There sort of is a big difference in moral character between the two groups, though. Certainly in the case of the soldiers on the front lines. Yes, terrible things are being done by people on both sides, such is war—it creates wonderful opportunities for those lacking morals. But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine. Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc. That seems like an important distinction.
I agree that the current discourse is not objective. It’s not supposed to be—it’s propaganda. I also agree that it’s not Middle-earth. There is a lot of shady things going on during this birthing of a nation. That being said, this is one of the few conflicts where the Goodies and Baddies are obvious.
But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine.
If you think Russian official military doctrine includes rape, then (and I’m trying to put this as politely as possible) you are deluded.
Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc
Probably true, but I do wish we’d actually know how much plundering is going on relative to how many soldiers are there.
That seems like an important distinction.
I saw some pretty nasty psychological warfare-type stuff the Ukranians were doing that the Russian’s weren’t. Like sending pictures of their dead sons to Russian mothers, and it seems like Ukraine is potentially willing to kill ‘pure’ civilians abroad than Russia is (see the murder of Darya Dugina, yes I know about Russia going after ex-spies and arms-dealers, so it’s not so clear cut). Obviously it’s hard to compare two countries when one is invading, and the other is defending. But nobody can claim that either side hasn’t committed atrocities.
But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine. Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc.
Well, that was true during WWII up until the Soviet Army started winning and fighting on German soil. Then they started behaving worse than the German military. We have no idea what Ukrainian troops will do if and when they take over Crimea. Dehumanizing the enemy is happening on both sides, pretty strongly.
True. But that’s sort of a different matter. Also, I’m honor bound to say that the Soviets started misbehaving before they got to German soil. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories.
Crimea would be fighting on Ukrainian, rather than Russian soil (that’s the whole point here), so I’m not sure that it applies. It could go both ways. Especially since Ukraine is very dependent on the west, so they’re likely to at least pretend to be nice.
You’re totally correct about the dehumanizing, though. And it’s very concerning.
Crimea would be fighting on Ukrainian, rather than Russian soil (that’s the whole point here)
Yes, that is the point indeed. Well, Kyiv, Kherson and places like that are unquestionably “Ukrainian soil”, Donetsk and Luhansk are sort of 50⁄50 (not exactly, and changing quite a bit after the war started) due to the influx of Russians over the decades, and Crimea is very disputably so. Most locals are ethnically Russians (and long persecuted Crimean Tatars) who lived there for generations and had been quite unhappy with being under the Ukrainian rule for decades, welcomed the Russian takeover. There were no widespread rapes or abuse of locals by the Russian troops taking over Crimea in 2014, as far as I know. It was all very peaceful, completely unlike what is going on in this war. Russia and its military did a lot of shit in Europe, Central Asia, and most recently Syria, and a lot of it is counts as war crimes. Taking over Crimea doesn’t rank in the top 100, from what I understand.
I agree with this as a general description, with the obvious caveats that it’s hard to not welcome someone who’s pointing a gun at you etc., since that makes it somewhat coercive, even if you’d have welcomed them anyway. Crimea really does seem to like Russia, or at least did so before the war started getting serious (I’m guessing it’s more complicated now).
That being said, I was talking about it being Ukrainian soil from the point of view of the soldiers. They’d be thinking of themselves as heroes rescuing a captive population, so are more likely to be nice. Although you could imagine the opposite story, where they think of them as traitors to be punished and purged.
[Soviet Army] started misbehaving before they got to German soil. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories.
Soviet Army was famous for raping women on the territories they “liberated”; at least I have heard stories about their behavior in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Not a systematic rape, like they did in Germany, but simply “soldiers doing whatever they want (with the approval of their officers), and if you complain you get shot”.
Most Soviet soldiers actually had no idea what country they were currently in, and whether that country was technically an ally or an enemy. They probably didn’t care anyway, considering that they also raped women recently liberated from concentration camps (link).
During socialism, Soviet Union did not allow discussion of this topic in any of its vassal states.
EDIT: According to this article, in current Russia you could get up to five years of prison for discussing this topic.
Yeah, definitely wasn’t taught in schools, unsurprisingly. Even in Germany (both of them) it was minimized, though at least in West Germany students learned about “Russian babies”, but more from an angle “war is evil, soldiers rape”, than specifically anti-Russian. At least that is my understanding. Which is kind of my original point, I would not assume that soldiers of any of the ex-Soviet countries are better than from others. It might happen that Ukrainian military leaders will be more strict in that regard, but this remains to be seen.
I assume that the Ukrainian army was significantly “Westernized” during the last decade.
No evidence other than dozen articles from various sources I have read recently, but the story seems consistent (still might be propaganda, though). According to those sources, NATO offered quite a lot of training for non-member countries as a part of Partnership for Peace. Ukraine took that opportunity very seriously; they had a strong motivation to get better quickly. Russia was also invited, but only did some half-assed effort, mostly using the training as a “vacation” for a few selected soldiers.
So I would assume that 10 years ago, there was not much difference between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, from the perspective of training and professionalism. But today, there probably is.
After watching some interviews with Russian POWs, and listening to intercepted phone calls (yes, possibly strong selection bias, maybe completely staged), it seems to me that the Russia’s army is organized very ineffectively, relying on numerical superiority, not caring much about how many soldiers die. To put it bluntly, Russian army seems to be used as a form of population control (of the non-Russian ethnic groups), so from this perspective occasionally dying soldiers are a feature, not a bug, as long as the war ultimately results in victory. The only problem is that in Ukraine too many soldiers are dying now, the territory is being lost, and Russia is running out of tanks. New soldiers are only given one week of training, and survive on average about one week in the battle.
Shortly, my impression is that Soviet/Russian army has always been “a very large group consisting mostly of poorly trained people”. That seems to explain everything—the rapes, the looting, and ultimately the defeat by Ukrainian army. Yes, Ukraine got lots of weapons from the West, but if both armies had an equivalent amount of training, Russia still would have won.
In the conflict from 2014-2021 the amount of torture that both sides did was roughly the same:
It estimated the total number of conflict-related detainees subjected to torture and ill-treatment in 2014-2021 at around 4,000 – 1,500 at the hands of government agents and about 2,500 by separatists. They included an estimated 340 victims of sexual violence.
The OHCHR said that both in the government-controlled and separatist-held territories “torture and ill-treatment, including conflict-related sexual violence, were used to extract confessions or information, or to otherwise force detainees to cooperate, as well as for punitive purposes, to humiliate and intimidate, and to extort money and property.”
As far as the last year goes, we don’t have yet good information about how many misdeeds each side did and there’s a lot of propaganda about it on both sides where it’s hard to know which claims are true.
Ukrainian military setting up bases in residential areas, schools, and hospitals and firing missiles from there is a war crime, and more than someone on the Ukrainian side just using “wonderful opportunities for those lacking morals”.
It’s also war crimes as part of military doctrine.
It seems a bit disingenuous to put pre 2021 together with the current war. They’re quite different. Especially nearer 2014 when the Ukrainian army was a joke. That being said, I reckon I could have been unfair, since I was thinking about the official stance on such matters, rather than how it plays out on the ground. The Ukrainians seem to at least pretend to care about behaving properly.
Thanks for the info on torture—I should really have investigated it myself—do you have any more data on the scale of it? A quick search only found variations on your linked article, and the 3 soldiers shot in March. Which honestly surprised me, since I assumed that I’d find a load of Polish nationalists shouting about how bad the Ukrainians are.
We don’t have good info and there’s lots of propaganda. I’d still bet a lot on the majority of the badness being Russian. Their army has a history of bad behavior, which seems to be repeating itself now. Looting and wanton destruction are both rampant and institutionalized.
Setting up bases in residential areas is bad. One example that comes to mind was that shopping center that got bombed in the spring because it was being used to park humvees. That being said, setting up bases in residential areas during an active conflict where you’re fighting to protect/recapture said areas is a different scale of bad than stealing all washing machines in a liberated town, and then leaving booby traps once you run away. Again—a lot depends on how often this happens, proportionally. There are bad eggs in every organization. Especially if you have a monopoly on violence. The question is how it’s spread out, and how deep its roots go.
It seems a bit disingenuous to put pre 2021 together with the current war.
[...]
I’d still bet a lot on the majority of the badness being Russian. Their army has a history of bad behavior, which seems to be repeating itself now. Looting and wanton destruction are both rampant and institutionalized.
If you want to extrapolate from history, both armies have a history of torturing roughly the same number of people within the bounds of uncertainty we have for those estimates.
Besides that history, we should also expect that a good portion of the Ukrainian army comes from those street militias. I only cited the attack of the women’s March as one example but there are also countless other examples of bad things they did. I would not expect that kind of people to wage war without badness.
Thanks for the info on torture—I should really have investigated it myself—do you have any more data on the scale of it?
That being said, setting up bases in residential areas during an active conflict where you’re fighting to protect/recapture said areas
Most residential areas where soldiers located themselves were kilometres away from front lines. Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas. In the cases it documented, Amnesty International is not aware that the Ukrainian military who located themselves in civilian structures in residential areas asked or assisted civilians to evacuate nearby buildings – a failure to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians.
These are civilians who are Ukrainian citizens. My point is not about the badness of this particular act, it’s about the kind of heuristics you need to have to think that if you are the Ukrainian army, using Ukrainian citizens as human shields is a good idea. An army that operates with those heuristics is going to do a lot of badness.
Which honestly surprised me, since I assumed that I’d find a load of Polish nationalists shouting about how bad the Ukrainians are.
There’s a lesson here: People like the Polish nationalists are bad at doing research. Just like most of the COVID skeptic posts you find on social networks are also very poor in quality.
Again—a lot depends on how often this happens, proportionally.
At 22 out of 29 schools visited, Amnesty International researchers either found soldiers using the premises or found evidence of current or prior military activity – including the presence of military fatigues, discarded munitions, army ration packets and military vehicles.
To me, that sounds like it proportionally happens a lot.
All that said, if we get a peace deal that will reduce badness that both sides inflict. War is bad.
There sort of is a big difference in moral character between the two groups, though. Certainly in the case of the soldiers on the front lines. Yes, terrible things are being done by people on both sides, such is war—it creates wonderful opportunities for those lacking morals. But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine. Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc. That seems like an important distinction.
I agree that the current discourse is not objective. It’s not supposed to be—it’s propaganda. I also agree that it’s not Middle-earth. There is a lot of shady things going on during this birthing of a nation. That being said, this is one of the few conflicts where the Goodies and Baddies are obvious.
If you think Russian official military doctrine includes rape, then (and I’m trying to put this as politely as possible) you are deluded.
Probably true, but I do wish we’d actually know how much plundering is going on relative to how many soldiers are there.
I saw some pretty nasty psychological warfare-type stuff the Ukranians were doing that the Russian’s weren’t. Like sending pictures of their dead sons to Russian mothers, and it seems like Ukraine is potentially willing to kill ‘pure’ civilians abroad than Russia is (see the murder of Darya Dugina, yes I know about Russia going after ex-spies and arms-dealers, so it’s not so clear cut). Obviously it’s hard to compare two countries when one is invading, and the other is defending. But nobody can claim that either side hasn’t committed atrocities.
Well, that was true during WWII up until the Soviet Army started winning and fighting on German soil. Then they started behaving worse than the German military. We have no idea what Ukrainian troops will do if and when they take over Crimea. Dehumanizing the enemy is happening on both sides, pretty strongly.
True. But that’s sort of a different matter. Also, I’m honor bound to say that the Soviets started misbehaving before they got to German soil. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories.
Crimea would be fighting on Ukrainian, rather than Russian soil (that’s the whole point here), so I’m not sure that it applies. It could go both ways. Especially since Ukraine is very dependent on the west, so they’re likely to at least pretend to be nice.
You’re totally correct about the dehumanizing, though. And it’s very concerning.
Yes, that is the point indeed. Well, Kyiv, Kherson and places like that are unquestionably “Ukrainian soil”, Donetsk and Luhansk are sort of 50⁄50 (not exactly, and changing quite a bit after the war started) due to the influx of Russians over the decades, and Crimea is very disputably so. Most locals are ethnically Russians (and long persecuted Crimean Tatars) who lived there for generations and had been quite unhappy with being under the Ukrainian rule for decades, welcomed the Russian takeover. There were no widespread rapes or abuse of locals by the Russian troops taking over Crimea in 2014, as far as I know. It was all very peaceful, completely unlike what is going on in this war. Russia and its military did a lot of shit in Europe, Central Asia, and most recently Syria, and a lot of it is counts as war crimes. Taking over Crimea doesn’t rank in the top 100, from what I understand.
I agree with this as a general description, with the obvious caveats that it’s hard to not welcome someone who’s pointing a gun at you etc., since that makes it somewhat coercive, even if you’d have welcomed them anyway. Crimea really does seem to like Russia, or at least did so before the war started getting serious (I’m guessing it’s more complicated now).
That being said, I was talking about it being Ukrainian soil from the point of view of the soldiers. They’d be thinking of themselves as heroes rescuing a captive population, so are more likely to be nice. Although you could imagine the opposite story, where they think of them as traitors to be punished and purged.
Soviet Army was famous for raping women on the territories they “liberated”; at least I have heard stories about their behavior in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Not a systematic rape, like they did in Germany, but simply “soldiers doing whatever they want (with the approval of their officers), and if you complain you get shot”.
Most Soviet soldiers actually had no idea what country they were currently in, and whether that country was technically an ally or an enemy. They probably didn’t care anyway, considering that they also raped women recently liberated from concentration camps (link).
During socialism, Soviet Union did not allow discussion of this topic in any of its vassal states.
EDIT: According to this article, in current Russia you could get up to five years of prison for discussing this topic.
Yeah, definitely wasn’t taught in schools, unsurprisingly. Even in Germany (both of them) it was minimized, though at least in West Germany students learned about “Russian babies”, but more from an angle “war is evil, soldiers rape”, than specifically anti-Russian. At least that is my understanding. Which is kind of my original point, I would not assume that soldiers of any of the ex-Soviet countries are better than from others. It might happen that Ukrainian military leaders will be more strict in that regard, but this remains to be seen.
I assume that the Ukrainian army was significantly “Westernized” during the last decade.
No evidence other than dozen articles from various sources I have read recently, but the story seems consistent (still might be propaganda, though). According to those sources, NATO offered quite a lot of training for non-member countries as a part of Partnership for Peace. Ukraine took that opportunity very seriously; they had a strong motivation to get better quickly. Russia was also invited, but only did some half-assed effort, mostly using the training as a “vacation” for a few selected soldiers.
So I would assume that 10 years ago, there was not much difference between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, from the perspective of training and professionalism. But today, there probably is.
After watching some interviews with Russian POWs, and listening to intercepted phone calls (yes, possibly strong selection bias, maybe completely staged), it seems to me that the Russia’s army is organized very ineffectively, relying on numerical superiority, not caring much about how many soldiers die. To put it bluntly, Russian army seems to be used as a form of population control (of the non-Russian ethnic groups), so from this perspective occasionally dying soldiers are a feature, not a bug, as long as the war ultimately results in victory. The only problem is that in Ukraine too many soldiers are dying now, the territory is being lost, and Russia is running out of tanks. New soldiers are only given one week of training, and survive on average about one week in the battle.
Shortly, my impression is that Soviet/Russian army has always been “a very large group consisting mostly of poorly trained people”. That seems to explain everything—the rapes, the looting, and ultimately the defeat by Ukrainian army. Yes, Ukraine got lots of weapons from the West, but if both armies had an equivalent amount of training, Russia still would have won.
In the conflict from 2014-2021 the amount of torture that both sides did was roughly the same:
As far as the last year goes, we don’t have yet good information about how many misdeeds each side did and there’s a lot of propaganda about it on both sides where it’s hard to know which claims are true.
Ukrainian military setting up bases in residential areas, schools, and hospitals and firing missiles from there is a war crime, and more than someone on the Ukrainian side just using “wonderful opportunities for those lacking morals”.
It’s also war crimes as part of military doctrine.
It seems a bit disingenuous to put pre 2021 together with the current war. They’re quite different. Especially nearer 2014 when the Ukrainian army was a joke. That being said, I reckon I could have been unfair, since I was thinking about the official stance on such matters, rather than how it plays out on the ground. The Ukrainians seem to at least pretend to care about behaving properly.
Thanks for the info on torture—I should really have investigated it myself—do you have any more data on the scale of it? A quick search only found variations on your linked article, and the 3 soldiers shot in March. Which honestly surprised me, since I assumed that I’d find a load of Polish nationalists shouting about how bad the Ukrainians are.
We don’t have good info and there’s lots of propaganda. I’d still bet a lot on the majority of the badness being Russian. Their army has a history of bad behavior, which seems to be repeating itself now. Looting and wanton destruction are both rampant and institutionalized.
Setting up bases in residential areas is bad. One example that comes to mind was that shopping center that got bombed in the spring because it was being used to park humvees. That being said, setting up bases in residential areas during an active conflict where you’re fighting to protect/recapture said areas is a different scale of bad than stealing all washing machines in a liberated town, and then leaving booby traps once you run away. Again—a lot depends on how often this happens, proportionally. There are bad eggs in every organization. Especially if you have a monopoly on violence. The question is how it’s spread out, and how deep its roots go.
If you want to extrapolate from history, both armies have a history of torturing roughly the same number of people within the bounds of uncertainty we have for those estimates.
Besides that history, we should also expect that a good portion of the Ukrainian army comes from those street militias. I only cited the attack of the women’s March as one example but there are also countless other examples of bad things they did. I would not expect that kind of people to wage war without badness.
The article does cite OHCHR which is the UN Human Rights organization. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/arbitrary-detention-torture-and-ill-treatment-context-armed-conflict is the report.
Most residential areas where soldiers located themselves were kilometres away from front lines. Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas. In the cases it documented, Amnesty International is not aware that the Ukrainian military who located themselves in civilian structures in residential areas asked or assisted civilians to evacuate nearby buildings – a failure to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians.
These are civilians who are Ukrainian citizens. My point is not about the badness of this particular act, it’s about the kind of heuristics you need to have to think that if you are the Ukrainian army, using Ukrainian citizens as human shields is a good idea. An army that operates with those heuristics is going to do a lot of badness.
There’s a lesson here: People like the Polish nationalists are bad at doing research. Just like most of the COVID skeptic posts you find on social networks are also very poor in quality.
At 22 out of 29 schools visited, Amnesty International researchers either found soldiers using the premises or found evidence of current or prior military activity – including the presence of military fatigues, discarded munitions, army ration packets and military vehicles.
To me, that sounds like it proportionally happens a lot.
All that said, if we get a peace deal that will reduce badness that both sides inflict. War is bad.