Ukraine Invasion: Part 34

[MagicFox]

Welcome all 🇺🇦

Finland and Sweden allow deployment of nuclear weapons near borders with Russia - Bloomberg.

Just to note, they're not allowing the deployment, just not ruling it out yet.

How much do the Russian people know about the Russian losses? Just wondering if they knew just how many are dying, especially the mobilised ones dying quite quickly, how much more they will take before major civil unrest?

Blueshoes - Today 13:41
The Russian birth rate was woeful long before the war. I remember reading about it decades ago. This is why RU did not have enough soldiers at the start of the invasion. I cannot believe they are throwing more young (and older) men at the invasion as dispensible road blocks. Along with the brain drain and flight from mobilisation, RU can barely afford

You are right. Kamil Galeev wrote a lot about this in one of his threads at the beginning of the war.

Very good point - the language etc is really important..

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-01/nordic-nato-candidates-seek-no-opt-outs-on-nuclear-weapons

Ijsbear
Re: your post earlier today speaking up against dehumanising all Russians.

You are right to do this, of course, and it is always individuals who count, but
reading this understanding of Russia from their neighbours (which someone posted on this thread a few weeks back) it does seem as though there is a destructive and cruel element, sown in medieval times, which is still part of the collective Russian psyche.

Human Life Has No Value There“: Baltic Counterintelligence Officers Speak Candidly About Russian Cruelty - Eesti Ekspress

ekspress.delfi.ee/a/120083694
ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/120083694/human-life-has-no-value-there-baltic-counterintelligence-officers-speak-candidly-about-russian-cruelty

Think this might actually have been in response to me. Thanks for that i'll take a look.

I don't doubt though that there is probably an underlying dark part of the psyche of a great many nations, us Brits included. We just see in Russia a regime that allows that part of the population's nature to flourish. The Russians also have an incredibly rich scientific and artistic histroy.

it does seem as though there is a destructive and cruel element, sown in medieval times, which is still part of the collective Russian psyche.

Sadly there has been at least one account of an atrocity on line, source being somebody fairly credible within one of the "Foreign Legions" that would back that comment up.....

I'm not going to provide a link or C&P because what was described was utterly grim, horrific and barbaric..

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"

I think its worth revisiting the wisdom of Hannah Arendt again at this point seeing as this is the direction that the conversation has gone.

She described the phenomenon using the example of the trial of Eichmann, but it certainly wasn't restricted to Eichmann.

She called it the Banality of Evil.
This is a really good explainer:
aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil

Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). Instead, he performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, he ‘commit[ted] crimes under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong’.

Arendt dubbed these collective characteristics of Eichmann ‘the banality of evil’: he was not inherently evil, but merely shallow and clueless, a ‘joiner’, in the words of one contemporary interpreter of Arendt’s thesis: he was a man who drifted into the Nazi Party, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief. In Arendt’s telling, Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened’.

The observation holds true of Nazi concerntration camp guards. They were remarkable not for their ideological extremism. The were remarkable in their consistent ordinariness as a group. It wasn't a bunch of people who stood out in their beliefs or support for the regime.

In other words it goes back to the totalitarian drive to remove the ability to question and to think for yourself or to challenge what happened with the regime I was talking about before with the destruction of the ability to seek the truth. Again its about this deliberate fostering of powerlessness and this sense of almost being a passenger to events around you and not being able to change events around you in any way. They just 'happen' and you are not responsible in anyway, because thats the business of the ruling elite to take all responsibility, not the individual.

We are observing the same in real time with Russia. This is also why Russian who are not subject to the same brainwashing are not hostage to it or controlled by it in the same way, though may have a long hangover from it when they first leave the country until they realise they CAN think for themselves and are responsible for themselves.

Hehehe funny :P not really.

er sorry that was to @JimDixon

I think there is a lot of denial.
Wartranslated on Twitter posted an intercepted call the other day in which a mobilised soldier is trying to tell his mum how awful it is and she’s just like ‘nonsense, the Ukrainians will have lost by the end of October.’
It makes me despair.

Thank you for noting I must have been referring to your post Igotjelly · Today 14:00, not as I wrongly said one from Ijsbear, and you were right.

More reports about Putin's ill health:

Putin battling cancer and Parkinsons disease, leaked emails claim: report

The puffiness in his face is pretty obviously due to a long course of corticosteroids (prednisone being the most common). These are awful drugs with terrible side effects, so they are only given when there is no alternative, and they're stopped as soon as possible. He's quite ill with something if he's doing a long course of prednisone.

Re the battlefield atrocities, it's largely a matter of military training, culture and discipline. The psychological pressure is enormous when you've been in combat for ages, had numerous mates killed and wounded, and are in fear of death almost constantly. If you finally get the upper hand over your enemies (or perceived enemies in the case of civilians) the temptation to do terrible things in retaliation is quite real.

This is why every army has what are called Field Service Regulations. They dictate military law on the treatment of opposing forces, POWs and civilians. Military training and culture must reinforce the utmost respect for the FSRs and their possible violations have to be vigorously investigated and punished when needed. The Russians clearly do not do this.

mm. yes, wasn't me.

I am quite sure that there are a lot of decent Russians. But I have come to believe there is something profoundly wrong in the culture that allows evil to blossom regularly - a combination of the valuelessness of human life, plus the extraordinary way the Kremlin lies, plus the apparent encouragement of brutality in enough people that the soldiers historically and now commit appalling atrocities.

ccl.org.ua/en/news/ria-novosti-has-clarified-russias-plans-vis-a-vis-ukraine-and-the-rest-of-the-free-world-in-a-program-like-article-what-russia-should-do-with-ukraine-2/

I think there is a element there that believes horror acts beneficially as a good purge, I have never forgotten this chilling sentence from a propaganda article in Ria Novosti at the start of the war;

Historical experience shows that the tragedies and dramas of wartime benefit peoples who have been tempted and carried away by the role of an enemy of Russia.

I've been reading this and other themes here for a while (many friends in the UK), but decided to post about Russian perspective for the first time, if you're interested. I sincerely promise not to spread any propaganda (at least, to my knowledge). Generally, Russians do know about the losses, though estimates may be very different from the Ukrainian/Western. People have friends, family members, about half of Russians also have friends or relatives in Ukraine. More socially active are involved in different volunteering projects. The rest just reads news channels - and even the most 'patriotic' channels do post news about the military funerals or stories of heroes who were killed in action. There are also billboards with 'heroes of the special operation' in different cities, some of them clearly mention that those people have been killed in action. From a personal point of view - just a couple of days ago I met my neighbour, an old lady. She was devastated because her best friend's grandson was killed. And my friend lost a classmate recently - but he was from Lugansk militia. Hopes it helps to get a perspective.

Thanks Ranevskaya, do you think that people are generally upset but accepting of the deaths as being "necessary" or suchlike or upset and angry about the deaths?

Is is soooo very different, depending on the kind of people. I don't have any poll data, of course, but I do have many acquaintances in different 'circles', their opinions would be opposite. I know ppl who have left the country or are generally very anti-government. and I also know ppl who would like to go and fight as volunteers, but have been rejected because they don't fit the criteria. No statistics though, juts personal observations. For the most part, life goes on as usual, but the knowledge is there.

Just realised that I didn't answer the question. Neither, I think. It is hard to explain

I've been reading this and other themes here for a while (many friends in the UK), but decided to post about Russian perspective for the first time, if you're interested. I sincerely promise not to spread any propaganda (at least, to my knowledge).

@Ranevskaya Thank you for coming here and posting (especially as it really can't be easy reading the anti-russian sentiment thinking what I just posted myself).

From the pov of this thread your input is very very welcome by me and I suspect by many.

For the most part, life goes on as usual, but the knowledge is there.

Thats exactly it. A sense that it's happening but life goes on and it 'just happens' and you can't do anything about it.

This in spades!

MissConductUS:

Re the battlefield atrocities, it's largely a matter of military training, culture and discipline. The psychological pressure is enormous when you've been in combat for ages, had numerous mates killed and wounded, and are in fear of death almost constantly. If you finally get the upper hand over your enemies (or perceived enemies in the case of civilians) the temptation to do terrible things in retaliation is quite real.

This is why every army has what are called Field Service Regulations. They dictate military law on the treatment of opposing forces, POWs and civilians. Military training and culture must reinforce the utmost respect for the FSRs and their possible violations have to be vigorously investigated and punished when needed. The Russians clearly do not do this

Never been in the army, but when I was in Israel, they had something called Torat haNeshek - sometimes translated at "purity of arms", although that doesnt' really give the flavour of it at all - which is about trying to educate against these pressures. The reason I know about it was because as part of basic training, they brought in civilians of a similar age (I was 18 at the time like them) which by definition meant people who had not grown up in Israel but were on programmes in Israel (what are known as chutznikim - literally "outsiders", anybody 18 from Israel would either be in the army, in national service - which you can elect to do, particularly if you are a religious woman, or learning in yeshiva) - for seminars on these topics - ie to take part in a (small) part of the Torat HaNeshek programme along with the soldiers going through basic training. I think the idea was that chutnikim of a similar age would help avoid "group think" on these topics and give different perspectives (let's face it, most of us chutznikim were left wing idealists - and although they were somewhat trying to educate us too, the focus was very much on educating the soldiers about handling weapons responsibly in difficult situations). They certainly tried to talk through and debate a whole host of moral dilemmas and tried to give an understanding of the pressures up front as well as hammering home the equivalent of MissConductUS 's Field Service Regulations. The impression I got from this was that they try and run these programmes alongside military training at all levels (although I suspect the chutznik bit of it was only part of basic training). But it is obviously expensive to run "moral" training as well as practical training - and as MissConductUS says, the psychological pressure in combat is enormous - and despite this some people will crack. But an army that can't even train its soldiers properly in weaponry (and apparently uses hazing as a bit part of their induction - as the Russians apparently do) is not going to even try (and if anything the hazing suggests that cruelty is what they are trying to incalculate - it seems calculated to make people angry enough to be cruel).

Ranevskaya -· Today 16:23
Thank you for your post answering the question about whether Russians are aware of all the Russian losses. Your perspective is appreciated.
From a personal point of view - just a couple of days ago I met my neighbour, an old lady. She was devastated because her best friend's grandson was killed. And my friend lost a classmate recently - but he was from Lugansk militia. Hopes it helps to get a perspective.

I am truly sorry these and all the other Russian deaths.

RedToothBrush · Today 16:52
For the most part, life goes on as usual, but the knowledge is there.

Thats exactly it. A sense that it's happening but life goes on and it 'just happens' and you can't do anything about it.

I know that feeling ( about all sorts of things) as an English person too, all too well.

Naem · Today 17:08
MissConductUS

Thank you both very much for your posts about moral training/preparedness for ‘cracking’ in the army. I have often wondered about this and whether soldiers are helped to prepare.

We all have the propensity for extreme violence within us ( for survival) but don’t really know it is there lurking. It could come as a shock to be overcome by rage and massacre someone or rape them, IMO a lot of army training should go into helping people avoid it, and not just for the enemy’s sake.

Just think if one had a innocent 18 year old son, a perfectly ordinary person who generally tried to do good, but who, after days of no sleep and no food, possibly drugged too, and maybe under pressure from older peers, committed an atrocity? They would never be the same again. They would never get over it really. They would be killed in some senses even if they survived.