He and his parents were among the last in their village to take a Russian passport, but the pressure was becoming unbearable.
By his third beating at the hands of the Russian soldiers occupying Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vyacheslav Ryabkov caved. The soldiers broke two of his ribs, but his face was not bruised for his unsmiling passport photo, taken in September 2023.
It wasn’t enough.
In December, they caught the welder on his way home from work. Then one slammed his rifle butt down on Ryabkov’s face, smashing the bridge of his nose.
“Why don’t you fight for us? You already have a Russian passport,” they demanded. The beating continued as the 42-year-old fell unconscious.
“Let’s finish this off,” one soldier said. A friend ran for Ryabkov’s mother.
Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship ahead of elections Vladimir Putin has made certain he will win, an Associated Press investigation has found. But accepting a passport means that men living in occupied territory can be drafted to fight against the same Ukrainian army that is trying to free them.
They arent. ukraine has a large russian minority especially in the east, hence them trying to secede from ukraine and join russia
Then those are Ukrainians not Russians though perhaps ethnically they might well be Russian, who cares. Fight for your country or get the fuck out, pretty literally every country at war does this.
Should we point to how one of the only ways out of Japanese internment camps was if you were useful to the war effort? Should we point to how Russia is forcing passports in occupied areas and then forcing Ukrainians to fight?
The lines you draw just paint a fucked up picture, you can hedge of you’d like but you’re going to be in the wrong side of history on this one.