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[Article] ‘Evil must not win’ — how Ukraine’s female partisans resist Russian occupation
(kyivindependent.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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This one broke my heart a little bit. I've seen some of these guys dying on video, in a cold puddle, bleeding out and gasping.
Yeah, I'm sure you're posting from Kyiv. You sound exactly like Ukrainians I know in person and on social media. They all talk exactly like you, and every so often they bring up what the bonus amount is for people signing up for armed forces in Moscow. It's uncanny.
Edit: Typo
Maybe those people are there to create a picture for you. Now that USAID and similar projects are stopping, we might see less of those.
You all look at this literally as battle of good vs evil, the reality: ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder, while russia stopped forced conscription and pays 22k$ to motivate their conscripts. The propaganda image of ukraine as good or democratic is absurd. It's just a meat shield of west at best, and it rapidly becomes more and more inefficient.
If you want to check current ukrainian inside discourse, watch independent ukrainian bloggers, a few for a start:
Or, maybe you're there to create a picture for me. I didn't say it, you did.
I know the Ukrainian woman whose son was a client of mine for a while would have some pretty harsh words for you. I knew her for a while, and one day said one thing in support for the war, and it was like this outpouring came out of her of appreciation for it and support for Ukraine.
I don't really know the Ukrainian guy in my gaming group well enough to know where he stands on the war. We've talked about it, just a small amount. He definitely didn't say he was afraid of being tortured by the Ukrainian government, I'll say that.
Before the war, I actually kind of liked the Russian people I knew, on a personal level. I still do, I guess, although unrelated events have meant we don't really see each other now. Their mentality is pretty similar to mine, weirdly enough.
You're saying all this shit to me about USAID creating a picture for me, when you have no idea how I form my pictures. You conveniently excised the other part that came before "and on social media," which I had put there for a very specific reason.
Man, get the fuck out. I didn't say "evil," the people whose country is being invaded said that. Sounds pretty right to me.
You sure are trying hard to talk up Russia, for someone who lives in Kyiv. Keep saying bullshit. I welcome it, let's talk.
Women and ukrainians who live outside of Ukraine, especially those who left before May 2024, have a very different mental image of Ukraine. For me the main turning point is the scale of unlawful forced conscription really. Simple as that. I stopped paying taxes, stopped donating, and stopped mentally supporting Ukraine. I just care for borders to open at this point. Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships to me.
Sounds like you should get the fuck out. People are dying to keep your apartment building safe, and you're there trashing them because they're short of people, while you're not helping them.
Maybe when your savings run out you could go for that $22k. It sounds like that's really important to you. You keep bringing it up.
I do like that you've abandoned the effort to paint Russia as some improvement in individual human rights, and just gone with the "they're both hopeless corrupt evil" brand of cynicism. That's definitely going to be more believable than "Russia is better, I'm only here because I can't leave."
Just open the borders and there's no need to protect me personally.
I'm not trashing ukrainian soldiers. Conscription officers are not soldiers and never were. Neither are politicians.
It's just that russians lives now supposedly valued way more than ukrainians while it was part of propaganda that russian lives worth nothing and ukrainians are part of civilized world and share its values.
The truth about situation in Ukraine is, as usual, somewhere between the two extremes. It's definitely not as bad as russia - there are rumors of men getting forcefully drafted in some places - but I don't know anyone personally who had gone through that. We're all scared and tired, and the shitshow that's going on in the West is not helping keep our hopes up.
And yet we persist, because the only other choice is to lie down and stop breathing.
Yeah, I get that. You'll notice I didn't tell that other guy that reports of harsh forced conscription are definitely not true. Some of what he's saying is clearly total bullshit ("Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships" "ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder" "a worse dictatorship than russia is"). Some is clearly based on truth or has some accuracy to it (harsh conscription "a meat shield of west" "nobody wants to fight anymore").
I cannot even imagine trying to fight for my life with the level of apathy, inconsistency, incompetence, and bumbling that's gone on from the West in general in its support for Ukraine. It's a fucking crime. I like that Zelensky doesn't sugarcoat it all that much. He gave an interview with the AP a few days ago where he said as much. More or less, "Yes, we got about $77 billion, of course I'm grateful, it's wonderful, but it was all too late, all with 'red line' conditions that mean we can't really fight, all with all this money and materiel going missing sometimes or we don't know where it went, all overblown in its impact CAN YOU GUYS JUST FUCKING HELP US... we are fighting the enemy you would be fighting, if not for us being in the way." That's not the words but that was the overall vibe.
Like I say, I can't even imagine. And three years of nonstop war will break anyone down. And now it's going to get worse. Trump hasn't even really had time to get started on fucking things up. I hope you can keep safe.
Pretty much, yeah. I wish for you safety and better things.