To reject our fascination of violence is to reject our humanity. We are a violent species.
We can try to better ourselves but there are some people out there that are plain evil and need putting down.
That russian sitting in that fox hole always had a choice and I would have chosen prison worst case any day with no other option available.
To claim your average Russian doesn't know what's going on after 9 months is beyond ignorance.
They have mouths an ears and hear the rumours and choose the murder the Ukrainian option anyway so **** them and I drink a glass of wine whilst watching them vids.
It is easy to say sitting comfortably in the UK - Russian prisons are often ****** horrendous a chance the worst case is far more violent even death for some (the kind of stuff which went on in Bucha, etc. Russians have no problem carrying out against their own people either) and a good chance of repercussions against their family as well - dependants can lose any support from the state, etc. as punishment and many of these soldiers are being
recruited conscripted from poor segments of society where they'll rely on what little support from the state they can get.
How much Russians know varies vastly - those in the big cities like Moscow, the so called "European Russia" will have about as much access to information as we do (some will even still have access to BBC international programming, etc.), those in the remote parts of the Russian far east, etc., where a lot of these conscripts are coming from, can be quite isolated with limited information - they might have heard some rumours but they will have a very different perspective to what is going on compared to those of us in the West.
I pretty much guarantee some of the opinions banded about in this thread at various points by people of what they'd do if they were a Russian/Russian soldier would go very different in reality if they were in that position.
EDIT: It is also difficult in any situation for individuals to get organised as a collective and effect change against a tyrannical power, even when those in power are a relative small number. Look how many workplaces no one will stand up to a tyrannical boss let alone a context like the military/politics.
