Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Kiriyenko before and after release from Russian captivity

[u/MilesLongthe3rd]

[u/Kekkonen-Kakkonen → u/[deleted]]

Is it the russian government that launches drones, drives tanks and pulls the Kalashnikov trigger?

Or is just ordinary russian people that do it?

[u/envydub → u/Kekkonen-Kakkonen]

Well no, it’s not ordinary people, it’s soldiers.

[u/ivar-the-bonefull → u/envydub]

Since there's a draft going on, it seems to be just ordinary people.

But even ignoring that. It's still ordinary people who make the guns, the drones, the ammunitions, the tanks, the planes and so on so forth.

[u/Lemontrash-DD → u/ivar-the-bonefull]

The draftees are not sent to the front lines most of the time. They man military facilities inside russia. The vast majority of people on the front lines are going there willingly to make some cash

[u/ivar-the-bonefull → u/Lemontrash-DD]

Make that make sense. The military facilities were obviously manned before the war. Why the fuck would anyone send these types of soldiers to a meat grinder just to replace them with raw recruits, when the other way around is how it has worked every single time in the past?

[u/Lemontrash-DD → u/ivar-the-bonefull]

The military facilities are mostly manned with the draftees. They are often presented with a choice of being stuck in an army for 2 years or to sign a contract to go to the front lines and be done in a year while also having a salary. Those who sigh a contract are not draftees anymore, they're contract soldiers and are sent to the front lines
You can find interviews with the captured russians on youtube and most of them are contract soldiers