"I can only say thank you for saving my life," - a captured Russian conscript who blew himself up with a grenade in order not to surrender has confirmed that in Russia, soldiers are programmed to commit suicide, being told about the long and painful torture in captivity.

Fyodor, a conscript from St. Petersburg, told a UNIAN journalist how he blew himself up together with a comrade when the Armed Forces of Ukraine approached his position in Russia's Kursk region.

"I took out a grenade. He [his comrade] said, "Let's do it." We hugged each other, threw it on the ground and said some last warm words to each other. The comrade also has a leg wound. At that point, I had already realized three times that I was closer to death. We were afraid to surrender, we didn't know what would happen here. We were afraid that there would be long and painful torture. But considering how it is in reality now, I can only say thank you for saving my life and curing me," he said.

According to Fyodor, he was given first aid by the Ukrainian military. They shared water and cigarettes with the prisoners and brought medicine to the wounded from other dugouts.

📹: Ukrainian Independent Information Agency of News

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago (2 children)

@LaFinlandia

I'm reminded of what Japanese soldiers were told about Americans. From what I recall, they, too, would commit suicide rather than be captured, fearing torture. Awful.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Back then it was almost impossible for the average Japanese person to get news not controlled by the Japanese government, but is Putin's control over the Russian internet so effective that Russians also have no information that he doesn't control?

[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not about control, it's about distrust. Totalitarian cacophony. Putin doesn't need to make Russians trust their own media; he only needs to convince them that ALL media, everywhere, lies, all the time. The weaponization of cynicism in service to fascism.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Known as the "firehose of falsehood"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

More like the "Lying Press"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Well, no. The originally German / Nazi tactic called Lügenpresse aka. "Lying Press" is more about just claiming that the press is lying – like how conservatives latched onto calling everything "fake news" after US Republicans and Trump started doing it after their bullshit was called out with that term.

The idea with the "firehose of falsehood", like the page I linked to explains, is to saturate media with so much high volume and continuous bullshit that people start to doubt whether it's even possible to know anything about objective reality in the first place. The point isn't to proclaim that the media is lying, but to simply lie so much that people start to think that all media is just lies. The tactic originated in Russia and has been in use since Soviet times and the internet has allowed them to take it to a completely new level.

And yes, Nazi-controlled media was obviously also full of total fabrications, but that doesn't mean that these two tactics are the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

He doesn't need to have watertight censorship of outside sources to have meaningful control. The USA has relatively little censorship and we still have a sizable population that are happy to accept any old bullshit as fact, without any impetus to question or validate it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

AFAIK it's more of a nudge-theoretic information bubble. Most people will just listen to the news put right in front of them. Russian language independent outlets targeted at Russia exist, but obviously are facing an uphill battle to distribute their stuff there, and if they do get through there's no way for a person to know they're not just a different kind of propaganda. Plus, the version Russian media tells is much more flattering to you, a Russian.

If you're the kind of person who's ends up on Lemmy, you may be willing to learn English and expose yourself to the outside world, however ugly what you find is. Most people are not that savvy, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

It's not total control, but it's so highly laced in propoganda and unreliable that Russians don't trust western media either, assuming it's the same. It's just like how politics in russia is something that's not for normal people so no one pays any interest in it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

A lot of people don’t get their news from the internet. Especially the older generations. The same generation that send young men to die in pointless wars.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

@ArbitraryValue

Most social media is blocked in Russia, if I'm not mistaken, so yeah, probably.

Which is sad. Nothing good ever comes of leaders stopping their people from speaking freely with foreigners.

That, by the way, is why Chat Control, KOSA, and similar legislation must be stopped. It's the same damn thing as Russian and Chinese censorship, with the same foul purpose.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Given the things that have come to light since then, I can't fault them for choosing suicide over capture.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

like?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Um… the Imperial Japanese had a very well documented history of horrible treatment of prisoners. Yes, small units were horrible in the Us forces, the poor treatment was quite wide spread in the Japanese side.