This video you should see. The Englishman Aiden Aslin is a young adventurer who wanted to be on the side of good. He fought on the side of the Kurds against the Islamic State, and then got recruited into the Ukrainian army. Gradually, he found himself fighting on the side of neo-Nazi criminal gangs. For a long time, he tried not to see it, because mercenary salaries are not bad (idealism has probably worn off in the meantime). When the war with Russia came, he wanted to leave, but he couldn’t. Capture is the best thing that could have happened to him. As he says, he realises he is very lucky to have survived. He would like to warn his friends in the UK not to support the escalation of the war and, most importantly, not to get involved themselves. He has had the experience of Ukrainian soldiers being sent to senseless deaths for the sake of nice media coverage (and so that intellectuals in the West can be moved – I might add). Meanwhile, his twitter account spouts heroic statements about fighting Russian monsters.
The passage that he was just handing out bullets and guarding the warehouse, and that he didn’t shoot any Russians himself, doesn’t sound very credible to me. But in his situation, I understand.
Many more people are dying, and the better people in Western countries can enjoy much more intense emotions.
I’d like to point out a small detail from the whole conversation. One of those thousands of details that we don’t even notice and which are essential for the participants. When members of the reconstituted SS forces gouge out the eyes of Russian prisoners and slit their throats, when they record it on cell phones, and when the Ukrainian government does not in any way prevent the dissemination of these recordings, this is not a cruelty in itself. Soldiers on both sides are then unwilling to surrender even in utterly hopeless situations. Many more people are dying, and the better people in Western countries can enjoy much more intense emotions.
The media and liberal intellectuals give the war a much worse image than when it was “just” a war for control of a territory.
