>>63929630
Perhaps I was overly harsh. This side of the art I certainly recognise the quality of, and it's certainly thought provoking. Part of what I was trying to say on a deeper level is that I find it difficult to engage in artwork that depicts russian soldiers as victims of tragedy, no matter how authentic or moving these artworks are, when I know that most russian soldiers currently are volunteers, and that if the ukrainians had put up less of a fight in a few years it would be me and my brothers on the firing line before them. That said I do find russian lamentations of war uniquely moving; In particular, looking into the russian experience of afghanistan, and then chechnya after the breakup of the USSR, has often moved me to the point of tears. This video in particular always fuck me up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnA552tMV8g
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I will never not sympathise on a fundamental level with soldiers who are just trying to do their job and follow orders they believe to be lawful, because had I been born on their side of the wire, I know I probably could have ended up in their shoes, but in the specific case of ukraine -
the goals of the war, the prosecution thereof by the russians, the fact that the russian army is not made up of unwilling conscript but now mostly of volunteers, and the fact that it is not only the ukrainians but free europe as a whole on the line, my europe, makes me unwilling to sympathise too much with them in this specific conflict. But even still there is some level of empathy in my heart.