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.
Ok imma try to get my point across one more time: There are two different layers of reality about the war.
Both layers contain meaningful information.
A bit of info in layer 1: The war is bad.
A bit of info in layer 2: Not all people see that.
We agree on both. Now my point is: We should understand the nuances on layer 2.
Your answer is: “Layer 1 has no nuances”
The war is not the same thing as the opinions about the war.
To influence the discourse, i.e. opinions, it’s better to understand the opinions specifically (“in nuances”).
To close the discrapancy between misguided public opinion and actual reality, we need to understand the opinions, not confuse its object with its (ideologically structured) representation.
