Russia invades Ukraine

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

The Red Army, as they marched west, employed rape as a weapon and during the occupation of E Germany.

If the level of rape was as high as reported in East Germany, how the hell was the Germany's approval of Russia so high prior to the Ukraine invasion? Was it the bloodless Russian withdraw leading to the reunification of West/East Germany or some other factor I don't understand?

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

If the level of rape was as high as reported in East Germany, how the hell was the Germany's approval of Russia so high prior to the Ukraine invasion? Was it the bloodless Russian withdraw leading to the reunification of West/East Germany or some other factor I don't understand?

Maybe cuz they both hate Nazis......

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

This whole war has highlighted some of the bigger red flags in German/ European corruption. Why does Neutral Switzerland even produce ammunition if they specifically don't allow the provision of that ammunition to warzones? Is it just meant for training ammunition?

Germany can use them in a warzone if they're directly involved. What the Swiss don't want is countries sending ammo they bought for themselves to 3rd parties in an active warzone. That's pretty common in arms sales; buyers are allowed to use them for themselves, but they often need permission to transfer them to other countries for use in conflict.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Maybe cuz they both hate Nazis......

East German nostalgia is definitely a thing, the same way our grand parents talk about the gold old days

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

If the level of rape was as high as reported in East Germany, how the hell was the Germany's approval of Russia so high prior to the Ukraine invasion? Was it the bloodless Russian withdraw leading to the reunification of West/East Germany or some other factor I don't understand?

Because WW2 was a catastrophe that post-war Germans (rightly) felt responsible for. And the feeling was the best way to prevent a repeat of that catastrophe was to foster strong economic ties with Russia.

If Germans held grudges after WW2, Russia wouldn’t be the only nationality they’d still hate today. Hundreds of thousands of German women and children were blown to bits or immolated in the Allied bombing of German cities that deliberately targeted civilian neighbourhoods (aka “de-housing”). And it’s not as though Allied soldiers didn’t rape too. An estimated 14k women were raped by Allied soldiers in Western Europe during WW2.

It seems weird to be chiding Germans today for not hating their former enemies enough.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

It was a known fact, you even learn it in highschool history.

The Red Army, as they marched west, employed rape as a weapon and during the occupation of E Germany.

From Wikipedia


It shocks no one they are doing it again, and frankly yes, Russian soldiers have a reputation.

It can't be understated why almost every post-Soviet, post Warsaw Pact country in Europe that was either invaded by Russia or part of the former Russian Empire, wanted to join NATO as soon as they could. It's also case in point for why many people in some countries that were facing invasion and occupation by the Soviets or their proxies in WW2 did not see the Allies as an option and turned to Axis support.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by FlameOn

If the level of rape was as high as reported in East Germany, how the hell was the Germany's approval of Russia so high prior to the Ukraine invasion? Was it the bloodless Russian withdraw leading to the reunification of West/East Germany or some other factor I don't understand?

I imagine Germans realize that they have basically no basis to be critical or resentful of other countries' treatment of their civilian population in that era given the horrors they inflicted on other countries' populations. Even if Russian treatment of German civilians was horrific, it pales in comparison to the Holocaust, the 10-20 million Russian civilians killed by Germany, or the deliberate killing of millions of Soviet POWs.

[burn_this_city]

Great thread from the PM of Estonia.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1518671282627301380

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Poland, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Chechnya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes





Russia's culture is defined by rape.

Rape statistics per capita are in fact pretty low in Russia. While rape is a crime where statistics are always questionable, I haven't seen anything that suggests the situation is particularly bad in Russia, relative to comparable countries. (That likely means it's pretty bad, but not an outlier.)

Statistically US has a much bigger rape problem than Russia.

That said, domestic violence seems to be more common in Russia, and that quite often goes together with unreported sexual violence. However, I would be very hesitant to say there's anything particularly rapey about Russian culture in general.

Russian military however is an extremely messed up system. Extreme hazing is rampant, to the point of torture and rape. Suicides are common, permanent injuries are a thing you need to be afraid of. The conditions in general are just awful, food is so bad that people lose tons of weight, pneumonia spreads like a plague, soldiers are commonly used as free labor for their officers (building vacation homes is the stereotype), and there was even a scandal where conscripted soldiers were forced into prostitution to earn money for their officers. The mandatory military service is really more like a slave labor camp than anything, with fairly little actual military training involved. The people who want to be officers in that system are of course what you'd expect, a real cesspool of abusive scum. Especially since popularity with the troops or just outstanding competence is often punished from above instead of rewarded. (The point of this is to prevent military coups or uprisings, and that's really the only thing the Russian military system is good at.)

Even though military service is technically mandatory, in practice only about half the men serve, while the rest use various excuses or outright bribery to get out of it.

Russia has an extremely long tradition of mistreating it's soldiers more than most militaries, and the whole culture around it is just cancerous. It's definitely to be expected that anywhere the Russian military goes, horrible treatment of civilians is inevitable.

[activeStick]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Russian men are going to have the stigma of rapists for generations. The crimes are too widespread to not be taken by outsiders as a cultural imperative, right or wrong. It's too bad that the Russian media is so insular, it's probably going to come as a surprise to Russian men how they are viewed when they travel elsewhere after this war.

Maybe, but maybe not. The Japanese murdered at least 200k and raped at least 20k in Nanjing over a mere 6 weeks and nobody views Japanese men in that light.

[Harry Lime]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Maybe, but maybe not. The Japanese murdered at least 200k and raped at least 20k in Nanjing over a mere 6 weeks and nobody views Japanese men in that light.

Nanking didn't have twitter.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Itse

Rape statistics per capita are in fact pretty low in Russia. While rape is a crime where statistics are always questionable, I haven't seen anything that suggests the situation is particularly bad in Russia, relative to comparable countries. (That likely means it's pretty bad, but not an outlier.)

Statistically US has a much bigger rape problem than Russia.

That said, domestic violence seems to be more common in Russia, and that quite often goes together with unreported sexual violence. However, I would be very hesitant to say there's anything particularly rapey about Russian culture in general.

Russian military however is an extremely messed up system. Extreme hazing is rampant, to the point of torture and rape. Suicides are common, permanent injuries are a thing you need to be afraid of. The conditions in general are just awful, food is so bad that people lose tons of weight, pneumonia spreads like a plague, soldiers are commonly used as free labor for their officers (building vacation homes is the stereotype), and there was even a scandal where conscripted soldiers were forced into prostitution to earn money for their officers. The mandatory military service is really more like a slave labor camp than anything, with fairly little actual military training involved. The people who want to be officers in that system are of course what you'd expect, a real cesspool of abusive scum. Especially since popularity with the troops or just outstanding competence is often punished from above instead of rewarded. (The point of this is to prevent military coups or uprisings, and that's really the only thing the Russian military system is good at.)

Even though military service is technically mandatory, in practice only about half the men serve, while the rest use various excuses or outright bribery to get out of it.

Russia has an extremely long tradition of mistreating it's soldiers more than most militaries, and the whole culture around it is just cancerous. It's definitely to be expected that anywhere the Russian military goes, horrible treatment of civilians is inevitable.

I'd posted it earlier in the thread, but violence and murder within Russian homes is a massive problem. Russia has a higher murder rate than the USA, but the majority of Russian murders are domestic. Imagine the USA's gang violence problem all occurring in a domestic context.

[Itse]

In more amusing news from Russia;

One of the main channels (Channel One) reported today that Russian troops discovered a gay and lesbian club in Mariupol, run by Joe Biden and the US Congress.

With satanic paraphernalia, of course.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1518928395777847298

[Geraldsh]

Raping and pillaging have been the rewards for winning a battle since wars began. The only thing different now is social media and the enlightenment of the me-to movement.
No country can claim superiority in this case.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

Raping and pillaging have been the rewards for winning a battle since wars began. The only thing different now is social media and the enlightenment of the me-to movement.
No country can claim superiority in this case.

I disagree pretty strongly on that. Even the USA, which is very far from perfect, did make efforts to prosecute soldiers who engaged in excess or sexual violence during their various ill-advised invasions. There's a big difference between that and systematically encouraging rape.

You can definitely find examples of American soldiers raping women in the middle east, but those incidents largely resulted in at least some kind of prosecution, and what's going on in Ukraine appears to be of several degrees of magnitude worse.

[djsFlames]

If raping/pillaging is systemically "encouraged" in modern day wars then i don't want to live on this planet.

Conquering a place does not mean you must desecrate it with every atrocity imaginable. And surely even in conquering, we can maintain an iota of our humanity.

If Russia had dreams of governing any part of Ukraine in the future, that's how you destroy any chance of that ever happening. Those 40 million people will continue to exist after the war. Doing irrefutable damage like that to a whole generation of citizens can't be wise to have any kind of peaceful relation moving forward. They will never forget.

I hope those soldiers/savages and Putin have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of their existence.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

Raping and pillaging have been the rewards for winning a battle since wars began. The only thing different now is social media and the enlightenment of the me-to movement.
No country can claim superiority in this case.

No country can claim innocence, just like no country can claim there are no rapes in that country in peace time There are however MASSIVE differences between how common it is, and how much it's encouraged or discouraged.

They are very far from being all the same.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Geraldsh

Raping and pillaging have been the rewards for winning a battle since wars began. The only thing different now is social media and the enlightenment of the me-to movement.
No country can claim superiority in this case.

this is a poor post

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by blankall

I disagree pretty strongly on that. Even the USA, which is very far from perfect, did make efforts to prosecute soldiers who engaged in excess or sexual violence during their various ill-advised invasions. There's a big difference between that and systematically encouraging rape.

You can definitely find examples of American soldiers raping women in the middle east, but those incidents largely resulted in at least some kind of prosecution, and what's going on in Ukraine appears to be of several degrees of magnitude worse.

Totally agree. In this context, and other contexts like when people say that NATO or the USA killed civilians too. Yeah, for sure civilian casualties and sexual assaults happen far too often in war, but there is a huge difference between making it part of your war effort and something that unfortunately happens, but you try to minimize.

I will defend Russia only to the extent that I think it is wrong for some people to imply that it is something pathological about being Russian. I believe it is systemic, and perhaps cultural to the degree that historical violence and trauma can shape a culture. These things can be turned around if the will is there however.

[Itse]

I would like to make a comparison here;

US can't claim it's innocent of bombing civilians. The whole drone war against terrorism was exactly that. Time after time US hit areas with civilians, sometimes in very densely populated, to get this one guy or that. It was an abomination and the whole program was obviously criminal, organized terrorism.

It's still very different from systematically leveling whole cities with artillery, which is what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

Neither are innocents, but clearly the latter is much worse.