"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 (13 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 (9 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 (3 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.

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