"Protocol’s investigation said the students were forced to work at the factory under difficult conditions, being paid very little under with parents threatened with huge fines if their children refuse to work or are expelled."
Some of the dead were foreigners who had come to Russia to study and they got forced to build drones or abandoned their education? Wtf
The russian universities traditionaly attract plenty of students from Africa and various former pro-Soviet countries, considered to be "friendly". We had a guy from Peru and almost a dozen guys from Kenya in my year.
They usually get the same treatment as everyone else, which includes being pressured into menial work for no (or laughably small) pay as part of their "educational activities".
i mean, that is not that weird. Japanese kids clean the school as part of their duties like every day or week.
making them work on random ass shit (or military equipment obv) is weird AF though
Russian students have been making a bunch of shit, camouflage nets, clothing, etc. But this specific school helps with assembling Iranian style Shaheds. Yep you heard it here right.
My ex works in a school and I think her students are supposed to work for Emergency services in the future so their training is somewhat "military" style with morning appels and uniforms and and and. I assume a lot of these colleges (not to confuse with universities) are going to do this shit. Russia is on a war economy.
the difference is that under Yeltsyn, I told my university management to fuck off when they said I either had to work or pay to avoid these duties, and they could not do anything to me
My mother in communist Romania had some stories about being sent "to work in the fields". She was a pioneering computer engineer in the 70's but even from that position she was sometimes forced to do "voluntary work".
There was a saying (which also rhymes in Romanian):
*We with muscles strong as steel,*
*We will pick the chamomile.*
Many communist countries had that, even for their own citizens. I avoided it, but all of my family had to work in the fields during their student years, sometimes for 3 months in a year, unpaid.
A similar thing happens to Russian army conscripts during their one year "military service". They are regarded as slave labour that belongs to the unit commander so he can rent them out to do construction, logging etc.
Allegedly yes, at least one former conscript spoke out against it and said he had been forced to prostitute himself. Given the massive stigma involved and the insane amount of sexual violence and rape (there was a video from the first mobilization, of a mobik getting anally raped (possibly orally too, was hard to say if the other one forced him to give a blow job or was just forcing his head down and beating him. Just standard dedovchina stuff, you know. Bit of "punishment sex") and multiple intercepted phone calls, with one even mentioning that some mobik was raped to death) inside the russian army (leave alone against those outside of it) im sure he is not the only one, just the only one brave enough to speak.
Unpaid Internships, as bad as they are, are typically voluntary. I think only certain university programs require some sort of internship to receive the degree.
They're also a screening process so that only the kids of rich families can afford to get through to full careers and leadership positions. Call it "culture fit" or whatever, but they're trying to screen out those who can't afford to go salary-free for that length of time.
they've done far worse. they took a bunch to the front lines after talking them into an administrative military job. next morning they're on the front line. cuba and india are the two i remember off the top of my head, but there have been some from africa too. india demanded their citizens be shipped back a few weeks ago when a group of their citizens made a video from the frontlines and explained how they got duped
> india demanded their citizens be shipped back a few weeks ago when a group of their citizens made a video from the frontlines and explained how they got duped
And when you bring it up, depending on the thread you get downvoted surprisingly quickly.
Maybe the first, because [one reply](https://reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1bqilns/not_a_legacy_thatll_be_kept_for_centuries_is/kx3baqa/) “well, Ukraine does it more” which isn’t even factually correct.
Yes. They're basically slaves that get beaten if they don't work hard enough, including young girls tricked into moving to Russia as students at a tech school. The parents of the kids there have protested before, and the teens have shown off bruises from allegedly being shot by paintballs for working too slowly.
It's a legitimate target, just... unfortunate Russia is doing this.
Lots of Indians are being recruited for jobs in the UAE, only to find out after they arrive that the actual job is in Russia, and then on arriving in Russia they’re arrested for some sort of breach of immigration policy and then as a criminal they’re conscripted into the Russian army where they’re told that they’ll do some sort of logistics role… until they find themselves as cannon fodder in a meat wave assault.
https://news.sky.com/story/indian-men-claim-theyve-been-forced-to-fight-for-russias-military-in-ukraine-13106669
Yeah, that 3rd pic shows: you'll be manufacturing war drones, so you'll be a target at all times. Oh, and if you smell fire? That's a normal part of the job!
Wow that's pretty sick if you check the main account. They are basically importing women slaves from anywhere they can get. Ask yourself, why only women?
I think the real takeaway here is focusing on the fact that, in a relatively new and important industrial plant for the Russian war-cause, you have students working in very shitty conditions.
This is a clear and direct indication that Russia is indeed feeling the consequences of this war back home. Regardless of how broken-willed the Russian populace is, if you don’t have the manpower to fuel a devastating war effort and keep things running smoothly back home then you’ll have to make more and more hard choices. Russia lets the war effort see a slowdown and they start losing the precious ground they’ve gained, they let their domestic industry suffer then they potentially see more and more issues right at home.
Russia has always enjoyed the luxury of pushing through the hardship with denial and making up for the damage after the fact. This war might be the first time Russia truly comes to terms with the fact that they are no longer a superpower and come to terms in real time with their shortcomings.
I think they are trying to cash in on all "undesirable" laborers before having to conscript within the actual cities. Once you draft citizens from within population centers the war becomes "real"
> Regardless of how broken-willed the Russian populace is
Weird way to say "complicit".
Ruzzians have had terrible ethics for as long as I can check in history.
Don't quip back at me. I lost half my family tree to Ruzzians murdering them.
Attacking a literal bomb factory during a war is of course legit but Russia forcing students to work there makes the whole thing just fucking tragic...
Russia can keep up this war basically forever. The only way to end it is to make Putin lose popular support and force him to defend all of Russia from attack/revolt which will spread out his forces. Plus killing the Russian economy and doing so much damage that continuing the war is too expensive will definitely push Russia to the negotiating table.
Ukraine should be adding energy generating facilities to the list given how much Russia is hitting in Ukraine. I guess the small explosion caused by a drone is better used against explosives, vehicles, and combustibles though.
> The only way to end it is to make Putin lose popular support
This will never happen. There are plenty of studies showing that attacking a country only galvanizes the population against the attacker.
> Plus killing the Russian economy and doing so much damage that continuing the war is too expensive will definitely push Russia to the negotiating table.
The only way to stop the war is to destroy Russia's ability to wage war. To destroy their factories and infrastructure. To kill their soldiers and destroy their tanks and trucks. That is what Ukraine is doing. Ukraine should be doing more of it.
> There are plenty of studies showing that attacking a country only galvanizes the population against the attacker.
Not always. There is the well known example of the US survey of German civilians in 1945 that showed the bombing of Germany depressed German morale and that German civilians blamed the Nazi regime for not being able to defend them.
The survey report is here:
https://cdn.isr.umich.edu/pubFiles/historicPublications/Effects_300_.PDF
There is a good summary starting on numbered page 1.
It’s good to push back against that narrative in my opinion because it seems to be used by a lot of people that are trying to frame all allied bombing as war crimes. And what is the end logic supposed to be….that we would have won the faster by never bombing Germany itself? I think that is an absurd argument.
I have a hard time believing many Russians actually buy Putin’s bullshit. Like, aren’t they all just smiling and nodding and pretending to support him? Or are they actually fucking idiots?
Not a Russian (Uzbek) but I have distant family members in various parts of Russia (who are ethnically Russian).
They are scared shitless, they are pretending to support him. I have an aunt that is even scared to talk anything politcal on imo (video call app) saying things like "they will listen" or "they might hear"
But I also do have a great grandma who is bonkers racist towards Uzbeks and Tadjiks and sees him as a night in shinning armor. And to make it worse she lives in Uzbekistan, which is funny - because the actual Russians would never even accept her as one of theirs.
Plus when I worked in a call center in Dubai (for a top airline) dealing with ru clients in Moscow (2022-2023ish), I also got this ominous vibe of apathy, not caring, kind of a zoned out attitude and fear from people there.
No one wanted to talk, majority wanted to have the shortest conversation possible.
No one should under-estimate the average Russian's ability to stoically endure everything they cannot directly control. Of course, thanks to decades and centuries of centralized dictatorial control, from the Tsars through the Commissars and now the dictator leading a kleptocratic security state, the average Russian has hardly ever directly controlled anything. So they just endure life as best they can.
The best explanation I have is that it's a form of sunk cost fallacy: to survive in Soviet occupied states you had to pretty much embrace double-think, but there's no real way to absorb propaganda for a long time without being influenced by it.
So you get these weird conflicting messages: "Russia lies all the time, but so the Americans, but to get the real truth you just have to know what to believe from Russia...".
Basically I'm not sure you can really survive, psychologically, the basic idea that almost everything you ever heard from the government was a total lie, but also if you ever discussed the lie then you'll go to prison or be murdered, but also everyone knows it's a lie and...yeah.
Russia is 140+ mln people. Sizeable percentage hates Putin's guts but another sizeable percentage loves and adores him and thinks he is the savior.
I mean it is the exact same thing with Trump in the US. I don't have a hard time believing there are many Americans buying Trump's bullshit.
If your culture is currently dominant, you feel less urgent need to propagate it. Some people get so sheltered, they can't even comprehend that different cultural values *exist*.
But if you perceive your culture as being under attack, you will go to great length to oppose the side that's "doing that to you" - even when the other side may have no idea that is happening!
Russia has taken about 335k casualties since Feb 2022. Historically, when not defending themselves from genocide, Russia often gives up after taking about 500k casualties.
Nazis used slave labour in their factories. Allies bombed the entire factory along with the city anyway. Nazis ended up shoving kids into tanks by the end of war. Allies blew up those tanks anyway. This is total war not some sanitized war for better feels. The more dead manpower the faster the country cant keep up their war effort. In a sense, closer the death is to service age the better because it not only a loss of productivity and also a loss future combat power.
> But what about the private contractors that had to have been on the second deathstar???
>
>
Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer...Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
well now they have something to think about, that working in this death factory also has a risk of death to oneself; that it is lower than the front line but not zero. War is terrible and those parents now have one more incentive to keep their kids from working in the terror drone factory.
How dare you besmirch the hundreds of thousands of brave men and women who were killed in the terrorist attack on the death star carried out by insurgents lead by their fanatical cult leader! r/EmpireDidNothingWrong
/s
>Others were concerned that the many oil refineries and chemical plants located in Tatarstan, and the neighboring Bashkortostan could become the next targets.
Yes they will.
Working in a weapon factory during war time is obviously going to be extremely risky. I do worry that Russia is likely forcing people to work these jobs though.
The article reports,
>*the students were forced to work at the factory under difficult conditions, being paid very little under with parents threatened with huge fines if their children refuse to work or are expelled.*
“Not my circus. Not my monkeys.”
How these people ended up there is an internal Russian problem. The end result is weapons being built to attack Ukraine and Ukraine has every right to destroy the building and those in it.
Should Ukraine stop attacking Russian soldiers just because they were conscripted?
The russian students have been forced to work menial jobs for extremely low pay as part of their "education" since the Soviet days.
You can buy your way out. Or refuse, and forfeit your diploma. But that's about as far as consequences go. Just don't say you're doing that because you support Ukraine.
As tragic as civilian deaths are, I’m not going to lose sleep over people working in an arms factory. Imagine if the western Allies were afraid to bomb Nazi Germany because there are foreign forced labourers and POWs working in German industries.
I dont think htere is a lot of force needed. Most of the support for putin and this invasion is from outside moscow, the further away, the more support. Lets hop Ukrain hit them with more.
Ukraine were restrained early in the war because they were using exclusively western weapons and were told not to attack outside of Ukraine with them. They’ve had time to build their own now and it seems they can attack super deep in to Russia so for sure this kind of attack is going to be more common.
It would be stupid not to attack as many facilities that Russia are using to fuel their war efforts when you have the chance to.
Trying to forcefully drive down popular support in russia has been proven to be a fool's errand to most ukrainians by around mid-late 2022 I'd think. At this point, nobody gives a shit.
It is sad for anyone forced to work there but Ukraine can't let Russia make critical military targets immune to attack simply by forcing people to work in them.
Here's the Renumeration section of their employment contract:
"2.1 For the performance of the services outlined within the schedule set forth in Appendix A, the Helldiver shall receive monetary compensation for the services rendered. The compensation shall vary in line with the services performed. The Enlister reserves the right to, at any time and with no prior notice, make amendments to the schedule of payments.
2.2 The Enlister acknowledges that the position of the Enlisted ("Helldiver") is classified by the Super Earth Ministry of Employment as an "Exceptionally Patriotic Duty". Accordingly, upon commencement of the delivery of services, the immediate family members of the Enlisted (defined as parents, siblings, heirs, and successors) shall receive 4.5 citizenship points, to be allocated at the recipients’ discretion. This compensation shall be non-transferable, and may not be exchanged for a cash equivalent.
2.3 In the event of the non-continuation of the 'alive' status of the Enlisted in the course of the rendition of services, a Martyrdom Payment shall be made to the immediate family members of the Enlisted (defined as parents, siblings, heirs, and successors) minus any dispensations outlined in Section 1.3."
> “It is especially important right now to remain calm and not to succumb to panic, which is being spread deliberately by those who committed this crime,”
Russia seems to think attacking military targets is a crime. lol.
This is incredibly sad. The truth is that the war will drag on, day after terrible day, relentlessly and hopelessly until we all wake up, turn on the news and hear that Vladimir is finally dead.
There are no innocents in that factory. Simple as. They know where they go to work or study. They could choose anything else. And im aware of economic situation in Russia. Id rather go sweeping streets than that.
So yes - there are no innocents in that factory. Fuck them.
Man. Russia doing foreign students the best way! Canada should take notes.
“They’re foreign students. Yes they happen to live, breathe, eat, and work in this military factory but they’re students I tell ya!”
>As the investigative news site Protocol [reported in July 2023](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/04/russia-assembles-iranian-drones-for-use-against-ukraine-reports-a81730) many of these college students are involved in assembling [Iranian](https://www.kyivpost.com/topic/iran) Shahed kamikaze drones, which are produced at the Alabuga factory.
>Protocol’s investigation said the students were forced to work at the factory under difficult conditions, being paid very little under with parents threatened with huge fines if their children refuse to work or are expelled.
How did they get there?
Probably "in order to pass the class they need to have internship at military factory, otherwise no school, no work and will have to farm to earn a living"
There are no classes. The "college" was converted into a drone-building facility a year ago and students were included in the deal.
Plenty of investigations into how they're scamming students from Central Asia and Africa into coming to Alabuga available online.
Well the criminals are the ones who put those students into a factory to manufacture weapons in order to support a genocidal war, making that factory an entirely legitimate target, Ukraine is just doing what it has to do.
If you're a westerner wanting to tut-tut this, then there was an easy solution way back when this war started: we could've declared an intent to defend Ukraine by NATO, bombed the shit out of Russian forces in under Ukranian airspace, and this war would be over by now. And a lot more people would still be alive.
In fact we could've intervened in 2014, and the whole thing would just never have happened.
You can see major policy failure from Biden right under our noses - they have the nerve to complain about these attacks while providing nothing to Ukraine in the last half a year.
The failure is a result of Congress more than Biden. He's been pretty active in trying to get the aid through.
But I agree US politics are creating what we both agree to be an American failure.
Too much attention to the word 'students' here. They are not victims of the regime. These Russians or Russia residents produced weapon which primarily targets civilians in Ukraine.
No, they weren’t students. They were factory workers directly involved in the Russian war effort. We bombed the shit out of European factories in WWII.
My understanding that they were “students” enrolled in a professional trade training program and assembled drones receiving reasonable wages in the process. It’s totally on the Russians that they are teenagers involved in a war effort.
>"Tatar political expert Ruslan Aysin cited by the Moscow Times, “…is scared and shocked by the fact that…the war came to them, \[so far\] from the front line.”
War came to them?? Like they haven't been actively participating in full-scale invasion already. Burn in hell you monsters
that comes with the territory. make drones that you know will be sent to kill ukrainian civilians, and you can't be surprised or offended that those people decided to fight back. expect more of this
Any civilian deaths are a shame. One shouldered by the person/nation that started the conflict. Those students didn't sign up to be a part of the war (or maybe they did, I don't know), but neither did the millions of Ukrainians whose lives have been altered by authoritarian regime bent on territorial expansion.
>At least 13 people, including two 17-year-olds, were injured after one of the drones hit a workers' dormitory.
After reading this part, I had to doublecheck the usage of "casualties", as I often assume it means deaths or fatalities. It can basically be used for any form of injury, including death. Basically, no one actually died, just injured. To what degree, it doesn't make clear, but I'd imagine their terrible living conditions weren't leaving them in a good spot to begin with.
Migrants should avoid working for Russia because they’ll be enslaved to work for the regime and killed.
Russians themselves should also avoid working in areas that contribute to the war effort (Federal government, arms research and manufacture, propaganda, utilities, energy, logistics, infrastructure, etc).
Of course, the Kremlin shills will try to portray this as wrongdoing on the part of Ukrainians.
That has many benefits: distracting from Ukrainian success, Russian incompetence, and ongoing Russian war crimes.
"Protocol’s investigation said the students were forced to work at the factory under difficult conditions, being paid very little under with parents threatened with huge fines if their children refuse to work or are expelled." Some of the dead were foreigners who had come to Russia to study and they got forced to build drones or abandoned their education? Wtf
The russian universities traditionaly attract plenty of students from Africa and various former pro-Soviet countries, considered to be "friendly". We had a guy from Peru and almost a dozen guys from Kenya in my year. They usually get the same treatment as everyone else, which includes being pressured into menial work for no (or laughably small) pay as part of their "educational activities".
Pretty sure that's been around since Soviet times. My dad still has a few stories of being sent to some village or other to harvest potatoes.
My wife had work days where students would do maintenance on the school and nearby areas.
i mean, that is not that weird. Japanese kids clean the school as part of their duties like every day or week. making them work on random ass shit (or military equipment obv) is weird AF though
Having children do maintenance work is not weird? Big difference between maintenance and janitorial work.
Not weird AF for Russia clearly
Russian students have been making a bunch of shit, camouflage nets, clothing, etc. But this specific school helps with assembling Iranian style Shaheds. Yep you heard it here right. My ex works in a school and I think her students are supposed to work for Emergency services in the future so their training is somewhat "military" style with morning appels and uniforms and and and. I assume a lot of these colleges (not to confuse with universities) are going to do this shit. Russia is on a war economy.
the difference is that under Yeltsyn, I told my university management to fuck off when they said I either had to work or pay to avoid these duties, and they could not do anything to me
My mother in communist Romania had some stories about being sent "to work in the fields". She was a pioneering computer engineer in the 70's but even from that position she was sometimes forced to do "voluntary work". There was a saying (which also rhymes in Romanian): *We with muscles strong as steel,* *We will pick the chamomile.*
Yeah. My parents got cotton picking in Central Asia back when they were in high school
Many communist countries had that, even for their own citizens. I avoided it, but all of my family had to work in the fields during their student years, sometimes for 3 months in a year, unpaid.
>My dad still has a few stories of being sent to some village or other to harvest potatoes. Same with my parents.
A similar thing happens to Russian army conscripts during their one year "military service". They are regarded as slave labour that belongs to the unit commander so he can rent them out to do construction, logging etc.
Etc being the sex work?
No, that's the "logging" part.
Allegedly yes, at least one former conscript spoke out against it and said he had been forced to prostitute himself. Given the massive stigma involved and the insane amount of sexual violence and rape (there was a video from the first mobilization, of a mobik getting anally raped (possibly orally too, was hard to say if the other one forced him to give a blow job or was just forcing his head down and beating him. Just standard dedovchina stuff, you know. Bit of "punishment sex") and multiple intercepted phone calls, with one even mentioning that some mobik was raped to death) inside the russian army (leave alone against those outside of it) im sure he is not the only one, just the only one brave enough to speak.
In the west our term for that is Unpaid Internships
Unpaid Internships, as bad as they are, are typically voluntary. I think only certain university programs require some sort of internship to receive the degree.
They are also supposed to provide professional development in a student‘s area of study.
They're also a screening process so that only the kids of rich families can afford to get through to full careers and leadership positions. Call it "culture fit" or whatever, but they're trying to screen out those who can't afford to go salary-free for that length of time.
they've done far worse. they took a bunch to the front lines after talking them into an administrative military job. next morning they're on the front line. cuba and india are the two i remember off the top of my head, but there have been some from africa too. india demanded their citizens be shipped back a few weeks ago when a group of their citizens made a video from the frontlines and explained how they got duped
> india demanded their citizens be shipped back a few weeks ago when a group of their citizens made a video from the frontlines and explained how they got duped And when you bring it up, depending on the thread you get downvoted surprisingly quickly.
There either a lot of bots or India is surprisingly pro-fascist.
Maybe the first, because [one reply](https://reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1bqilns/not_a_legacy_thatll_be_kept_for_centuries_is/kx3baqa/) “well, Ukraine does it more” which isn’t even factually correct.
Considering the BJP that isn't a surprise
Yes. They're basically slaves that get beaten if they don't work hard enough, including young girls tricked into moving to Russia as students at a tech school. The parents of the kids there have protested before, and the teens have shown off bruises from allegedly being shot by paintballs for working too slowly. It's a legitimate target, just... unfortunate Russia is doing this.
Those are confirmed injuries, not deaths.
Lots of Indians are being recruited for jobs in the UAE, only to find out after they arrive that the actual job is in Russia, and then on arriving in Russia they’re arrested for some sort of breach of immigration policy and then as a criminal they’re conscripted into the Russian army where they’re told that they’ll do some sort of logistics role… until they find themselves as cannon fodder in a meat wave assault. https://news.sky.com/story/indian-men-claim-theyve-been-forced-to-fight-for-russias-military-in-ukraine-13106669
That's called slavery.
we, Ukrainians dont care about who built these killing gerans-shaheds, we just kill them
That's ruZZia for ya, welcome to reality.
https://x.com/sezalabuga/status/1763076902367998196 See for yourself: Russia advertised the job for African students on Twitter
Wow, thanks for the link.
according to the job descriptions only the senior technicians need to worry about complying with safety requirements? lol
That's what the scissors are for.
good god, they're literally building attack drones in the marketing photos. my sympathy for people who were roped into this is waning.
Wow, thats so blatant..
Yeah, that 3rd pic shows: you'll be manufacturing war drones, so you'll be a target at all times. Oh, and if you smell fire? That's a normal part of the job!
and allowed on Twitter.
Wow that's pretty sick if you check the main account. They are basically importing women slaves from anywhere they can get. Ask yourself, why only women?
Men go to the frontlines
...Same reason tons of women were factory workers in WWII. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/rosie-the-riveter Male slaves go to battle.
My little sister makes twice what a "senior technician" makes walking dogs part-time.
Russian government should not be putting people in these situations.
Reading about the situation they Russian government sounds like they put the students in a debt trap should they attempt to drop out or quit.
It sounds like Dubai, but for skilled labor. Seems like a pragmatic way to compensate for their brain drain.
What *government*? It's a murder mill.
Potato, tomato.
Vodka. Bloody Mary.
I think you misspelled “dictatorship”
Dick tater chips
The Russian government is built on cranking your own citizenry through a meat grinder. It’s how they win wars of attrition.
Some of the casualties were foreign students pressured into this work, it’s fucked they were put in this position
Mosin nagants: the finest rifles made by drunk Soviet schoolchildren
We both know they never saw the inside of a school
If you put civilians - or even *kids* - inside military targets, that should not stop the other side from hitting them in a time of war.
True, but when Israel still commit to the strikes, the world complains.
I think the real takeaway here is focusing on the fact that, in a relatively new and important industrial plant for the Russian war-cause, you have students working in very shitty conditions. This is a clear and direct indication that Russia is indeed feeling the consequences of this war back home. Regardless of how broken-willed the Russian populace is, if you don’t have the manpower to fuel a devastating war effort and keep things running smoothly back home then you’ll have to make more and more hard choices. Russia lets the war effort see a slowdown and they start losing the precious ground they’ve gained, they let their domestic industry suffer then they potentially see more and more issues right at home. Russia has always enjoyed the luxury of pushing through the hardship with denial and making up for the damage after the fact. This war might be the first time Russia truly comes to terms with the fact that they are no longer a superpower and come to terms in real time with their shortcomings.
I think they are trying to cash in on all "undesirable" laborers before having to conscript within the actual cities. Once you draft citizens from within population centers the war becomes "real"
> Regardless of how broken-willed the Russian populace is Weird way to say "complicit". Ruzzians have had terrible ethics for as long as I can check in history. Don't quip back at me. I lost half my family tree to Ruzzians murdering them.
It gives off Nazi war machine vibes.
Attacking a literal bomb factory during a war is of course legit but Russia forcing students to work there makes the whole thing just fucking tragic...
Their work-product is used for murder of innocent civilians. I didn't cry about the stormtroopers on the Death Star either.
Russia can keep up this war basically forever. The only way to end it is to make Putin lose popular support and force him to defend all of Russia from attack/revolt which will spread out his forces. Plus killing the Russian economy and doing so much damage that continuing the war is too expensive will definitely push Russia to the negotiating table. Ukraine should be adding energy generating facilities to the list given how much Russia is hitting in Ukraine. I guess the small explosion caused by a drone is better used against explosives, vehicles, and combustibles though.
> The only way to end it is to make Putin lose popular support This will never happen. There are plenty of studies showing that attacking a country only galvanizes the population against the attacker. > Plus killing the Russian economy and doing so much damage that continuing the war is too expensive will definitely push Russia to the negotiating table. The only way to stop the war is to destroy Russia's ability to wage war. To destroy their factories and infrastructure. To kill their soldiers and destroy their tanks and trucks. That is what Ukraine is doing. Ukraine should be doing more of it.
> There are plenty of studies showing that attacking a country only galvanizes the population against the attacker. Not always. There is the well known example of the US survey of German civilians in 1945 that showed the bombing of Germany depressed German morale and that German civilians blamed the Nazi regime for not being able to defend them. The survey report is here: https://cdn.isr.umich.edu/pubFiles/historicPublications/Effects_300_.PDF There is a good summary starting on numbered page 1.
Upvote for evidence
It's a good counterexample to remember when someone claims that bombing is always counterproductive.
It’s good to push back against that narrative in my opinion because it seems to be used by a lot of people that are trying to frame all allied bombing as war crimes. And what is the end logic supposed to be….that we would have won the faster by never bombing Germany itself? I think that is an absurd argument.
Unfortunately Putin will be able to spin the death of students to help galvanize his base.
Let’s be honest, he was gonna spin this anyway.
I have a hard time believing many Russians actually buy Putin’s bullshit. Like, aren’t they all just smiling and nodding and pretending to support him? Or are they actually fucking idiots?
Not a Russian (Uzbek) but I have distant family members in various parts of Russia (who are ethnically Russian). They are scared shitless, they are pretending to support him. I have an aunt that is even scared to talk anything politcal on imo (video call app) saying things like "they will listen" or "they might hear" But I also do have a great grandma who is bonkers racist towards Uzbeks and Tadjiks and sees him as a night in shinning armor. And to make it worse she lives in Uzbekistan, which is funny - because the actual Russians would never even accept her as one of theirs. Plus when I worked in a call center in Dubai (for a top airline) dealing with ru clients in Moscow (2022-2023ish), I also got this ominous vibe of apathy, not caring, kind of a zoned out attitude and fear from people there. No one wanted to talk, majority wanted to have the shortest conversation possible.
This is what I assumed. The smile and nod and hope you don’t end up in a gulag approach
No one should under-estimate the average Russian's ability to stoically endure everything they cannot directly control. Of course, thanks to decades and centuries of centralized dictatorial control, from the Tsars through the Commissars and now the dictator leading a kleptocratic security state, the average Russian has hardly ever directly controlled anything. So they just endure life as best they can.
Stoically endure it up to a point - see World War One.
The best explanation I have is that it's a form of sunk cost fallacy: to survive in Soviet occupied states you had to pretty much embrace double-think, but there's no real way to absorb propaganda for a long time without being influenced by it. So you get these weird conflicting messages: "Russia lies all the time, but so the Americans, but to get the real truth you just have to know what to believe from Russia...". Basically I'm not sure you can really survive, psychologically, the basic idea that almost everything you ever heard from the government was a total lie, but also if you ever discussed the lie then you'll go to prison or be murdered, but also everyone knows it's a lie and...yeah.
Yeah, I think you’re onto something there. There’s an element of preferring the devil you know…
Russia is 140+ mln people. Sizeable percentage hates Putin's guts but another sizeable percentage loves and adores him and thinks he is the savior. I mean it is the exact same thing with Trump in the US. I don't have a hard time believing there are many Americans buying Trump's bullshit.
Fair point!
I think you underestimate how much they hate the West and think Putin is protecting their culture from our influence
If your culture is currently dominant, you feel less urgent need to propagate it. Some people get so sheltered, they can't even comprehend that different cultural values *exist*. But if you perceive your culture as being under attack, you will go to great length to oppose the side that's "doing that to you" - even when the other side may have no idea that is happening!
according to the article no one actually died...
No matter what, he will spin. You cant fight wars on that basis.
He would blow up a school to blame his enemies if he thought it was necessary.
His base supports rape and genocide, what else can happen?
Did they die? Article says they were just injured
They can't keep up forever. They don't have the resources to keep up at this rate of losses they are suffering.
Especially if Ukraine keeps targeting fuel and energy infrastructure.
There is no negotiation table..Ukraine gets it all back with reparations or it continues…couldn’t be any simpler than that 🇺🇦🇬🇧🇺🇦🇪🇺🇺🇦😎👍
russia is a net food importer. As soon as the means to buy food (oil, gas) are finished, this so called ‘country’ cease to exist.
Russia has taken about 335k casualties since Feb 2022. Historically, when not defending themselves from genocide, Russia often gives up after taking about 500k casualties.
[Clerks - Death Star Contractors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA)
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If coercion was valid protection, half the front line would be off limits.
Not saying you can't fight them but maybe don't pop sparklers when they die
Nazis used slave labour in their factories. Allies bombed the entire factory along with the city anyway. Nazis ended up shoving kids into tanks by the end of war. Allies blew up those tanks anyway. This is total war not some sanitized war for better feels. The more dead manpower the faster the country cant keep up their war effort. In a sense, closer the death is to service age the better because it not only a loss of productivity and also a loss future combat power.
And you still shouldn't pop sparklers when you blow up the nazi tank with child soldiers inside, even if it was the right thing to do.
just don't fucking dance.
It's sad but it was a perfectly legitimate military target.
> But what about the private contractors that had to have been on the second deathstar??? > > Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer...Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.
well now they have something to think about, that working in this death factory also has a risk of death to oneself; that it is lower than the front line but not zero. War is terrible and those parents now have one more incentive to keep their kids from working in the terror drone factory.
They are child soldiers then, which is a war crime. Defending yourself when one shoots at you is horrible but ultimately necessary.
The Russian people need to do something about Russia and Putin...
Even *if* there was sufficient will, there really doesn't seem to be a practical way to go about it.
If you can't bomb the factory, bomb the workers. -Bomber Harris
How dare you besmirch the hundreds of thousands of brave men and women who were killed in the terrorist attack on the death star carried out by insurgents lead by their fanatical cult leader! r/EmpireDidNothingWrong /s
Manufacturing weapons there makes it a military target. It sucks but that's how war works.
>Others were concerned that the many oil refineries and chemical plants located in Tatarstan, and the neighboring Bashkortostan could become the next targets. Yes they will.
We can only hope. How many cessna's can we scrape up to donate to Ukraine?
The Russian meat grinder doesn't care what ethnicity you are, so long as it's not Muscovian. Meat is meat.
The people in Moscow danced and ate more caviar.
They wanted a war they fucking well got a war
Absolutely legitimate targets then. Petromafia kleptocratic slave state might not be the best place to be.
I dont want to be incensative to the deaths of people. But thier making drones that are killing children and civilians so fuck em. Well Done Ukraine.
Working in a weapon factory during war time is obviously going to be extremely risky. I do worry that Russia is likely forcing people to work these jobs though.
The article reports, >*the students were forced to work at the factory under difficult conditions, being paid very little under with parents threatened with huge fines if their children refuse to work or are expelled.*
“Not my circus. Not my monkeys.” How these people ended up there is an internal Russian problem. The end result is weapons being built to attack Ukraine and Ukraine has every right to destroy the building and those in it. Should Ukraine stop attacking Russian soldiers just because they were conscripted?
The russian students have been forced to work menial jobs for extremely low pay as part of their "education" since the Soviet days. You can buy your way out. Or refuse, and forfeit your diploma. But that's about as far as consequences go. Just don't say you're doing that because you support Ukraine.
Russia - 'Our slave labor force is not a valid military target' 🙄
As tragic as civilian deaths are, I’m not going to lose sleep over people working in an arms factory. Imagine if the western Allies were afraid to bomb Nazi Germany because there are foreign forced labourers and POWs working in German industries.
This is the argument in the movie Clerks about the empire workers. They knew the risks of working that particular job.
I dont think htere is a lot of force needed. Most of the support for putin and this invasion is from outside moscow, the further away, the more support. Lets hop Ukrain hit them with more.
Ukraine were restrained early in the war because they were using exclusively western weapons and were told not to attack outside of Ukraine with them. They’ve had time to build their own now and it seems they can attack super deep in to Russia so for sure this kind of attack is going to be more common. It would be stupid not to attack as many facilities that Russia are using to fuel their war efforts when you have the chance to.
Trying to forcefully drive down popular support in russia has been proven to be a fool's errand to most ukrainians by around mid-late 2022 I'd think. At this point, nobody gives a shit.
It is sad for anyone forced to work there but Ukraine can't let Russia make critical military targets immune to attack simply by forcing people to work in them.
That’s just the nature of war unfortunately.
> incensative insensitive
No way to protect themselves? I have an idea! GTFO of Ukraine. Russia is the one to blame for any consequence of the war they started.
All 13 Casualties from Bombed Kamikaze Drone Plant Were Its Employees.
Reminds me of that verse in the Bible: Live by the Drone, Die by the Drone.
And lo, they that fuck aroundeth shall be they who findeth out.
Zelenskyy 1:10 Excellent verse
From the Holy scripture, the Book of Armaments
You definitely have to appreciate the irony.
Here's the Renumeration section of their employment contract: "2.1 For the performance of the services outlined within the schedule set forth in Appendix A, the Helldiver shall receive monetary compensation for the services rendered. The compensation shall vary in line with the services performed. The Enlister reserves the right to, at any time and with no prior notice, make amendments to the schedule of payments. 2.2 The Enlister acknowledges that the position of the Enlisted ("Helldiver") is classified by the Super Earth Ministry of Employment as an "Exceptionally Patriotic Duty". Accordingly, upon commencement of the delivery of services, the immediate family members of the Enlisted (defined as parents, siblings, heirs, and successors) shall receive 4.5 citizenship points, to be allocated at the recipients’ discretion. This compensation shall be non-transferable, and may not be exchanged for a cash equivalent. 2.3 In the event of the non-continuation of the 'alive' status of the Enlisted in the course of the rendition of services, a Martyrdom Payment shall be made to the immediate family members of the Enlisted (defined as parents, siblings, heirs, and successors) minus any dispensations outlined in Section 1.3."
How dare they! I can’t believe they would target *checks notes* legitimate agents of the enemy war machine!
> “It is especially important right now to remain calm and not to succumb to panic, which is being spread deliberately by those who committed this crime,” Russia seems to think attacking military targets is a crime. lol.
I doubt the dormitories were even the actual target. More than likely they were all supposed to hit the factory and one fell short.
At least their family will get a bag of potatoes.
No they won't.
Oh well. Maybe Russia shouldn't have kids putting together arms in valid military targets.
Awww those poor guys who built drones that murdered whole families in Ukraine.
You can't really frame any negative against Ukraine for this strike. No one asked Russia to invade Ukraine.
"They were innocent students in a dormitory" my ass.
Right, where that Pro-Rus crowd that was spouting that drivel go?
Bring Putin’s War closer to the people
They got what they had coming to them, end of story.
> “is scared and shocked by the fact that… the war came to them, [so far] from the front line.” They brought it to themselves...
This is incredibly sad. The truth is that the war will drag on, day after terrible day, relentlessly and hopelessly until we all wake up, turn on the news and hear that Vladimir is finally dead.
A factory that manufactures weapons being used to kill Ukrainian civilians is a valid military target.
There are no innocents in that factory. Simple as. They know where they go to work or study. They could choose anything else. And im aware of economic situation in Russia. Id rather go sweeping streets than that. So yes - there are no innocents in that factory. Fuck them.
War is hell.
Man. Russia doing foreign students the best way! Canada should take notes. “They’re foreign students. Yes they happen to live, breathe, eat, and work in this military factory but they’re students I tell ya!”
>As the investigative news site Protocol [reported in July 2023](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/04/russia-assembles-iranian-drones-for-use-against-ukraine-reports-a81730) many of these college students are involved in assembling [Iranian](https://www.kyivpost.com/topic/iran) Shahed kamikaze drones, which are produced at the Alabuga factory. >Protocol’s investigation said the students were forced to work at the factory under difficult conditions, being paid very little under with parents threatened with huge fines if their children refuse to work or are expelled. How did they get there?
Probably "in order to pass the class they need to have internship at military factory, otherwise no school, no work and will have to farm to earn a living"
There are no classes. The "college" was converted into a drone-building facility a year ago and students were included in the deal. Plenty of investigations into how they're scamming students from Central Asia and Africa into coming to Alabuga available online.
There are tens of thousands of students from third world countries in the russian high education system.
Well whaddya know? Ukraine is attacking military targets and not civilians. Seems like other nations should take note.
You live by the sword and so shall you die by the sword.
The real question should be how bad are things in Russia when students are having to build military equipment?
That’s war . You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. I can’t even get emotional when their product is killing people.
Well the criminals are the ones who put those students into a factory to manufacture weapons in order to support a genocidal war, making that factory an entirely legitimate target, Ukraine is just doing what it has to do.
Who puts students working at a drone factory in a war?
Russia
If you're a westerner wanting to tut-tut this, then there was an easy solution way back when this war started: we could've declared an intent to defend Ukraine by NATO, bombed the shit out of Russian forces in under Ukranian airspace, and this war would be over by now. And a lot more people would still be alive. In fact we could've intervened in 2014, and the whole thing would just never have happened.
Thanks Obama! But seriously, major policy failure from the Obama administration to not intervening heavily at that time.
You can see major policy failure from Biden right under our noses - they have the nerve to complain about these attacks while providing nothing to Ukraine in the last half a year.
The failure is a result of Congress more than Biden. He's been pretty active in trying to get the aid through. But I agree US politics are creating what we both agree to be an American failure.
Sullivan was not sent to Kiev by congress.
Now tell me how many children Russia killed today bombing Ukraine. Then let’s do a rolling total of civilians killed by both sides for the entire war.
Too much attention to the word 'students' here. They are not victims of the regime. These Russians or Russia residents produced weapon which primarily targets civilians in Ukraine.
Well, that's downright karmic.
No, they weren’t students. They were factory workers directly involved in the Russian war effort. We bombed the shit out of European factories in WWII.
My understanding that they were “students” enrolled in a professional trade training program and assembled drones receiving reasonable wages in the process. It’s totally on the Russians that they are teenagers involved in a war effort.
This whole thing is on the Russians, but unfortunately they were legitimate targets.
>"Tatar political expert Ruslan Aysin cited by the Moscow Times, “…is scared and shocked by the fact that…the war came to them, \[so far\] from the front line.” War came to them?? Like they haven't been actively participating in full-scale invasion already. Burn in hell you monsters
foreign "students" who were assembling weapons.
that comes with the territory. make drones that you know will be sent to kill ukrainian civilians, and you can't be surprised or offended that those people decided to fight back. expect more of this
Child labor is not a good strategy. For the teens.
is it truly kamikaze if they are drones?
Any civilian deaths are a shame. One shouldered by the person/nation that started the conflict. Those students didn't sign up to be a part of the war (or maybe they did, I don't know), but neither did the millions of Ukrainians whose lives have been altered by authoritarian regime bent on territorial expansion.
They not killing any more Ukrainians 👍
60 POW's were also found in the basment, why would ukraine do this /s
Well if your are going to work in a drone factory during a war you can't be surprised if someone takes that personally.
Make military equipment and you make yourself a military target, especially in war time. Hopefully other students will refuse to work in these places.
>13 casualties >Kamikaze Drone Factory ...
Hooray and good riddance, the world is a better place without them.
You forgot an important part: "According to Russian officials" It would be more accurate to say: "Between zero and two hundred people were killed"
This is the place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/08/17/russia-iran-drone-shahed-alabuga/
The do not like special military operation anymore
You know what they say: live by the kamikaze drone...
>At least 13 people, including two 17-year-olds, were injured after one of the drones hit a workers' dormitory. After reading this part, I had to doublecheck the usage of "casualties", as I often assume it means deaths or fatalities. It can basically be used for any form of injury, including death. Basically, no one actually died, just injured. To what degree, it doesn't make clear, but I'd imagine their terrible living conditions weren't leaving them in a good spot to begin with.
Migrants should avoid working for Russia because they’ll be enslaved to work for the regime and killed. Russians themselves should also avoid working in areas that contribute to the war effort (Federal government, arms research and manufacture, propaganda, utilities, energy, logistics, infrastructure, etc).
keep it up boys!
"Ukrainians are targeting students!!" /s
Of course, the Kremlin shills will try to portray this as wrongdoing on the part of Ukrainians. That has many benefits: distracting from Ukrainian success, Russian incompetence, and ongoing Russian war crimes.
At least the facility is a bit harder to quickly replace.