this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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I don't know a single other modern "country" (that is considered "good" and "democratic" by westerners) that people don't want to defend so much that the regime needs to resort to forbidding people from leaving (and then put a huge effort into patrolling the borders because people want to escape this hell anyway) and literally kidnapping people off the streets and putting them into vans by masked ""people"" on daily basis just to sustain the meatgrinder.
The only thing that comes close are British press gangs - but that was 2 centuries ago.
And if there are some recent examples like this - I would absolutely support hanging the tyrants who do this, just like I hope Zelensky would be hanged one day.
A brief scroll of Wikipedia (the sources seemed legit) shows that, for example, Cuba (which I'm assuming you admire?) has mandatory military service, no known policy of alternatives for conscientious objectors, and harsh punishments for evading it even in peacetime, to the point that people have attempted to injure themselves to get out of it. They haven't been tried in modern war, but can't see them suddenly relaxing the rules when actually tested. Border countries tend to take defence very seriously.
For countries and cultures bordering Russia, this really is an existential question. The forced population transfer/ethnic cleansing of Tatars, Ingrians, Chechens and Ingush, Balkars, etc. show what tends to happen. And before you say "well that was Stalin", I'll point to the Russification efforts of Alexander III and Nicholas II, and to... well, just about all speakers of Uralic languages still existing in Russia, facing steadily or rapidly declining numbers. Also the number of people identifying as ethnic Russians in the Baltics and Crimea, directly attributable to said forced population transfers; Transnistria, where the change happened more organically but was nonetheless used as an excuse for invasion; and to some degree in eastern Ukraine, that saw significant russification attempts and Russians moving in to man the industrial centers during SU, inflating the numbers of ethnic Russians and prevalence of the Russian language at cost of the native population.
I honestly don't know that much about Cuba, seems like country much like any other that has trouble because of a difficult neighbor and making the best of it? But if we're talking about whether mandatory military service is sometimes justified, not whether mass media is biased (duhhhhh), perceptions held by the majority are inconsequential.
Conscription is done in preparation for "mass kidnappings of cannon fodder", as you put it.
Edit: Also kudos for not trying to defend ethnic Russians' history of ethnic cleansing.
No?..
Russia has conscription but not kidnapping part and forbidding to leave the country part. So do many other countries.
...yes? Or do you think the countries with peacetime conscription do it for shits and giggles, and the massive economic benefit of half the population losing about a year of working life?
Okay, then surely you can show me a shittone of examples of such a massive campaign of kidnappings happening to people forbidden from leaving the country because they are needed as cannon fodder that happened in modern history (let's say last two centuries)?
I'll just give you a partial list of European countries that 1) had wartime conscription, and 2) executed deserters, in WW1 or 2, which would indicate an equally/more drastic "kill or be killed" choice, and is way easier to find. Or do you know better how conscription worked in the WWs off the top of your head?
Neither of that is what I asked you for (come on, you even quoted my reply in you reply - "massive campaign of kidnappings happening to people forbidden from leaving the country", and then you proceeded to give an example of a completely different thing (also awful, but completely different)).
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I don't. But surely you do, as you're trying to portray what happens in Ukraine as normal, so I am asking you to tell me about it.
Russia has a larger population than Ukraine, and thus the luxury to not need everyone, and still they have called in reservists in "partial mobilization", exact number unknown. As Russia has conscription, every adult man who has performed their service is in reserve. As of 2023, reservists called into service are not allowed to leave and are subject to restrictions until they report to duty, which seems like high-tech enforcement/"kidnapping" to me. The conscriptions have also hit poorer regions, often with large ethnic minorities, more harshly, but I'm sure that's just coincidence.
There are reports of some military districts closing borders, of mobilized men being ill-equipped and used as cannon fodder, being killed in large numbers, you name it. As with all war reporting, hard to get well-verified factsfacts, especially from a country hostile to neutral reporters. We do know that protests are broken (and male protestors sometimes drafted).
But yeah, probably not needing troop replacements to the same extent as Ukraine. Who, I'm saying again, are fighting for the survival of their country and culture.
Maybe because "the Russian brainpan is predisposed to genocide" is self-evidently racist and nonsensical.
That's literally what conscription means in legal terms, though I imagine most military organisations would object to the term "cannon fodder" as they do try to use personnel to get something done, not just send them running into enemy lines of fire for no reason.
No. Conscription is you get summons and have to do military service (which is also totally wrong but a different thing). If you refuse you get sent to jail. You can simply leave the country if you don't like that.
What happens in Ukraine is kidnapping random people off the streets (who are forbidden from leaving the country), putting them into vans and sensing them to die.
You're presenting a distinction without a difference.
Both are effectively the same thing, a citizen pressed into service, against their will.
Jail-time is the best case scenario, and in no way intrinsic to the concept.
So "you cannot leave the country and will be kidnapped and forced to die a horrible death on the front lines" is the same as "you can freely leave the country but if you don't you will have to do forced labour in military uniform for a year".
Got it.
Now you're just being deliberately obtuse. That's not what the word "conscription" means, and I'm pretty sure you know that.
You're just being an ass because a year of mandatory service is what the law uses conscription for in Finland, DURING PEACETIME.
In wartime, being unable to leave the country, forced to fight on the front lines, is also conscription.
"you cannot leave the country and will be kidnapped and forced to die a horrible death on the front lines"
When done by a state, that is literally still within the definition.
Conscription for popular wars doesn't get to the point Ukraine is at. The U.S. drafted soldiers in WWII without the situation deteriorating to this point, for example. Then when they tried that for an unpopular war (Vietnam) it created all sorts of problems and the draft was scrapped.
Considering Ukraine is the only modern/western democracy to have been invaded for territorial conquest in about 80 years demonstrates the level of bullshit that you're spouting.
It's being liberated, not invaded.
Dismissing a state's right to sovereignty is the most anti-democratic thing I can think of.
Well, I personally stopped caring about a [western definition of] democracy when I learned that closing borders and not letting people out, kidnapping people off the streets, beating them, holding in basements for days and then sending them to the meatgrinder is actually entirely democratic while elections, forming political parties, etc. apparently is not.
Dictatorships are not as scary as western "democracy".
Literally no-one is claiming any of that shit is democratic.
Stop confusing wartime martial law with democracy. It makes you look like an idiot, when clearly you have far more developed ideas to discuss. It completely ruins any actual argument you might make for what is right and wrong.
Such as this article you commented on, demobilising someone who should never have been mobilised is a no-brainer, and it is fucked as hell that it isn't happening.