'We Can Only Be Enemies'

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/putin-war-propaganda-russian-support/629714/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/cJooF

When the russian army first began shelling Lukashivka, a village in northern Ukraine, dozens of residents fled to the Horbonos family’s cellar. Children, pregnant women, bedridden pensioners, and the Horbonoses themselves headed down below the family’s peach orchard and vegetable patches, and waited. For 10 days, they listened as shells whistled and crashed above several times an hour. The attacks left huge craters in the land, incinerating the Horbonoses’ car and destroying the roof of their house. Finally, on March 9, they heard the sound of heavy weaponry and tanks entering the village: The Russian army had taken Lukashivka.

Soldiers ordered the terrified villagers to the surface, and then threw a grenade into the cellar, targeting any hidden Ukrainian soldiers. The Horbonoses—Irina, 55; Sergey, 59; and their 25-year-old son, Nikita—spent the next night in a neighbor’s cellar, but it was so wet and cold that they returned to theirs. Upon arrival, they found five Russian soldiers living inside.

“Where are we meant to live?” Irina asked. “This is our home.” The soldiers told the Horbonos family that they could return home—they could all live there together. And so the Horbonoses moved back in.

They would spend about three weeks with those five Russian soldiers, eating together, walking together, talking together. The Russian soldiers would make nonsensical declarations about their mission and ask alarmingly basic questions about Ukraine, yet also offer insights into their motivations and their morale; the Horbonoses would push back on their claims, angrily scream at them, and also drink with them, using that measure of trust to prod at the soldiers’ confidence in Vladimir Putin’s war.

*snip*

[tblue37]

1. Excellent article, a bit longish, but we'll worth reading. I have a digital subscription to

The Atlantic because I enjoy their thoughtful, in-depth articles.

[dalton99a]

2. "They had come, one said, 'for a victory march in Kyiv.'"

The Horbonos family also got unusual insight into the Russians’ motivations. When I asked Sergey what he thought drove them, he was unequivocal. The soldiers, he said, were propelled not by national pride or expansionary zeal, but by money.

The soldiers all said they had debt—mortgages, loans, medical bills—and needed their army salaries. Even those wages weren’t enough. Their job as mechanics was to repair tanks, but their skill set meant they were also proficient at taking them apart. During breaks in the shelling, they would find damaged or destroyed Russian vehicles, and smelt down plates with gold wiring. One plate would get them 15,000 rubles, or about $200, back home.

Other Russian soldiers were less creative. On the day the Russian army left the village, many grabbed everything they could. Their tanks were piled high with mattresses and suitcases; their armored vehicles were stuffed full of bedsheets, toys, washing machines. (When the Tatar soldier came to say goodbye, he told Sergey that he would soon retire, and promised to send the Horbonoses part of his pension.)

On the surface, Russian officials may exalt Putin’s new model of splendid isolation, claiming that their people don’t care about sanctions, that they don’t need any other countries, that Russia is its own civilization. But Russian behavior suggests otherwise: Think of the stampedes to buy out IKEA before the Swedish furniture chain closed its stores in the country, or the widespread use of virtual private networks and mirror sites to use Instagram and Netflix.

[SergeStorms]

3. This sounds remarkably like....

the BIG LIE told by Trump and his evil cohorts.

When the attack on the Capitol failed to produce the desired result - the installation of Trump as president - the insurectionists left. To their amazement they were hunted down by law enforcement and charged with a smorgasbord of crimes.

Surely Trump would issue pardons for them all. They were acting on Trump's orders, after all. But no pardons came.

Some of the insurectionists have woken up to the fact that they were used by Trump for his delirious scheme of staying in power by somehow overturning the will of the people.

There are others though who still believe the BIG LIE and continue to be pawns in Trump's war on democracy.

These two stories mesh perfectly into a lesson why BIG LIES should not be protected by the "free speech" of the Elon Musk variety.

Both of these BIG LIES resulted in wars where people have been killed. Granted, Ukraine's war is exponentially worse than the war on truth in the United States, but they're both predicated on lies told by the people in power.

Lies, disinformation, and the willingness of those in power to use them to control others to carry out their nefarious schemes, can't be considered "free speech". This is speech that comes at a horrible cost. The cost of lives, people's homes, their livelihoods, democracy.

[relayerbob]

4. Excellent article, very insightful