@Igotjelly
Maybe really daft question but in the grand scheme of how many people live in these areas and the number of soldiers isn’t 45k actually pretty low? If the Russians planned to murder the entire population/ a good portion of it wouldn’t they need a damned sight more than 45k? Assume the plan would just be to mass grave the rest? If so why bother with any body bags at all?
Just trying to understand the logistics and intention.
You don't need to kill everyone to produce mass terror.
Remember the plan was that Zelensky would leg it and then they'd get a puppet government in straight away.
At that point you wouldn't have armed resistance in quite the same way we are seeing because there wouldn't be leadership and the central command for it.
Therefore you'd be looking to round up people you viewed as 'political agitators' to make an example of them.
Think about whats happening with the protests in Russia - except you'd round them up and simply shoot them because you'd say they were nazis and a threat to society. Because in a war zone there is no rule of law and order is maintained only by force or the social pressures of the captive public.
But because this became a war where the whole world was watching very intently and there was reporting of what was going on, this became something that couldn't be done.
As Kamil Galeev points out as part of the thread I linked to before:
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
Donbass is now a fully militarised statist society. There's almost no private sector. Locals must either work for government enterprises (for food) or serve in Donbass army (for better wage). You have no choice but to toil for pro-Russian warlords or to shed your blood for them
There's no law in Donbass, people have no protection against the arbitrary rule of pro-Russian warlords. There's obviously no place for dissidence, those who object will just disappear. People are purposefully kept in poverty so they can be better used as workers or cannon fodder
'People just disappear'.
Its not unlike what happened in Syria. People just disappeared. They were spent to prison if they were unlucky and were tortured rather than just been outright murdered. There are lots of mass graves there... but equally millions fleed. So no need to kill everyone. Those who remained live in poverty and have to do whatever they can to merely survive.
I think what you have to now be thinking of is what is happening to those left in the likes of Mariupol and Kherson and other occupied places.
The Ukrainians were aware of many of the appalling things that were already happening post 2014 to those in the Donbass area. That is in part precisely why they have fought so hard and didn't consider giving in. There are accounts of what was going on there which do fit in with the idea of what Sergj Sumlenny was saying.
You have to think back to what Putin was doing in East Germany and what he considered as acceptable practice as part of his days in the KGB.
Eastern Europe was not a nice place to live in you didn't obey authority...