[cedws]

Hard to feel the same sympathy for Russian men to be honest, I've seen many gallivanting abroad, whilst majority of Ukrainian men are stuck either in hiding in their own country or have been sent to the front lines. Only a few got out early or by paying bribes.

[saidnooneever]

honestly i am happy for the russian and ukranian young men and women i meet here in NL each day. Glad for them they can dodge the draft. most simply drove out, some had more hastle than others.

war is shit on all sides and thinking one or the other suffers less because you dont like their colours is very short sighted.... i think we had enough time by now to realise it.

and dont call it cowardice if someone doesnt want to fight for a bunch of 'rich pricks' playin with their money while normal people get to die in the streets. It has never been good or normal and should never be.

[cedws]

It's objectively worse on the Ukrainian side. Imagine you haven't been able to leave your house in 4 years for fear you'll be grabbed by a draft officer. Russians do not know this fear.

To boot, many Russian men have been paid handsomely for their participation in the SMO and get to live nice lives abroad.

[sesqu]

Did you just forget about the mobilization drive Russia had in 2022, where they grabbed young men off streets and from their houses?

It was very unpopular, lead to people fleeing the country, and was pushed out of the public eye as soon as they figured out how to forcefully volunteer people instead.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

Nobody grabbed anyone. It was an unusual, but otherwise a normal bureaucratic process. Got handed a paper, signed, have to appear. Many probably didn't have plans to go voluntarily, but felt it unmanly to dodge. I was at one of such sites and saw a man who got there too drunk and was handed over to the police; he was very disappointed he is not allowed go with the fellas.

It wasn't hard to dodge; you could just refuse to take the papers pretending it's not you or get sick the very day or something like that. The system had a number and once it was reached (very quickly) no further action was necessary. The only change so far us that the employers started to follow their military tracking procedure to the letter; before that it was required but not really enforced, but now all the paperwork gets done by the book.

Some people indeed left the country but those are the kind you don't want to have your back anyway.

Forceful volunteering is pure imagination. At most it's intensive persuasion or a new way to get out of jail, but if you don't want to go, nobody will force you.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Nobody grabbed anyone

Around the Moscow elite, no. In the outer provinces, we have ample evidence of forced conscription.

[saghm]

It's not like it's zero-sum though; the world outside Russia and as Ukraine isn't going to become so full that there's no room for more or them to leave to dodge fighting in a war, so the parent commenter can easily be happy for any of them regardless of their country of origin.