• raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        That may be not an option for the individual conscript. We don’t know who of them was recruited under which circumstances. They are still humans. Even for war criminals we can unfortunately not deny that they are human.

        With the Russian army being the aggressor, and short of Putler withdrawing from Ukraine, it is unfortunately the only option for Ukraine to kill the Russian soldiers in self defense. If that can be accomplished without causing them to suffer unnecessarily, that is the preferable option.

        • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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          4 months ago

          That may be not an option for the individual conscript

          If the other option is getting your head blown off, maybe you need to look a little bit harder.

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            There are certainly Russian soldiers who knew enough about that war to make such an informed decision. But Putler is also using this war to perform an ethnic cleansing a genocide among Russian minorities from far east - recruiting people from communities with little knowledge about world politics and being very very poor. Buratya comes to mind. Low education + poor + pressure + promise of money and you will end up with a lot of recruits who had no idea what they were getting into until their own soldiers started pointing rifles at their backs from the second line should they dare retreat.

        • rab@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          I actually had your viewpoint until I watched 20 days in mariupol

          • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            If you lost it, you are dehumanizing people, which is a condition that many absolutist regimes aim to accomplish to enable genocide.

            The Russian war of aggression and uncounted war crimes against Ukraine are suitable to make everyone furious, but how we treat even mass murderers is a reflection not of who they are, but who we are. By doing more than the necessary (and if that is killing, by being excessively cruel, or enjoying the killing), we harm ourselves, not the enemy. Because we desensitize ourselves to violence, and we become that which we claim to be fighting.

            Support Ukraine with everything we have, but let us enable them to kill as cleanly as possible - that also means (looking at you, my government in Berlin) to give them proper long range missiles. Let us never rejoice over unnecessary cruelty towards anyone - although we may be happy for neutralized threats.