KATERYNA TYSHCHENKO – SUNDAY, 14 AUGUST 2022, 22:22
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that those Russians who do not actively express their opposition to the war in Ukraine are, in fact, complicit in it.
Quote: "[W]hen evil takes on such proportions, people’s silence approaches the level of complicity. And refraining from taking up an active stance against evil will only assist it.
Therefore, if you have Russian citizenship and you are silent, it means that you are not fighting, and thus that you are supporting evil.
And no matter where you are, on the territory of Russia or abroad, you must voice your support for Ukraine, and therefore voice your opposition to this war."
Details: Zelenskyy also noted that in the near future, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [the Ukrainian parliament - ed.] will have to make a decision on the extension of martial law and general mobilisation.
"This is an obvious decision, and the reasons for making it are obvious," he said.
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jackpype on August 15th, 2022 at 04:38 UTC »
All right you know what I'll take the down vote storm. I disagree. I don't know what it's like in Russia, but I'm not sure I would risk my life in the life of my family to speak out about it. It doesn't seem like protesting and speaking out is going to have an effect on this problem so why put my family's life at risk?
ch_greams on August 15th, 2022 at 00:27 UTC »
More than 15000 people were arrested at anti-war protests in russia in the first month of the war ( https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/03/22/more-than-15000-russians-have-been-arrested-in-anti-war-protests ).
Right after they started heavily cracking down and arresting them for literally anything, mystery fires started happening ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_mystery_fires ). Alternative would be going empty-handed against police with real guns, and those people will torture you and if you go missing nothing will be done. I know this in detail because I was there when the same thing happened in Belarus 2 years ago.
You see a few crazy russian people yelling on Instagram. But what you don't see are people who volunteer to help refugees, how many non-russian in Europe speak languages to help Ukrainians do you think? Here's for example Belgian red cross https://volontairesdecrise.croix-rouge.be/ , they still need rus/ukr volunteers even though Belgium can't really accept new refugees.
Also, how many people do you think will tell someone that they're from russia even in the same anti-war protest somewhere in Europe? Large groups of people are rarely rational and it's not safe.
I wouldn't call all of this silence, and calls to hate all russians won't help to end this war sooner, what would help is to empower any possible opposition in russia. Otherwise, you'll get North Korea 2.0, which will send ICBMs randomly scaring people and it won't be possible to do anything with it then.
wired1984 on August 15th, 2022 at 00:24 UTC »
I actually have some amount of pity for Russians. They’re held captive to this oppressive system. The lucky ones just leave.