Quote:
Originally Posted by Huntingwhale
What a depressing and brutal article. Was hard to read that. Suffice to say, it lines up exactly with what we know is happening in not only my in-laws village, but elsewhere as well. The Telegram chats my wife follows all have similar storylines. Very clearly this isn't a one-off situation. These are orders from above to perform these heinous acts.
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Not necessarily.
It's quite enough if nothing is done to control the troops. Among tens of thousands of young men there would be some murderers and rapists at the best of times. Give them weapons and power to do what they want and no oversight, and add in the inhumanity of war which in itself can turn even normal men into beasts, the frustration of war going badly where you watch your friends die on a daily basis, where you have to rob people to feed yourself and keep warm...
It would have been a miracle honestly if this stuff didn't happen, considering the way the war has been going and the general inhumanity of the Russian military towards even their own forces. In these conditions, with no oversight, all it takes is one bad officer to turn the random inhumanity into organized mass executions in that area.
At some point we will start to get stories about what happens when the Ukrainians get their hands on civilians they see as traitors. There's going to be some really ugly stories there too, and we can just hope the Ukrainian forces can mostly keep their heads when witnessing this stuff. If you think the news is bad, just imagine what it's like for the troops on location.
It takes a lot of discipline to keep troops from taking their anger out on easy targets.
This war is emotionally very similar to a civil war, and those are always the ugliest wars.