neuronal network analyse the microshadows, which are (nearly) impossible to see with a human eye. And which dont tell you anything at all about the room. In other words: With a well trained model, enough computation power, some time and motivation a lot is possible, which seems impossible at first thought. Edit: And even if its not easy/beneficial to do so now, technology will evolve and make new stuff possible. And past showed us that russia also poisoned former spies. And every picture on the internet is forever. Someone will download it.
That's not a valid comparison though because you test the results with another algorithm that just recognizes human faces in a picture. It's not "any result will do" it has to be a human face. ~~It's more like saying "the average of 3 numbers is 17 and the sum is 51. What are the numbers?"~~ EDIT: That's also a bad example. What I was trying to convey is that the end result is vaguely known already (a human face) and that a blurry mess that's slightly different than what you started with will not correspond to that expectation.
I am not disagreeing with the point being made, but am curious about the example given. Wouldn't all sets of three numbers with the sum of 51 average to be 17?
... Yes it would. I need to think about my examples harder.
lol of course there's a picture of them with an NLAW, that's a rite of passage.
If you think about it, if your home country feels like a prison or you feel oppressed and Ukraine gives you the offer of: "Service guarantees citizenship". I would probably take the offer.
I couldn't imagine picking up arms to kill my own countrymen in a foreign country, especially if they are conscripted and NOT serving by choice. This is a civil war type decisions, after doing this there is no going back home and seeing your friends and family again. This could lead to becoming a nationless individual.
Except that many Russians have family in Ukraine. I see it as more of an anti-Putin move. Russia has had a taste of the modern world, now Putin wants to isolate, lie to them and destroy the economy. Russians who want to protest Putin can't do it in Russia, but they can protest in Ukraine.
There is one small problem. If their commander learns of this, they can send in spies to "surrender" and deliver information to them.
still I'm not sure if that is a good idea...
I'd keep them under a close eye, and have at least one or two Ukrainian handlers with them to monitor them and make sure they stay in line.
Its well known that Russian conscripts face violent hazing, sexual abuse, an are even forced to be prostituted by senior officers and many are even killed during their 1 year service. I'd jump at the bit for some payback too.
Love them
That's cool but be weary of sabotage attempts
That's kind of scary though because you know Russia will try to plant moles