[diskcat]

>Can you imagine travelling today to a foreign country ready to die for fighting oppression? I have never seen such kind of conviction in my life.

There were russians who fight in Ukraine and if you ask ISIS fighters they will tell you they are fighting to spread the-one-true-religion which is similar to fighting to spread the-one-true-ideology with minor differences.

Also fighting oppression was what was sold to US soldiers going to the Mid East at least partially.

[mercurial]

> There were russians who fight in Ukraine

The official line from Putin is that all Russian soldiers fighting alongside the independentists are volunteers, but that sounds as true as his earlier lie about the "green men" being local militias.

[guard-of-terra]

This is correct, but there were large independentist brigades comprised of volunteers. Indeed that's how this civil war started.

Now there is a formal army of "unrecognized republics" formed from same volunteers plus a lot of locals who are just in it for the pay. The morale is correspondingly much lower.

AFAIK Russian army did some heavy lifting but not on the regular basis. They merely protect "republics" from collapse.