Germany votes to bring in voluntary military service programme for 18-year-olds

> "We don't want to spend half a year of our lives locked up in barracks, being trained in drill and obedience and learning to kill," the organisers of the protests wrote in a statement posted on social media. "War offers no prospects for the future and destroys our livelihoods."

Is the idea that it’s better for your livelihood to just start learning how speak Russian now?

How is it a proxy war if Russia invades and you fight back?

Because both sides are funded and armed by much larger players using their respective proxies to deplete the resources of the other side. NATO is using Ukraine like a bullet sponge to deplete Russian resources, China is using Russia as a bullet sponge to deplete NATO resources. NATO sends Ukraine equipment, happy to send hundreds of thousands of Ukranians who have no say in the matter to their deaths. China sends Russia raw materials and manufacturing equipment for weapon systems, happy to send hundreds of thousands of Russians who have no say in the matter to their deaths.

Western defense contractors and Chinese industrial suppliers profit. Russians and Ukranians alike die.

Of course, it's just a question of Ukraine knowing what's good for it (and the poor Russians) and folding so that all of the dying stops!

Nice one, аноним29; I hope you made your day's quota!

You must have missed my comment about opposing the war. But this kind of bad faith accusation is really disappointing to see on HN. The caliber of discourse here is usually much higher - people engaging with the actual merits of the points being raised, not reverting to attacking strawmen that only exist in their head as if this was Facebook.

Ordinary Russian and Ukranian people are both victims of this war. It is being waged for reasons neither of them chose, that neither of them asked for, that neither of them wanted. Civilians are being killed on both sides, and the people most vested in the continuation of the conflict are those that reap all of the profits from the war while paying none of the human costs. This is a classic principal-agent problem.

If you can't see the inhumanity in the structural forces at play and want to play a game of "attack the strawman" to score meaningless internet points while millions die needlessly over a pointless war, I can't force you to stop, but I'd at least hope you can grow up and take the tragedy and human suffering seriously enough at some point to care more about that than you do about your HN rep.