They felt enough of something to bother to leave.

But they asked AI and it said it's fine!

Hear hear. The hope is strong. Recent developments are, indeed, inspiring.

When the full-scale invasion started I had an opportunity to talk to regular people on both sides. Ukrainians were leaving their homes and moving to relative safety. Few russians were leaving the country as a protest, majority, though, either didn't care or had an excuse why they can't do anything. Their description of the situation was "well, it's uncomfortable".

The difference was shocking, but telling. They will do nothing until it moves from "uncomfortable" to "holy shit, run!"

A tangent I utterly enjoyed. Thank you!

What's crazy is that they redid everything from scratch at least already two times, but both times they got exactly the same as before.

Things are changing and ruzzia is already noticing that there's lack of people. For one, they find it increasingly difficult to find new soldiers.

But even without that, it's a very important number because it's a metric. A measure of progress.

This number doesn't mean that they can continue until they lost everyone. We don't know for sure, but I cannot imagine that they can lose another million and just carry on. So the absolute worst case is that Ukraine will win this war latest in 4 years.

I want to believe that even sooner because the quality of Ukrainian army is improving, while the ruzzian one is not. They might be building drones, but they're not reforming their army. That would imply that something is wrong and nobody wants to be blamed.

It's not going to be easy. But it's a round number on a way to victory.

It's about 8% of the male workforce. Even those that were "just" wounded and came home, they likely cannot get back to the life they had before.

This is an absolutely insane "just a number" and they will spend generations trying to recover from this just a number.

Life has become far poorer, duller and more dangerous than before the war,

Oh no, poor russians! Life is dull!

There's a slight difference between a life taken away when ruzzians bomb a city and a family dies in their sleep and a life taken away when somebody willingly goes to the military, is sent to the foreign country and gets killed while trying to kill an enemy.

But you're right, it's definitely human lives taken away.

Did you know that all those people are raised on the idea that there was dictatorship in ruzzia and then people stood up and there was the great October revolution?

The reason they can't do anything is because things are not that bad. For them.

Entire nation? Merely the grand majority of it.

See, after the ww2 there was a debate whether there's something special about Germans that made them do what they did. Everybody knew that the fanatical and sadistical part was a very small minority and it wasn't Hitler who worked in the concentration camps or Gestapo. It wasn't Himmler who worked in factories or fought in the army.

It was normal everyday people who lived, laughed, laughed and that.

Their kind of excuse was lack of information.

What is the excuse for the good russians that enlist to the army, work in factories making drones or simply live their life and pay their taxes? Apathy that was cultivated over the decades?

Apparently, a serious number of them found the motivation to move to Georgia now that the war that they maybe don't approve can actually affect them.

And I'm sure massive majority of them are loveliest of people, they have friends, parents they take care of, children. And they grumbled in their kitchens that this war is a waste of life in the evenings. And until today, in the mornings they went to their jobs that directly or indirectly supported the war. Because, you know, it's war and terrible, but it's bad pootin, it's not them.

Am I hostile? I think I am. And I'm not even in Ukraine, I just have family there and for 4 years now I hear from them of what was bombed, how their life is now shaped by war. What I don't hear from them is how bad it is for the poor good russians that don't have it easy.

Am I hostile? Probably. But I think it's kind of hostility of a doctor to a cancer.