Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cedws 78 days ago
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.
2 comments
sesqu 78 days ago
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.

link
Mikhail_Edoshin 78 days ago
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.

link
JumpCrisscross 78 days ago
> Nobody grabbed anyone

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

link
saghm 77 days ago
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.
link