Sacrificed lives, same old privileged playbook

The way both Russia and Ukraine use prisoners and minorities in their armies is way more complicated than people make it out to be. I keep hearing stuff like, “the quality of their people is higher,” but honestly, that just sounds straight-up racist to me. What’s really happening is Russia is throwing convicts and ethnic minorities - people the state doesn’t care about - into these brutal “meatwave” assaults to absorb losses, while Ukrainians are losing their best engineers, teachers, and other skilled workers because they have no choice but to mobilize their own working population just to defend the country. Russia can’t get masses of people from Moscow or St. Petersburg to sign up - those cities are too wealthy, and the Kremlin’s offer of 3,000 euros a month just isn’t enough to convince them. People always hype up how Finland held off the Soviet Union during World War II, but a lot of that was because the Soviets, under Stalin, would send unwanted minorities to the front lines first. Only after those units were wiped out did they start sending in more trained soldiers, and even then, a lot of those “actual soldiers” were Ukrainians forced to fight for Stalin. Finland didn’t have some elite, professional army either - most of their defenders were regular farmers grabbing hunting rifles to protect their homes. The Soviet leadership back then, especially Stalin, really bought into their own propaganda, and it’s kind of wild how similar that is to what we see from the Kremlin today. The difference is, with the internet and more open media, Russia just can’t brainwash everyone the same way anymore. Ordinary Russians aren’t eager to die for a war they don’t believe in, and the cycle of sacrificing other people’s lives while shielding the privileged just keeps repeating, only with new faces and new technology.