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[Article] ‘Evil must not win’ — how Ukraine’s female partisans resist Russian occupation
(kyivindependent.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Wait until the Russian army rolls over your city. Then it'll be really hard to leave. What are you supposed to do, cross the battlefields?
Since it's Kyiv it would mean it's finally over I guess. Russia has open borders so if we eventually end up in Russia we can just leave.
"russia has open borders" uh huh, as well as democracy, free speech and human rights, yep
I said it has open borders which is factually true. Also, last summer they paid their conscripts in Moscow 22k$ for a contract. Regarding "human rights", well, lets try to count human rights. We don't have the right to criticise our government and we don't have the right to leave the country. Russians don't have the right to criticize their government but they do have the right to leave the country. They also pretty much free to walk their cities and participate in whatever activities present there unlike our conscription-aged men who are only really allowed to participate in war.
This one broke my heart a little bit. I've seen some of these guys dying on video, in a cold puddle, bleeding out and gasping.
Yeah, I'm sure you're posting from Kyiv. You sound exactly like Ukrainians I know in person and on social media. They all talk exactly like you, and every so often they bring up what the bonus amount is for people signing up for armed forces in Moscow. It's uncanny.
Edit: Typo
Maybe those people are there to create a picture for you. Now that USAID and similar projects are stopping, we might see less of those.
You all look at this literally as battle of good vs evil, the reality: ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder, while russia stopped forced conscription and pays 22k$ to motivate their conscripts. The propaganda image of ukraine as good or democratic is absurd. It's just a meat shield of west at best, and it rapidly becomes more and more inefficient.
If you want to check current ukrainian inside discourse, watch independent ukrainian bloggers, a few for a start:
Or, maybe you're there to create a picture for me. I didn't say it, you did.
I know the Ukrainian woman whose son was a client of mine for a while would have some pretty harsh words for you. I knew her for a while, and one day said one thing in support for the war, and it was like this outpouring came out of her of appreciation for it and support for Ukraine.
I don't really know the Ukrainian guy in my gaming group well enough to know where he stands on the war. We've talked about it, just a small amount. He definitely didn't say he was afraid of being tortured by the Ukrainian government, I'll say that.
Before the war, I actually kind of liked the Russian people I knew, on a personal level. I still do, I guess, although unrelated events have meant we don't really see each other now. Their mentality is pretty similar to mine, weirdly enough.
You're saying all this shit to me about USAID creating a picture for me, when you have no idea how I form my pictures. You conveniently excised the other part that came before "and on social media," which I had put there for a very specific reason.
Man, get the fuck out. I didn't say "evil," the people whose country is being invaded said that. Sounds pretty right to me.
You sure are trying hard to talk up Russia, for someone who lives in Kyiv. Keep saying bullshit. I welcome it, let's talk.
Women and ukrainians who live outside of Ukraine, especially those who left before May 2024, have a very different mental image of Ukraine. For me the main turning point is the scale of unlawful forced conscription really. Simple as that. I stopped paying taxes, stopped donating, and stopped mentally supporting Ukraine. I just care for borders to open at this point. Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships to me.
Sounds like you should get the fuck out. People are dying to keep your apartment building safe, and you're there trashing them because they're short of people, while you're not helping them.
Maybe when your savings run out you could go for that $22k. It sounds like that's really important to you. You keep bringing it up.
I do like that you've abandoned the effort to paint Russia as some improvement in individual human rights, and just gone with the "they're both hopeless corrupt evil" brand of cynicism. That's definitely going to be more believable than "Russia is better, I'm only here because I can't leave."
Just open the borders and there's no need to protect me personally.
I'm not trashing ukrainian soldiers. Conscription officers are not soldiers and never were. Neither are politicians.
It's just that russians lives now supposedly valued way more than ukrainians while it was part of propaganda that russian lives worth nothing and ukrainians are part of civilized world and share its values.
You said:
"Military is terribly mismanaged"
"terrible mismanagement at battlefields or corruption"
"they only leech help from west and sacrifice people unwilling to fight in return without even trying to win"
"US/EU giving money to Ukraine is basically sponsoring kidnapping/torturing/killing people who don’t want to fight"
As well as on top of:
"sorry girls, that’s all cool and I like the vibe, but I’m not going to fight for you"
"it’s not like they can’t go to Ukraine-controlled territories and mobilize there and go to the frontlines if they really care for this country so much"
I've pretty much decided you can get fucked.
Military commandment is very bad. A lot of soldiers escape from there (AWOL/deserting), everybody is talking about this, even the most patriotic bloggers that oppose ceasefires etc.
How are regular ukrainian soldiers responsible for any of this? It's the fault of our corrupt government. Most soldiers are also very unhappy with this mismanagement and and ask to not send people who will most likely desert from battlefield to their brigades.
Sure because that whole article is bullshit propaganda by people who will never have to fight in war themselves. Is it even moral to be allowed to have a voice in question of whether to continue the war when they aren't even subject to conscription?
Like I said: If the military command was bad, Ukraine would have lost the war by now.
You're avoiding fighting in the war. I will be perfectly willing to protect your right to speak on it, I guess, to "have a voice" as you put it. But I think under the system you propose, you'd be required to shut up and say nothing well before a group of partisans who are taking an active part in resisting the occupation. If you're actively avoiding requirements to fight for Ukraine, why should you be "allowed" (in your system) to speak on their behalf?
I agree. I wanted to say it's kind of immoral to write that propaganda when you're not even fighting yourself. And it's twice as immoral when you know that no one wants to fight anymore and people are forced against their will. Not that something should be banned.
Do you know how effective military forces are, when people are fighting against their will?
What's your explanation for why Russia outnumbers Ukraine about 20-to-1, is outspending them by about 10-to-1, and is stalled about 100 km from the border, after three years of fighting?
Also, it's 68196-65871=2325 km since September 3.
Idk where you get that from, you can check the map that is updated every day here: https://deepstatemap.live I just checked total occupied territory month ago and today and it's 68196-67889=307 km in a month.
km, not km². The red part at the eastern edge of Ukraine is about 100 km thick.
My point is that that's an incredibly poor showing for Russia fighting against a massively outnumbered enemy that's mismanaging a war fought by people who don't want to fight. And, on top of that, they have people giving advice to NATO and the EU about how they should organize their militaries, as if they have a bunch of authority and insight as to how to do it. What's your explanation?
They can't efficiently extend frontline "into the depth" (km) because it leads to "cauldrons", so they extend it along all the border.
It took 2 absurd failing counteroffensives to wipe all willing soldiers and forced conscription started just half of year ago, and everything was on rapid decline since then. It doesn't all happen overnight.
The truth about situation in Ukraine is, as usual, somewhere between the two extremes. It's definitely not as bad as russia - there are rumors of men getting forcefully drafted in some places - but I don't know anyone personally who had gone through that. We're all scared and tired, and the shitshow that's going on in the West is not helping keep our hopes up.
And yet we persist, because the only other choice is to lie down and stop breathing.
Yeah, I get that. You'll notice I didn't tell that other guy that reports of harsh forced conscription are definitely not true. Some of what he's saying is clearly total bullshit ("Both Ukraine and Russia are hopeless corrupt evil dictatorships" "ukraine beats, kidnaps and tortures people to send them to meat grinder" "a worse dictatorship than russia is"). Some is clearly based on truth or has some accuracy to it (harsh conscription "a meat shield of west" "nobody wants to fight anymore").
I cannot even imagine trying to fight for my life with the level of apathy, inconsistency, incompetence, and bumbling that's gone on from the West in general in its support for Ukraine. It's a fucking crime. I like that Zelensky doesn't sugarcoat it all that much. He gave an interview with the AP a few days ago where he said as much. More or less, "Yes, we got about $77 billion, of course I'm grateful, it's wonderful, but it was all too late, all with 'red line' conditions that mean we can't really fight, all with all this money and materiel going missing sometimes or we don't know where it went, all overblown in its impact CAN YOU GUYS JUST FUCKING HELP US... we are fighting the enemy you would be fighting, if not for us being in the way." That's not the words but that was the overall vibe.
Like I say, I can't even imagine. And three years of nonstop war will break anyone down. And now it's going to get worse. Trump hasn't even really had time to get started on fucking things up. I hope you can keep safe.
Pretty much, yeah. I wish for you safety and better things.
There are thousands of videos like this: https://streamable.com/lzh27n
If you want to check the scale of this and find more videos and news of how this is going, you can check this telegram channel: https://t.me/+MUx169gobDtjZjJh
Many of our videobloggers compare this to Holodomor due to the fact that those who were executing those orders back then were also locals.
I like this one:
Which one is your favorite so far?
I like the one with "are you sure how this evening will end?" It gives some funny spy vibes.
You're rather naive if you think you won't get conscripted into the russian army the moment Kyiv gets occupied. Though, with this kind of thinking, I'm sure they'll welcome you.
Edit: for what it's worth, I'm also one of those conscription-age men living in Kyiv trying my best to not get drafted. That doesn't mean thinking I won't have to fear for my life and freedom under russian occupation. The only real way for me and you to regain our safety is for Ukraine to win the war. And the least we can do for that is to stop pretending russian government has any sort of moral advantage
It's impossible and it was obvious to anyone who bothered to check basic arithmetic from the very beginning. My best hope is for some kind of ceasefire, elections, peace deal, which all give some little chance that maybe mobilization will stop and borders will open.
And sent where, to Baltic or Poland? Okay, I'll proceed to give up to NATO soldiers immediately.
It's not that they're nice, it's just that ukrainian government turned country into a worse dictatorship than russia is, and it really uncovered some truths about democracies, media, how european are ukrainian values and how helpful UN is, and many other things.
So why don't you go get conscripted and give up to russian soldiers? If Ukraine is a worse dictatorship, surely that will be a step up.
Oh wait, you actually are talking out of your ass.
Just one "step up" from ukrainian levels of shittiness isn't enough. This is too unsafe compared to giving up to EU. Russians will definitely want to trade you to some of their captured people even if you don't want to go back. EU will most likely not trade you back if you ask them.
I'm still kinda sorta willing to give you benefit of the doubt because we're all scared shitless for our lives every night, hearing air raid alert sirens. But your replies to OP start resembling russian propaganda rulebook more and more. If this war was following "basic arithmetic", we would be part of russia for the past 3 years.
A brief ceasefire, allowing you to get to EU, will not be enough to guarantee your safety. Given opportunity, putin will regroup, get more support from his allies and continue the war past Ukraine. I respect not willing to be sent to the battlefield against your will - but, unless we somehow get enough help to push russia back, this will happen sooner or later regardless.
EU should allocate more spending on their military so that when the day comes, they will have more than enough professional soldiers to fight Russia and have no need to mobilize civilians. If EU was one country it would be hard, but when there is NATO, contract soldiers from many NATO states might be enough without additional conscripts.
And why should EU do that for your sake, when you no longer give a shit about your own country?
Ask him why he thinks NATO uses the "contract soldier" vs "conscripts" distinction, or where he got that mental model from to use it habitually. That's not how Ukraine does it, is it? Or is it? Presumably most Ukrainians would know that it's specific to Russia instead of assuming everyone does it that way, right?
It is how Ukraine does it, too. Currently I don't think you can go for contract when you already have to be mobilized according to databases (on "Wanted" list in apps like "Reserve+" or "Dija"). And payment is laughable anyway. It would be really easy to boost morale if government decided to end forced conscription and paid to volunteers more than russia does. And it also could probably help to stabilize the frontlines. Given how much they steal I'm pretty sure they have more than enough money to pay more than russians 22k$ to volunteers as a single-time payment.
Too bad if they doesn't. What they gonna do when the time comes. In EU conscious objection is supposed to work, so people can decline en masse (did you know that includes personal beliefs, not necessarily religion?). They'd better start using that distinction asap and consider soldier as a full-time work even in peace time. So that enough people will be paid to be soldiers like a job but in case of war they and only they will go fight and no one else.
Why would they need soldiers "when the time comes" / "when the day comes"? I thought Ukraine was a lot more evil dictatorship than Russia. Aren't you looking forward to peace? Wouldn't it be nicer to have Russia on their borders, with open borders and free media, and finally put an end to the corruption of Ukraine? You said you were looking forward to the Russian military rolling over Kyiv, and then you could leave under the auspices of Russia's more friendly government. Right?
I'm mostly done talking, I'm just fucking with you I guess for my own amusement. It was enlightening though. Thanks for the insight.
I don't understand where do you see any paradox in that. Yes I'm looking forward to peace for Ukraine. Yes, I think it will be possible to leave the country in case of peace deal or if Ukraine falls. Yes, I consider it possible for Russia to continue and attack EU states eventually. Do you think I'm telling NATO to come fight for Ukraine or something? That would be neat, but that's obviously not going to happen.
It's not that they are kind, they just less absurd and at least don't sabotage their own economy and morale as hard as ukrainian government does.
…
If you're interested what ukrainians are talking about today, it's how USAID funded Maidan in 2014 and how it explains why we don't have Maidan now even though we have 100x reasons for it. In the meanwhile, Verkhovna Rada fighting each other while admitting terrible mismanagement of the frontlines. I'm personally researching some threads on extents of foreign influence in 2014 Maidan and some general things about colour revolutions.
Ukrainian ladies would be very disappointed in you.
The US State Department (more so than USAID, although I'm sure they were in Ukraine) was certainly involved in Maidan. They didn't create all those people in the streets. Those same crowds of people are out fighting against the Russians right now.
Just give it a rest. Russians can fuck off and go home. That's peace.
Apparently a lot of those far-right NGOs who were "the muscles" of Maidan were funded by west. I guess most of those have found their way to Valhalla by now. Certainly there were some civilian activists as well. I hope they don't have to participate in undersupplied meat assaults.
You didn’t reply again, but I decided to get ahead of it a little bit, in case you decided to:
https://ponder.cat/post/1520470
Oh yeah, the muscles came with their thick skulls and brutally assaulted the batons of the berkut and titushky.
Get fucked. I think how I'm going to start to deal with it when people start commenting bullshit to me, is to start to make posts about the accurate side of the matter, so that the sum total impact of you talking with me will be the spread of a lot more accurate information, instead of anything achieving your actual goal.
https://ponder.cat/post/1518838
Have fun! Tell me more about these far-right NGOs. Which NGOs, and about how many of their "muscles" were in the protests in 2013?
I took that straight from the Reddit thread I linked, you can find more there (there are some links to other sources as well). There were dozens of far-right NGOs, some of the biggest ones are listed in Wikipedia article you posted (Right Sector, Svoboda, UDAR, Spilna Sprava, Misanthropic Division). By the evening of today dozens of our popular videobloggers made videos about USAID and Maidan. I'm getting kinda sick of digging through this stuff.
Here is Reddit thread I posted before: https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/tg9zwp/what_evidence_exists_for_or_against_the_assertion/
Here's my reply to your comment elsewhere, off topic:
You said "I said it has open borders which is factually true. Also, last summer they paid their conscripts in Moscow 22k$ for a contract. Regarding “human rights”, well, lets try to count human rights. We don’t have the right to criticise our government and we don’t have the right to leave the country. Russians don’t have the right to criticize their government but they do have the right to leave the country. They also pretty much free to walk their cities and participate in whatever activities present there unlike our conscription-aged men who are only really allowed to participate in war." Sounds like you envy a lot more about it than just the ability to leave.
You said "Apparently a lot of those far-right NGOs who were “the muscles” of Maidan were funded by west." In general, you seem to think that without "the West", Maidan would never have succeeded, which given how little the West as a whole cares about Ukraine is pretty laughable. But it's hard for me to interpret this combination any other way than that the "muscles" were helping it succeed, and it wasn't a genuine people's movement.
"Your" government has fended off an enemy which is outspending and outmanning it by more than an order of magnitude. Of course, this kind of thing happens sometimes with empires, but usually if the little country is incompetent, it stops working the instant that US troops leave the country.
I made this point, and you made a weird non sequitur about "caldrons" that didn't really seem to grasp the core point that I was making.
I'm not really interested in the conversation anymore, I just wanted to respond since you made some specific points accusing me of misrepresenting you. That's what you said, maybe my summary was sloppy. I'm just mostly not interested in what you have to say anymore, to be honest.
Also:
You said, "And payment is laughable anyway. It would be really easy to boost morale if government decided to end forced conscription and paid to volunteers more than russia does. And it also could probably help to stabilize the frontlines. Given how much they steal I’m pretty sure they have more than enough money to pay more than russians 22k$ to volunteers as a single-time payment."
Maybe you're right, my summary was pretty inaccurate there. It sounded to me like you were pining for the higher pay, similar to my "envy" quotation above, but it's true you didn't explicitly say it.
Like I say, I'm mostly done, just wanted to respond to the accusation that I was lying about what you said.
Enjoy: https://ponder.cat/post/1522382
True, but that doesn't mean I want to live in Russia. It's just ridiculous to fight for what our people get and how our government treats us vs country that gives their people more and treats their people better. Countries aren't something that has inherent self-worth after all, the whole concept of states was supposed to be a tool to make people live better.
Those "muscles" played central role in making it succeed, people alone couldn't do it. Civilians in general are really bad at violence, especially in eastern europe. I was a student back then, and I didn't know a single person among my classmates or relatives or their contacts who went to Maidan.
It's "genuine" in a sense there is definitely something upsetting people and at the right time forces come in to drive that energy of people into revolution. The point is, it doesn't happen to most of things upsetting people. Since then we've many times had 100x more reasons for another Maidan, but there were no forces investing into "muscles" during long timeframes that were interested in our upset at those moments to overthrow government again. West is way more interested in dealing maximum damage to Russia at the cost of lives of ukrainians than saving lives of ukrainians. Also West thinks that if we become Russia it would just mean that Russia became stronger and it's better to just kill us all to prevent Russia from getting us. It's understandable point of view, but we as ukrainians are not interested in it.
I wrote a longer reply to this, but my browser ate it. Short version:
Here's your dose of general Ukraine postings:
https://ponder.cat/post/1528372
I can't decide which Ukraine-specific RSS feed to create and promote. I think it should just be one for now, multiple isn't necessary. Which one do you think I should pick?
Sorry, what? How is EU allocating money to defend themselves from Russia is for my sake? That's for the sake of their own people. They should watch closely what it does to people morale here in Ukraine when civilians are forcefully conscripted and try hard to make sure they never have to do the same to their civilians.