"Some men said they took exit routes that were illegal.... 'We just wanted to live... We ran from hell. Like Stalingrad in 1942.'... A 24-year-old [medical student] from Kyiv... ran through a field and then a forest, 'scared s---less,' he said, until he and the others ended up on a cold road in what happened to be Moldova.... The medical student received papers giving him the legal right to be in Moldova. There’s just one thing missing: a Ukrainian exit stamp. 'So I don’t know how I can go back,' he said. ... In Chisinau, at the army barracks, a 32-year-old IT employee from Kyiv said he and his father, 57, had managed to cross without any problems. They presented non-Ukrainian passports. The catch is that in Ukraine, dual citizenship is illegal. The 32-year-old said he had talked with his dad at length about whether they were doing the right thing, and they agreed that war had forced them into a terrible, cold decision: picking their own interests above those of their country. 'I don’t feel like a traitor,' the son said. He said it was natural to choose self-preservation. 'Just like America,' the father said...."
From "In a war of terrible choices, these are the fighting-age men who left Ukraine" (WaPo).
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46 comments:
it's Interesting, how the propaganda changes from day to day. A few days ago, we were being told that 'even Miss Ukraine' has joined the army; Then we found that Miss Ukraine had joined a photo shot for an AD for the army.
Today, we are told that skirt boys and panty waists are 'fleeing like dogs, and scared as sh*t'
Makes you wonder, what we'll be told tomorrow? Biowar labs? WMDs? No Bioware labs? NO WMDs?
One can never question the bravery of those with with official titles. Nor those that question the bravery of others via electronic device.
For everyone else, their degree of bravery is an unknown, only to be revealed when faced with imminent, mortal danger.
I wonder what I would do. I mean, I think I would run and want my husband and sons to run, but then I'd hope enough people would stay and fight in my stead.
All in all, pretty awful options.
After the blunder of Afghanistan and Ukraine
Is Joe Biden is handling Russia-Ukraine War seriously? Comment your answer!!!
It's awful. It's one of those choices so many have had to make over the years. The rational decision is to live. But there is the altruistic decision that putting your life on the line for others is more important.
None, or few of us know how we would actually act in the face of such decisions. You don't know until it's your time to decide, to act. From afar- from the comfort of my desk in Florida, I can come down on either side and feel good about my decision. But that's a meaningless exercise.
It really comes down to making a rational, or irrational decision. Or, as Ayn Rand put it, "To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death."
Ayn Rand on altruism: "What is the moral code of altruism? The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value."
With that in mind, I'm still not sure how I would react until I am facing that time, that decision. I know my grandparents fled their native countries. They fled for their lives, not having the choice to 'fight for the motherland'. Their 'motherland' wanted to kill them. Nothing focuses the mind like the choice to flee or die. The Ukrainian men don't have quite that clear a decision. They don't know they are going to die, but there's a very good chance they will if they stay. Or end up broken in a Russian prison.
My explanation of the Z sign that has been appearing recently in Russia:
* The horizontal line at the top is Russia's progress in the distant past.
* The backward-angled line in the middle is Russia's regression after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
* The horizontal line at the bottom of the Z is Russia's progress at the current time.
Hmmm always the men. The toxic men who are expected to die for country.
This always happens. There were plenty of draft dodgers and shirkers amongst the so called greatest generation. This will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
As Victoria Nuland said, discussing the upcoming coup in Ukraine to replace the elected president with "Yatz" (as she called him)
"Fuck the EU"
Some more detail here as well as call audio. Search Nuland + fuck the EU and you will get plenty of other details on the leaked phone call. Leaked by Ukraine? Russia? SOmeone else?
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/25/basic-notes-on-victoria-fuck-the-eu-nuland/
Yeah, the phone call was in 2014 shortly before the Maidan Revolution which threw out the democratically elected president and replaced him with guess who?
Me, I say, Fuck not just the EU. Them too of course. But fuck Ukraine and fuck the Obama admin and all the corruption by both.
Lots of people think that the 10% that was supposed to be kicked up to "The Big Guy" in the Biden emails was the head of the Biden crime family, Branden. I've long thought that the big guy was Obama.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Carter pardoned Vietnam draft dodgers so they could return from Canada. In the meantime, they lived in Canada.
MayBee said...
I wonder what I would do. I mean, I think I would run and want my husband and sons to run..
WHY are the Ukrainians fighting so hard? Why, do So MANY stay and fight and die.
Because they Love their government? 'cause they hate the Russians? 'cause they want to join NATO?
As a Civil War History enthusiast (a TOTALLY "Union Forever" enthusiast), the answer is easy.
As the Southern POW said when asked why HE was fighting US... Because You're Here
Or as the Blonde Babe said in Conan the Barbarian: What Do You Want To DO? Live Forever?
Wapo is just trying to run cover for the poll result that Democrats were far less likely to stay and fight for their country if America was attacked than Republicans and Hispanics of both parties. Love of country is not a progressive value.
"'I don’t feel like a traitor,' the son said. He said it was natural to choose self-preservation."
Don't tell any commentators on this blog. Why isn't he defending his country? Why isn't he fighting to the death, as he should? Does he think it's pointless or something? He's objectively pro-Putin.
Men from the cities may be able to get away by fleeing, but men from the villages will never be allowed to go back. I predict there will be reprisals when some try.
I keep seeing videos of Ukrainian men leaving Ukraine. Not sure this is a hard truth.
https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Satellite-images-show-flooding-north-of-Kyiv-in-16990814.php
Doctrev assured me the very thought of flooding kilometers and kilometers of roadside fields to keep the Ruskie convoy on the paved roads was delusional. Ukrainians said "hold my beer" as they blew up dams along the way and flooded the countryside. Anyway, don't see too much Ruskie armor leaving the roads.
Probably just a photo shop.
As Left Bank points out, upthread, during the Vietnam War an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 draft-eligible American men (and some who had received induction notices) fled from the US to Canada (my source for the number is Wikipedia — having myself been draft-eligible back then my instinct is that there were many more than that). Eventually someone was elected who proclaimed amnesty and let them come back. More than a few of us added that to the reasons not to re-elect Carter when the 1980 election rolled around. But the men of fighting age who fled Ukraine could be counting on the same thing happening in their country in a few years.
Contra Temujin, I certainly know how I would react. I received my induction notice on December 26, 1968 and reported on January 21st. I had a special reason to hope that Dick Nixon, inaugurated the day before, really did have a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam, but he was lying. As I thought.
As to the Ukrainian med student, Moldavia needs doctors, too. And I have read that Moldavian women are the best looking in Europe.
The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation.
Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.),
Has the Biden regime said anything about granting asylum claims to displaced Ukrainians?
How ridiculous. Men of fighting age? this is the age of Heavy artillery, Aircraft, missiles, drones, tanks, Armored vehicles. Ukraine doesn't need untrained Conscripts with AK-47s. And they certainly don't need men over 45. The USA in WW2 had a draft age of 38, and men with kids over 30 were rarely drafted.
And by the time any of these men got out of "Boot camp" assuming there is one, the war will be over. I do find it interesting that these people who live in Ukraine and aren't Ukrainians or are Dual or even Triple citizens, feel zero loyalty to the country and want to run away and NOT fight.
And gentlemen in Moldava now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us in Kharkiv and Kyiv.
20 years from now mr medical student will be telling stories about how he heroically saved lives on the front lines during the war.
Thought experiment: Let's postulate that the US government fails in a similar fashion to the way the USSR failed. Some states remain in the union, some decide they're better off on their own. You live in one of those breakaway states and consider it your home. At some point - say, thirty years down the road - the reformulated American Union chooses to try to re-absorb your home state.
Do you fight? Do you run? Do you acquiesce?
UkroNazis are holding civilians hostage and sabotaging HUMANITARIAN CORRIDORS
Ukies are stopping young men from leaving and they + WEST is accusing Putin for using conscripts!
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
J.S. Mill
I don't know what I would do if I faced the dangers these men face. But I know there are things that gnaw at a man worse than dying.
Cowards all.Their country is being invaded, for crying out loud. They want others to fight, so they can have a free country. Most American Democrats would likely agree with them, though. Sad as it is to say.
Oh, Canada!
Sebastian: he's either pro Putin or a coward just like you people. To be fair, I think you people are just cowards and don't realize that you are doing Putin's bidding. Trump prepared his useful idiots well.
Jay dub:
It’s almost like the Ukrainian army studied the British armored part of Market Garden.
@john henry "Yeah, the phone call was in 2014 shortly before the Maidan Revolution which threw out the democratically elected president and replaced him with guess who?"
Well, that would be Petro Porashenko. He ran for President again in 2019 and was defeated by Volodymyr Zelensky. In 2014, Zelensky was still just a tv star
Rediculious rcocean? I suppose traitors like you find the simple sentence below laughable:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Howard said...
Sebastian: he's either pro Putin or a coward just like you people. To be fair, I think you people are just cowards and don't realize that you are doing Putin's bidding. Trump prepared his useful idiots well.
How did that last poll where they asked who would defend their country in the US turn out Howard?
Were Democrats more or less likely than Republicans to defend the US? Who actually joins the Armed forces? Douchey Massholes or Georgia rednecks?
Oh that is right you are just a stupid troll with his head up his ass.
Howard said...
Sebastian: he's either pro Putin or a coward just like you people. To be fair, I think you people are just cowards and don't realize that you are doing Putin's bidding. Trump prepared his useful idiots well.
How about those Biden Regime funded bioweapon labs in the Ukraine?
You want to call all your political opponents Putin supporters. That is exactly what failing illegitimate regimes always turn to. They start wars and attack their polit8ical opponents at home as traitors.
I know you are a lying douchey crap weasel but even this has to penetrate your withered soul.
Turns out all the claims and fact checks by the State Media that this is not true are incorrect and that there actually are bioweapons labs all throughout Ukraine. Nuland admitted it under oath to the senate.
You have been skipping from lie to lie to lie Howard.
You are a liar.
At some point you will have to look yourself in the mirror and accept you are just a lying piece of shit.
“U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar applauded the opening of the Interim Central Reference Laboratory in Odessa, Ukraine, this week, announcing that it will be instrumental in researching dangerous pathogens used by bioterrorists.
The level-3 bio-safety lab, which is the first built under the expanded authority of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, will be used to study anthrax, tularemia and Q fever as well as other dangerous pathogens.”
Howard said...
Rediculious rcocean? I suppose traitors like you find the simple sentence below laughable:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
If you oppose Obama's WMD labs in Ukraine and believe those stories you are a traitor according to Howard.
They took our tax dollars and researched WMDs in a country bordering Russia. Everyone involved in this is a traitor.
You are supporting an evil, illegitimate, and traitorous regime Howard.
It is amazing that Russia waited so long. Obama and the demented Sock Puppet that is standing in for him have been trying to start a war with Russia for years.
Fuck you for supporting these people. You go fight this war. You caused it.
In my experience it's not too hard to cross those borders illegally, though given the current situation, maybe the countries to the west have tightened up security. However, at some point many of these men will want to go home, and then they will have to face those that stayed, which will be uncomfortable.
1. THere is no military reason to keep men over age 45 in the country
2. There is no reason to keep "untrained men of fighting age" in the Country. How are these men going to trained to fight in time to do any good? Does anyone think the Russians will be stopped and still be fighting for Kiev in May?
3. Where are the boot camps to train them? Where are the aritllery pieces? Where are the tanks and Armoured Vehciles? Where are the officers? Where is Ukrainian AF to provide air cover?
This is all just a propaganda show. Like Zelenksy forbidding mayors to surrender their towns under pain of death. This actor clown needs to stop fighting and start agreeing to detachment of the two border republics and the Crimea from the Ukraine. This is war over nothing. The result is forordained and his people are dying for nothing.
Tucker Carlson had a good bit on the biolabs last night. After constantly being told by the MSM that there were no USA financed biolabs, we now find out there are biolabs. Lied to again. Color me shocked.
Its not clear what exactly they were doing. Were they really just working on defenses to possible anthrax/biological weapons, or was it something more sinister? Who knows. certainly our MSM isn't going to tell us.
"The result is forordained and his people are dying for nothing."
But, but, you're supporting Putin! Don't you know that when you don't want other people to die for nothing when a result is foreordained, you are a coward? You should be braver and want them to die, en masse. That'll teach Putin.
"This actor clown needs to stop fighting and start agreeing"
Once again Russia is starving Ukrainians and once again there are those who see no evil. "Start agreeing" with Putin 0 and then what? Then everything will be OK? Peace with honor?
It's a shame the Ukes and their leaders aren't monitoring Althouseblog. This little thing would be settled before Gutfeld! returns.
Clausewitz wrote that all wars are choices--a country or people that is attacked can always just choose to roll over and take it with a grin. The choice to resist represents a disagreement over relative power, and especially in the case of a big country invading a small one, motivation (moral/morale factors) will be far more important than numbers and weaponry.
I'm wondering how long before we start seeing 'technicals' such as abound in the ragtag forces of recent Afghan, Iraq, Syria, or Libya fame. Ukraine and Poland are probably at least as full of gearheads, gun-lovers, machine shops, and pickup trucks as Libya or Afghanistan, and despite some tv experts' opinions guerilla war is quite possible in large areas of Ukraine and adjacent areas. The Polish-Ukraine border alone is almost two hundred miles long, not counting the Slovak and Hungarian frontiers--all selected by the USSR for their convenience in accessing restive satellites.
And if large numbers of refugees are going one way it doesn't mean there's no traffic in the other direction.
Van Creveld's 'law' applies: the longer a great power occupies and tries to subdue a weaker nation, the more it discredits itself in the eyes of the world and eventually its own people. (So does Mencken's: In wartime the heroes outnumber the soldiers ten to one.)
If the old farts who can't be armed and trained can be fed, they can dig trenches and make barricades, clear rubble and recover and bury bodies. The Soviets didn't hesitate to send tens of thousands city men and women out to do those things as the Nazis approached . . .
Forgive multi-posts
When the Russian dictator takes Moldova back into his embrace, I wonder what fate awaits Ukrainian emigrés?
I wonder what fate awaits Ukrainian emigrés when the Russian dictator takes Moldova back into his embrace?
For the record; Since 1991, with the exception of a brief period between 2013 and 2014, Ukraine has required a minimum of 1.5 years military service from its male citizenry. Prior to 1991 the Soviets required a minimum of 2 years of military service from its male citizens, including the citizens of the Ukrainian SSR.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 have had basic military training of some sort in the past and can man static defenses, stand guard posts, help evacuate wounded, move war materiel or as Narr says above; dig trenches and fill sand bags.
jaydub said...
https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Satellite-images-show-flooding-north-of-Kyiv-in-16990814.php
Probably just a photo shop.
3/10/22, 9:08 AM
I'm glad I made this much of an impact on you, but seriously. Most Western media isn't talking about this, perhaps because most of the convoy have already re-deployed into fighting positions, at Antonov and beyond.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-maternity-hospital-bombed-uk-says-war-crime/
But, uh, hope is the last treasure gifted to the desperate...
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