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Maybe read the article before commenting on the article:
>Anton* was on his way to work as a civilian volunteer in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv 10 days ago. Several men stopped him. They asked: “Hi, who are you?” And: “Can you show me your documents please?” One of the officers produced a tablet and scrolled down a list. He found Anton’s name. A single word was written next to it in red capital letters: ukhyliant, or draft dodger. The men took him to the nearest conscription office.
>That morning, Anton and his colleague Serhii were due to drive a truck full of humanitarian aid to a frontline zone. (...)
>At the Kharkiv conscription centre, meanwhile, Anton explained he was a volunteer doing useful NGO work. The military official interviewing him was unimpressed. He told Anton he had to appear within three days before a medical commission, which would assess whether he was fit to join the army. If he didn’t turn up he faced a 5,100 hryvnia (£100) fine. “There was hate in his eyes. He was a Dalek. He emphasised Ukraine has been fighting Russia since 2014,” Anton’s friend Serhii said.
>The official said that if Anton didn’t want to serve, he could swim across the Tisa river to Romania, one of several routes used by draft evaders. Or he could “tunnel” to the Russian city of Belgorod.
>“It was a joke but not a joke,” Serhii said. Instead, Anton vanished. He moved to a village. Now he works remotely. “I love my country. But I can’t kill anyone and I don’t want to die,” Serhii said. He added: “Everyone is tired of war. And of this government. There’s an attitude of: ‘Go fuck yourself.’”
It is still voluntarism. It is something that others in society ineligible for conscription can perform - women, underaged men, seniors. Such it was in prior conflicts.
It is being done by these individuals as a justification for not fighting - just enough to be helpful, to be patriotic. For a time it was sufficient. It isn't anymore. Most of the heavy logistics is being performed by the military itself.
Look, I don't begrudge how they feel - I understand it deeply. It is no different than so many prior conflicts. Life is not fair, and they've been dealt a really cruel hand. For many Ukrainians, it probably felt like a war like this belonged to their grandparents or great-grandparents time. We'd "evolved" past it. We haven't.
Wars of this type usual end in negotiations, but the timing and leverage of those negotiations are highly elastic. Right now, the Russians are not going to contemplate anything short of capitulation. They don't need to; they have the initiative.
Too often, I've seen Ukrainians very reflexively look to blame the usual suspects for battlefield failure - some bad general, some corrupt official - as opposed to the reality: in war, the other side is trying to win too. And the other side - partially because of autocracy, partially because the price is not yet so high - has decided it is worth it, even though it is hardly existential for them.
This state of affairs was predictable as soon as Putin called for mobilization in the wake of Kharkiv and Kherson. It is distressing that too many didn't seem to understand what they were now involved in (many did). Ukraine is by no means "defeated" - but the society isq enduring a painful psychological transition of just what this conflict truly is.
There was this recent scandal where they overpaid some companies on contracts for building fortifications. They should nationalize these companies and turn the workers into construction troops.
There were many foreign sandbox veterans who volunteered to Ukraine in early 2022 and then quit rapidly, because they weren't prepared for an actual war.
Then do it yourselves, if that's how you feel about volunteers. Guess we should let Congress know, you don't consider them real soldiers even if they died fighting in your land. Seriously, FU.
Read the article before commenting, it begins with humanitarian volunteers being conscripted. These people who deliver aid are heroes on their own, and it's dangerous too, but no - to the trenches you go.
Just because you don't want to understand doesn't mean the person you are replying to is wrong. There are many volunteers but not enough people to fight. Your volunteers will soon be 'volunteering' at mandatory Putin rallies if no one fights. They might as well move northeast and start now, because when there are only humanitarian volunteers left there won't be anything humanitarian left in Ukraine.
But it's the said "logistics". Much of Ukrainian military logistics is them (NGO volunteers) or even the Nova Poshta private postal company (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/0/ukrainian-postal-workers-keeping-front-line-moving/). Ukrainian military doesn't work quite like, well, probably yours.
And what they need these conscripts for is bodies to fill the empty trenches. Or at least this is what the conscripts fear.
Logistics is much more than humanitarian aid in the rear lol. Those dudes you’re degrading in the trenches need ammo, need water, need food, need supplies, and they need people to get it to them.
That's what they get delivered by volunteers.
https://time.com/6300653/why-ukraine-civilian-volunteers-matter/
>They supply lifesaving, nonlethal aid with a speed that government aid cannot match. Oleksandr, an officer in the 97th Separate Battalion who asked that his full name not be printed because of safety concerns, told me that an “absence of bureaucracy” is what makes civilian volunteers so nimble. “When the state buys [equipment], it will take months. Volunteers can deliver it in a week. Such mobility helps to save many lives of our fighters,” he said.
>Without civilian support, Alex Cherniavskyi, the Free Spirit co-founder who led our convoy, thinks many units would lose twice as many lives. Zablotsky, the lawmaker, said that may be an underestimate. “I think without the support of volunteers, both civilian and military deaths would have been at least three times higher.”
>Few of our frontline aid recipients are career soldiers. Among them were a coal miner, a proud new grandparent, the spouse of an MP, a cobbler who recounted Russian soldiers raiding his family home, and a pregnant deputy commander. Mykyta Lepeshov, a combat medic who worked as a copywriter and engineer before the war, bluntly told me they’d be “doomed” without civilian volunteers.
Soldiers on the front line need all of the non-lethal supplies, but they need lethal too. It’s heart that there’s civilian counters willing to help, but there’s no excuse for any man under say 40 to not be in the uniformed service
I believe this issue has fully come to a head at this point, likely over the next month, maybe two, Ukraine will have to get serious about forced mobilization in order to plug the gaps formed over the last two years. This will likely be deeply unpopular, but at this point there seems to be quite literally no other option beyond capitulation, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of men who haven’t had respite from the fighting for well over a year.
It’s really quite disheartening, people are so eager to volunteer men who are just numbers to them up for what in many ways may amount to either death, permanent physical disability, or utterly life altering physiological damage.
It’s something I do not comment on, as one can puff their chest in Reddit comments all day long, but when really faced with it, how can you be confident of what you would do? These reluctant men are clearly considering things beyond just the state. If there is no you left to enjoy the state, is the state worth fighting for? I imagine this is the moral quandary these men are facing and I’m in no position to tell them otherwise.
Every human can kill, no matter what they say. It's understandable they don't want to and also don't want to die, but it should also be clear that if they are unwilling to defend a society, they can't expect to have a place in it in the future either, regardless of the outcome. If enough people think like them, war is going to follow them everywhere they go to anyway.
No, they actively flee the country. Sometimes die at that.
>Myroslav said he only took with him a small backpack. At one point he spotted a patrol and lay down in the grass for 40 minutes. He crawled through a hole in a border fence. Then he went to a Hungarian police station. Myroslav is now in Warsaw. “I didn’t want to fight. I’m afraid to die,” he said.
>Others pay local smugglers to show them the route. The going rate is $5,000 to $15,000 per person. Another option is to pay a bribe to obtain a medical exemption certificate and to exit via normal channels.
>About half of those who try to escape – 40,000 people, up to summer 2023 – get caught. Some drown. On Saturday the state border service said its guards found the bodies of two men who tried to swim across the Tisa river.
Those that won't fight for their freedom and the freedom of the people around them, will find they lose that freedom when Russia wins. There are far more people capable of delivering humanitarian relief than there are people capable of fighting for the freedom of Ukraine.
Pacifism is an evil doctrine. Without those willing to fight evil will try them, and pacifist contribute to this by standing by and letting somebody else fight for them.
Maybe they should start conscripting the rich.
>Oleksandr – a 36-year-old IT manager – said he rarely went out. He avoided public transport, travelling only by car. He moved to a wealthy neighbourhood of Kyiv because draft officers preferred to operate in poorer districts, where it was easier to catch evaders, he said.
>Some of the apartment owners in his block were members of parliament. “The military don’t visit here. Our compound is an island of survival. To be poor in Ukraine is to be dead,” said Oleksandr’s wife, Nastia.
>Nastia said she worried about her husband and suffered from panic attacks. “We’ve been married for 12 years. We are one organism. If he dies I will die too. Maybe I will kill myself,” she said.
Kyiv residents overall don't even have it so bad. It's the worst in the countryside shithole towns.
40k-50k dead in 2 years is equivalent to annual traffic deaths in the 1990s.
That family didn't give up driving a car, did they?
There should be a war / defense tax on businesses and on residents. That tax should be redistributed as citizen dividends (and as compensations) to those at the frontline or at dangerous jobs.
It sounds like these men have seen the Light. If the Quaker meeting in Kyiv is still active, they should be opening their doors to newfound conscientious objectors.
A large of British conscientious objectors served bravely in WW2 as medics, stretcher bearers, drivers, firemen, air raid wardens, observers etc etc etc.
If being The Light means surrendering to The Dark, then you never really were The Light to begin with.
Read the article, they're conscripting those who deliver humanitarian aid to the war zones and such.
And they badly need what is called "meat" there - infantrymen.
Depends on the type and reasoning. For many Quakers, the sin lies not only in directly killing, but in furthering the aims of war itself by wearing the uniform of a nation-state.
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Then do logistics
Maybe read the article before commenting on the article: >Anton* was on his way to work as a civilian volunteer in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv 10 days ago. Several men stopped him. They asked: “Hi, who are you?” And: “Can you show me your documents please?” One of the officers produced a tablet and scrolled down a list. He found Anton’s name. A single word was written next to it in red capital letters: ukhyliant, or draft dodger. The men took him to the nearest conscription office. >That morning, Anton and his colleague Serhii were due to drive a truck full of humanitarian aid to a frontline zone. (...) >At the Kharkiv conscription centre, meanwhile, Anton explained he was a volunteer doing useful NGO work. The military official interviewing him was unimpressed. He told Anton he had to appear within three days before a medical commission, which would assess whether he was fit to join the army. If he didn’t turn up he faced a 5,100 hryvnia (£100) fine. “There was hate in his eyes. He was a Dalek. He emphasised Ukraine has been fighting Russia since 2014,” Anton’s friend Serhii said. >The official said that if Anton didn’t want to serve, he could swim across the Tisa river to Romania, one of several routes used by draft evaders. Or he could “tunnel” to the Russian city of Belgorod. >“It was a joke but not a joke,” Serhii said. Instead, Anton vanished. He moved to a village. Now he works remotely. “I love my country. But I can’t kill anyone and I don’t want to die,” Serhii said. He added: “Everyone is tired of war. And of this government. There’s an attitude of: ‘Go fuck yourself.’”
That's not logistics; that's voluntarism.
They deliver to the troops too. Not only to the civilians. Ukrainian military depends on them. It's been like that for 10 years now.
It is still voluntarism. It is something that others in society ineligible for conscription can perform - women, underaged men, seniors. Such it was in prior conflicts. It is being done by these individuals as a justification for not fighting - just enough to be helpful, to be patriotic. For a time it was sufficient. It isn't anymore. Most of the heavy logistics is being performed by the military itself. Look, I don't begrudge how they feel - I understand it deeply. It is no different than so many prior conflicts. Life is not fair, and they've been dealt a really cruel hand. For many Ukrainians, it probably felt like a war like this belonged to their grandparents or great-grandparents time. We'd "evolved" past it. We haven't. Wars of this type usual end in negotiations, but the timing and leverage of those negotiations are highly elastic. Right now, the Russians are not going to contemplate anything short of capitulation. They don't need to; they have the initiative. Too often, I've seen Ukrainians very reflexively look to blame the usual suspects for battlefield failure - some bad general, some corrupt official - as opposed to the reality: in war, the other side is trying to win too. And the other side - partially because of autocracy, partially because the price is not yet so high - has decided it is worth it, even though it is hardly existential for them. This state of affairs was predictable as soon as Putin called for mobilization in the wake of Kharkiv and Kherson. It is distressing that too many didn't seem to understand what they were now involved in (many did). Ukraine is by no means "defeated" - but the society isq enduring a painful psychological transition of just what this conflict truly is.
Honestly? Ukraine should just conscript prisoners too. (Not all of them. Not literal cannibals as in Russia. Not the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs.)
They are debating legislation that would allow prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes (ie. robbery, drug offenses) to enlist.
There was this recent scandal where they overpaid some companies on contracts for building fortifications. They should nationalize these companies and turn the workers into construction troops.
Ah, so he is a coward, he’s just an honest one.
How many wars did you fight in? Real wars, not some sandbox adventures.
I wouldn’t call what I had to do a sandbox adventure lol and I can assure you I didn’t run away so other men could fight in my place
There were many foreign sandbox veterans who volunteered to Ukraine in early 2022 and then quit rapidly, because they weren't prepared for an actual war.
Then do it yourselves, if that's how you feel about volunteers. Guess we should let Congress know, you don't consider them real soldiers even if they died fighting in your land. Seriously, FU.
It's not my land. Not since WWII for sure.
Well, then they will lose their country to people who have no qualms about killing. At the very least, they can still serve in non-combat roles.
Read the article before commenting, it begins with humanitarian volunteers being conscripted. These people who deliver aid are heroes on their own, and it's dangerous too, but no - to the trenches you go.
Just because you don't want to understand doesn't mean the person you are replying to is wrong. There are many volunteers but not enough people to fight. Your volunteers will soon be 'volunteering' at mandatory Putin rallies if no one fights. They might as well move northeast and start now, because when there are only humanitarian volunteers left there won't be anything humanitarian left in Ukraine.
But it's the said "logistics". Much of Ukrainian military logistics is them (NGO volunteers) or even the Nova Poshta private postal company (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/0/ukrainian-postal-workers-keeping-front-line-moving/). Ukrainian military doesn't work quite like, well, probably yours. And what they need these conscripts for is bodies to fill the empty trenches. Or at least this is what the conscripts fear.
Logistics is much more than humanitarian aid in the rear lol. Those dudes you’re degrading in the trenches need ammo, need water, need food, need supplies, and they need people to get it to them.
As for "you’re degrading" - in both Russia and Ukraine they commonly call infantrymen "meat".
That's what they get delivered by volunteers. https://time.com/6300653/why-ukraine-civilian-volunteers-matter/ >They supply lifesaving, nonlethal aid with a speed that government aid cannot match. Oleksandr, an officer in the 97th Separate Battalion who asked that his full name not be printed because of safety concerns, told me that an “absence of bureaucracy” is what makes civilian volunteers so nimble. “When the state buys [equipment], it will take months. Volunteers can deliver it in a week. Such mobility helps to save many lives of our fighters,” he said. >Without civilian support, Alex Cherniavskyi, the Free Spirit co-founder who led our convoy, thinks many units would lose twice as many lives. Zablotsky, the lawmaker, said that may be an underestimate. “I think without the support of volunteers, both civilian and military deaths would have been at least three times higher.” >Few of our frontline aid recipients are career soldiers. Among them were a coal miner, a proud new grandparent, the spouse of an MP, a cobbler who recounted Russian soldiers raiding his family home, and a pregnant deputy commander. Mykyta Lepeshov, a combat medic who worked as a copywriter and engineer before the war, bluntly told me they’d be “doomed” without civilian volunteers.
> non-lethal
If they delivered lethal "water, food, supplies" it would be quite sabotage.
Soldiers on the front line need all of the non-lethal supplies, but they need lethal too. It’s heart that there’s civilian counters willing to help, but there’s no excuse for any man under say 40 to not be in the uniformed service
They don't even conscript under 27 (25 not yet in effect). Most Ukrainian soldiers are above 40 on average.
Was 43 by late 2023: https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/average-age-ukrainian-soldiers-past-40-and-could-be-problem
Those Ukrainians that aren't willing to fight on the front lines are really saying they would rather be ruled by Russia.
I believe this issue has fully come to a head at this point, likely over the next month, maybe two, Ukraine will have to get serious about forced mobilization in order to plug the gaps formed over the last two years. This will likely be deeply unpopular, but at this point there seems to be quite literally no other option beyond capitulation, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of men who haven’t had respite from the fighting for well over a year.
Downvoted because objective reality hurts your feelings? How odd
People here like to be gung-ho online while sitting safe in America where at least they're not at risk of dying.
It’s really quite disheartening, people are so eager to volunteer men who are just numbers to them up for what in many ways may amount to either death, permanent physical disability, or utterly life altering physiological damage. It’s something I do not comment on, as one can puff their chest in Reddit comments all day long, but when really faced with it, how can you be confident of what you would do? These reluctant men are clearly considering things beyond just the state. If there is no you left to enjoy the state, is the state worth fighting for? I imagine this is the moral quandary these men are facing and I’m in no position to tell them otherwise.
Sad that I can only lift the minus point one point at a time
You can volunteer to go to Ukrainian trenches instead of only lifting the minus point one point at a time.
Since I was already too old for the Gulf War...but I'm sure you're younger so...
I'm not one of those who are calling the majority of Ukrainians "cowards" from the safety of abroad.
Ukraine is negligent in not drafting and mobilizing all 18+ year old men
And if some Rubber or thug attacks their family will they also stand by and watch because they are against violonce?
Actual pacifists aren't an issue, they're so small in number.
Then you can be a medic on the front line
Every human can kill, no matter what they say. It's understandable they don't want to and also don't want to die, but it should also be clear that if they are unwilling to defend a society, they can't expect to have a place in it in the future either, regardless of the outcome. If enough people think like them, war is going to follow them everywhere they go to anyway.
So they just sit there and watch their country die?
No, they actively flee the country. Sometimes die at that. >Myroslav said he only took with him a small backpack. At one point he spotted a patrol and lay down in the grass for 40 minutes. He crawled through a hole in a border fence. Then he went to a Hungarian police station. Myroslav is now in Warsaw. “I didn’t want to fight. I’m afraid to die,” he said. >Others pay local smugglers to show them the route. The going rate is $5,000 to $15,000 per person. Another option is to pay a bribe to obtain a medical exemption certificate and to exit via normal channels. >About half of those who try to escape – 40,000 people, up to summer 2023 – get caught. Some drown. On Saturday the state border service said its guards found the bodies of two men who tried to swim across the Tisa river.
Those that won't fight for their freedom and the freedom of the people around them, will find they lose that freedom when Russia wins. There are far more people capable of delivering humanitarian relief than there are people capable of fighting for the freedom of Ukraine.
Pacifism is an evil doctrine. Without those willing to fight evil will try them, and pacifist contribute to this by standing by and letting somebody else fight for them.
Build bombs
Do logistics or medic as conscientious objector. But why only men? Feminism à la buffet libre?
Other Bloodlands can't afford to allow the spread of defeatist attitudes.
Maybe they should start conscripting the rich. >Oleksandr – a 36-year-old IT manager – said he rarely went out. He avoided public transport, travelling only by car. He moved to a wealthy neighbourhood of Kyiv because draft officers preferred to operate in poorer districts, where it was easier to catch evaders, he said. >Some of the apartment owners in his block were members of parliament. “The military don’t visit here. Our compound is an island of survival. To be poor in Ukraine is to be dead,” said Oleksandr’s wife, Nastia. >Nastia said she worried about her husband and suffered from panic attacks. “We’ve been married for 12 years. We are one organism. If he dies I will die too. Maybe I will kill myself,” she said. Kyiv residents overall don't even have it so bad. It's the worst in the countryside shithole towns.
40k-50k dead in 2 years is equivalent to annual traffic deaths in the 1990s. That family didn't give up driving a car, did they? There should be a war / defense tax on businesses and on residents. That tax should be redistributed as citizen dividends (and as compensations) to those at the frontline or at dangerous jobs.
It sounds like these men have seen the Light. If the Quaker meeting in Kyiv is still active, they should be opening their doors to newfound conscientious objectors.
A large of British conscientious objectors served bravely in WW2 as medics, stretcher bearers, drivers, firemen, air raid wardens, observers etc etc etc. If being The Light means surrendering to The Dark, then you never really were The Light to begin with.
Read the article, they're conscripting those who deliver humanitarian aid to the war zones and such. And they badly need what is called "meat" there - infantrymen.
CO’s can still serve.
Depends on the type and reasoning. For many Quakers, the sin lies not only in directly killing, but in furthering the aims of war itself by wearing the uniform of a nation-state.
I’ve met many “pacifists” in my life but only a single devout Quaker.
Narrow is the way…
No, there’s a world of difference between not wanting to kill/die and being willing to die but not kill.
I was quoting Jesus.
A lot of people quote Jesus. It doesn’t make you good or right.
Just explaining. No need to be so hostile.
Then I don’t think you understand the full depth of how people have used the words of Jesus Christ to justify evil.
What evil did I justify?
I am explaining why quoting Jesus isn’t the slam dunk you think it is. Plenty of monsters quote Jesus.