There’s a difference between drafting citizen soldiers for an existential war for survival vs drafting them for imperial wars of conquest and genocide.
That doesn’t mean you have to agree with, or can’t criticize, the former, just that you should understand the stark moral contrast between them.
I disagree though about the contrast though. I believe in individual freedom and equality between men and women. Whether it’s the one of the latter purpose or specifically Russia or Ukraine doing it, both of them have shown very little appreciation towards male lives. With both parties, men immediately became an object of war and victims of orders from those in power. The sensitive issue with Ukraine is that they’re the defending party, so it makes it very hard to run away (if affected) or criticize (as an external) this approach. I think both parties equally violated human rights; Russia for conducting a racist war (where also mostly minorities are pushed to join the war) and Ukraine for its sexism and taking away freedom of men to choose whatever the fuck they want to do.
I don’t think the moral contrast is that stark. If you, even as a defender, have reached a point where your “volunteering” army is exhausted and you have to resort to drafting under the threat of punishment, you should instead accept defeat. Otherwise you are essentially forcing people to sacrifice their lives for a cause they apparently do not sufficiently believe in to do so under their own volition.
great idea, so any independent state should roll over and accept defeat from agressive imperialist countries that do conscript citizens
If the only way you can get people to fight for you is under the threat of punishment, yes, absolutely. The population does not value independence enough to enlist voluntarily, therefore you have failed your population and you should accept defeat.
War is often a political issue, not an existential one. Ukrainians will not suddenly drop dead because the Ukrainian state dissolves.
No.
Russia has killed less civilians in two years than Israel did in a single month. I don’t think it’s correct to characterize the Russian invasion as genocidal. Putin is a fuck, but he’s no Netanyahu.
Corpse in bucha disagree with you.
I doubt this will make anyone who didn’t get back to fight (millions of them) to get back to fight. The only thing it will manage to do is to make the emmigration permanent since even after the war end those people won’t ever get back since they will be arrested for dodging draft in the wartime, for which in most countries punishments are pretty serious.
The survival of the Ukrainian state shouldn’t really matter to the people living in other countries, right? So long as civilians are harmed as little as is reasonable in war, it’s just going back to the old ages where monarchs would fight while peasants would do work. We literally already know how Ukraine would be treated under Russia: we can look to Crimea as an example. Crimea is operating basically as you would expect a normal state to operate. The collapse and surrender of the Ukrainian state wouldn’t really impact people’s lives.
In contrast, the collapse of the Gaza Strip would displace millions and lead to mass starvation and disease.
Puts things into perspective.
Mass torture of civilians in Bucha, Kherson and Mariupol
Not impacting people’s lives.
Russian leadership, politicians and media openly calling for the extermination of Ukrainian identity.
Perspective.
Might want to look a little closer into Bucha… Look at the actual evidence that came out of Bucha, not Western commentary on it (which, as we know from Gaza, tends to be unreliable).
Ukraine had identity even as a member of the USSR. That’s why they were the Ukrainkan Soviet Socialist Republic and not the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Russian leadership is calling for the end of Ukrainian nationalism as an element of Ukrainian identity. Pick up a Russian language dictionary, maybe?
Ukraine was literally created out of whole cloth by USSR. Learn some history so you don’t make a clown of yourself in public.
And it was created because Ukrainian nationalists were acting up.
Ukraine was created because nationalists of a state that didn’t exist were acting up. Yup, that totally makes sense.
this seems familiar. where have i heard this before?
