this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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the_dunk_tank
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yes he did but there are degrees of innocence. A rabid dog is innocent but it's still dangerous
this is all true and materialist but also he did have some agency in this matter there are many people who were indoctrinated in hardcore racist backgrounds who broke away. He choose admitedly within a worse set of options than many people have ever been expected to face and maybe but for the grace of God there go I but he did choose this and I'm not that sorry that someone he was actively trying to kill killed him
I'll still mourn for Old Yeller.
The idea that Ukraine wouldn't have this war if everyone in the country just said "No more war!" is naive. That we're talking about this guy and not some kid who fled the warzone and survives in a refugee camp in East Russia or Poland or Moldova is a consequence of selection bias. If it wasn't him, it would have been some other kid who got suckered in by war propaganda, gang recruitment, and the illusion of security that a military provides. This kid (or someone like him) had his ticket punched as soon as the Bush State Department / CIA decided to flood Ukrainian Orange Revolutionaries with guns and funds, way back in 2004, when he was still in diapers.
To say he had agency? When? At 12, when the Ukrainian civil war turned hot? At 19, when Russian troops marched across the border and forced his family to flee? Did he have family to turn to? Was he educated or indoctrinated? Did he have friends who weren't all black-pilled on this shit already? Was he a volunteer or was he simply conscripted by Zelensky's goon squads? Was he choosing to join an ideological project or was he just eager to get his hands on three hots and a cot, in a country wracked by war-induced famine and homelessness?
What was he choosing between? What information did he actually have at any given moment?
If this was a story about a 22-year old Russian kid with a giant Wagner death's head tattooed on his skull who caught a bullet defending the Donetsk front from some Ukrainian guerrillas, I'd cry for him too.
Half the reason Ukraine and Russia are in this mess is their inability to see each other as people suffering the same material deprivations. Guys like this buy into the notion that they can kill their way to prosperity, just like you're sitting here with the belief that if enough of these kids die on the front lines, the ideology of these countries will somehow improve.
But blood can't wash anything clean. This guy will stain the black earth along with tens of thousands of others. And every death will make reconciliation between Russians and Ukrainians that much harder when the war is over.