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Facing a demographic catastrophe, Ukraine is paying for troops to freeze sperm
- dyauspitr 8mo agoWhat a waste of life. Why hasn’t someone taken out Putin, is it really that hard? It can’t possibly be that hard for a state.
- subjectsigma 8mo agoOk sure, you go try it! Just remember that even if you succeed, the consequences may be everyone you know and love dying in nuclear fire.
- technate4eva 8mo ago[flagged]
- brandonmenc 8mo agoYes, it is difficult to take out the leader of a world nuclear world power. Especially one as shrewd as Putin. Especially when you're expecting the EU to do it. Not sure why this is a surprise. The world is not an action film.
- rngfnby 8mo agoThis. Never mind that they tried a month ago with the drone attacks. How would this work exactly? The most protected person in the world, thousands of km from hostile borders, in the city with the world best AD surrounded, by bureaucrats who, if anything, think Putin is too soft on the West.
- SanjayMehta 8mo agoAnd what happened? They poked the bear and it turned their electricity grid off. Something NATO would have done in the first 4 hours, not take 4 years.
- rngfnby 8mo agoRight. Ppl behave as if Russia isn't sitting on the world's conventional weapons cache, and largest weapons production capability. Or that Ukraine wasn't sitting on the second largest cache of conventional weapons, particularly Soviet era AD.
- artem2471 8mo agoThat one attack where Russians released an ai generated video to prove its existence.
- jesterson 8mo ago[flagged]
- dismalaf 8mo agoZelenskyy could die tomorrow and Ukraine would keep fighting. Your brain's been melted by Russian propaganda.
- jesterson 8mo ago[flagged]
- fhdkweig 8mo agoThe Ukraine conscription age is 25. If they were desperate for soldiers it would be lowered. It was 18 for the United States in the Vietnam war. Definitely wouldn't be grabbing people off the streets.
- somenameforme 8mo agoThe US was a large country with normal demographics in the era of Vietnam, fighting a war with low deaths - less than 60k over ~10 years of fighting. Ukraine is a fraction of the size of the US, was already in a major demographic crisis before the war started, and is fighting a war where they are suffering high death rates. This [1] is a population of pyramid from Ukraine 2 years ago. It's going to look dramatically worse now. They simply don't have many people below the age of 25. And you shouldn't just view those people as fodder. That is essentially the future of Ukraine. Send them off to die and you literally and figuratively send the future of Ukraine off to die. So the two wars aren't especially comparable at all. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine2024.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine2024.jpg
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago3.1 million Vietnamese died. But they don't count in USAian math. https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War
- ars 8mo agoA state can do it, but it might fail, and the result of a failure would be a catastrophe so everyone is very cautious.
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago[flagged]
- rngfnby 8mo agoAnd then you get Medvedev. His finger is so itchy for the red button he has to rub it with vagisil. At a certain point we have to understand that Putin is about the most pro-Western person left in Russia.
- GolfPopper 8mo ago>Putin is about the most pro-Western person left in Russia. Appearing more sane than Putin while simultaneously being in a position to plausibly serve as Putin's successor is likely to be fatal.
- rngfnby 8mo agoHow's that relevant to the assertion that Putin should be whacked? For whatever reason Putin is the most pro-West guy in the West, he remains the most pro-West guy in the West. Off him and you get a very trigger happy replacement.
- wonderwonder 8mo agoYou think the war ends if they kill Putin? Medvedev would very likely nuke Kiev 30 minutes later.
- dyauspitr 8mo agoI seriously doubt it. You have to be absolutely bonkers to start nuclear war over one person. Russia is insane but not suicidal.
- hyperman1 8mo agoFranz Ferdinand proves we are this bonkers.
- fhdkweig 8mo agoI could believe that one man's death could start a conventional war. A conventional war is winnable. But 100 years later, a nuclear war is suicide at best. Trump would almost certainly not intervene with nukes to protect non-US soil if Russia launched first, but there are plenty of European countries with nukes. Anyone in charge of Russia would have to accept the possibility that a first strike would leave them with a bad time.
- rngfnby 8mo agoThey don't have to nuke anybody, just rain missiles on the Baltics and create a land bridge to Kaliningrad. Now the escalation ball's on our court. Are you willing to die for Latvia? (And Medvedev does appear to be that bonkers)
- Mikhail_Edoshin 8mo agoRussian are soldiers and the West are investors. (War investors in this case). From an investor standpoint a soldier is insane.
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago[flagged]
- kstenerud 8mo agoPutin is a symptom, not the problem. The problem is that Russia is the one surviving major imperialist state (as in annexing land) of the four that existed in the 1930s. We defeated the other three and rebuilt their constitutions, but we didn't have the manpower or the will to do this to Russia as well. And so, Russia continued in its imperialist tradition: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and next Moldova and Lithuania if they're not stopped. The West naively believed that commerce would tame Russia, but an imperialist is never satisfied with riches and friends - only land gives them a true sense of status. And so we must learn this painful lesson yet again. Killing Putin would only make a temporary dent. The only way to stop this kind of beast is to destroy and rebuild like we did with Italy, Germany, and Japan.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- clot27 8mo agoPutin is literally creation of west, they wanted USSR to fall so desperately but didn't think about its consequences, now all the former soviet countries are killing each other and doing ethnic cleansing of different groups inside their border.
- geo4449 8mo ago[flagged]
- rngfnby 8mo agoAnd how do you plan we do that? We can't beat the Houthis, but Im sure we'll be great vs. the most battle tested army since world war 2.
- SanjayMehta 8mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- whynotmaybe 8mo agoInteresting choice of word to describe a country trying to survive against an aggressor that started the war
- jesterson 8mo ago[flagged]
- netsharc 8mo agoPray tell, why is it "complicated"? And what's the situation behind the cliche that you're "more educated" in?
- whynotmaybe 8mo agoColour me as old fashion but in my book when a country invades another, it's an aggression. Especially when the one that started it seems inclined to target civilians that they supposedly want to help. Unless you also consider this a "mass media cliché".
- SanjayMehta 8mo agoKidnapping Maduro comes under what category?
- whynotmaybe 8mo agoAggression
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- notepad0x90 8mo agowhat is the point? genetic diversity? women and the length of pregnancy is the limiting bottleneck. Men can have kids very late, and from what I heard, only a certain top percentage of sperm donors' products get picked.
- dismalaf 8mo agoMaybe Ukrainian women want to have kids with their partners who are soldiers? Morale boost, probably a higher willingness to fight to the possible death if you know there's a chance your genes will survive... It's about more than simply having anyone's children...
- roysting 8mo agoIt might even just be a cynical motivation to with zero actual intent on using it. Men under pressure to be thrown into the meat grinder will be more encouraged and motivated if they believe their legacy can continue even without what they know is a death sentence.
- ars 8mo agoNo, the bottleneck is the desire to have children. Unless you are planning to force the women, you need policies (such as these) that encourage them to want children.
- dietr1ch 8mo agoWhich requires affordability to own a home sooner rather than later, but here we are closer to 50yr mortgages than closing in the replacement rate.
- netsharc 8mo ago> Private fertility clinics began offering what's known as crypto preservation to servicemen and women in 2022 at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion. I'm pretty certain it's "cryo" and not "crypto". Am I wrong, or has the BBC's standards slipped so badly?
- fhdkweig 8mo agoThe United States military was apparently interested in the idea in a 2022 article, although I can't find any recent information on it. https://qz.com/610131/the-us-military-will-pay-for-soldiers-to-freeze-their-eggs-and-sperm https://qz.com/610131/the-us-military-will-pay-for-soldiers-... https://www.progress.org.uk/us-military-to-offer-egg-and-sperm-freezing-to-service-members/ https://www.progress.org.uk/us-military-to-offer-egg-and-spe...
- eurleif 8mo agoAnd Israel has been freezing soldiers' sperm post-mortem: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5658287/families-of-israeli-soldiers-killed-in-gaza-are-retreiving-sperm-from-their-bodies https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5658287/families-of-isr...
- idiomaddict 8mo agoI’ve never been bothered by the idea of my corpse being mistreated, but that feels like several bridges too far
- red-iron-pine 8mo agopresumably this is a flag or box you can check in your military paperwork this also assumes there is enough of you left to recover, identify, and freeze
- idiomaddict 8mo agoThey only ask the parents
- powerpcmac 8mo agoHere's how Ukraine can still win
- marcus_holmes 8mo agoPeople who actually know about the Ukrainian war are countering the idea that Ukraine is running out of men: https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-fewer-soldiers-on-the-front-line https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-fewer-soldiers-on... As they point out: "... the issue of Ukraine’s supposed manpower crisis. This idea has been a key part of the analysis for more than two years now, analysis saying Ukraine was on the verge of military failure." The Ukrainians are adapting their battle tactics and use of drones to reduce their casualties. The Russians are not, and are suffering huge casualties as a result. Yet no-one is saying the Russian invasion is doomed because they're going to run out of young men.
- thisislife2 8mo agoIt is because of the manpower shortage that, credit due, the Ukrainians have come with many innovative ways to use Drones in the ongoing war. But anyone who says Ukraine's military doesn't have a manpower shortage is either ignorant, misinformed or deluded - quite recently Ukraine announced that they would now be recruiting even 60 years old ( https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskyy-signs-law-for-over-60s-to-join-military/live-73445167 https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskyy-signs-law-for-over-6... ). You do not hire old people to fight in a war unless you are desperate. Relying on drone warfare for defence however is still a short-term measure because the Russians too are learning from the Ukrainian and adapting accordingly ( https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/22/europe/russia-rubicon-unit-drone-revolution-ukraine-intl-cmd https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/22/europe/russia-rubicon-uni... ).
- Gud 8mo agoThe Ukrainians have always been inventive. They were the technological center of the Soviet Union. Slava Ukraini!
- geo4449 8mo ago"The Russians are suffering huge casualties as a result". This, right here, is the best proof that social media usage is directly proportional with intellectual decline. God save us all!
- 8mo ago
- hackandthink 8mo ago"The study examined different scenarios, from a "best case", in which the war ended in 2023 without significant further escalation, to a "worst case", ending in 2025 after further escalation." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
- hsyehbeidhh 8mo ago[dead]