Summary: <p>Crankstart Intern Suzi Darrington from Oxford University, who's with us for 6 weeks, is in the Listeners Chair. This is the first of 8 episodes where she will reside in that seat.</p> <p>This podcast's overall themes are nature, philosophy, climate, the human condition, sustainability, and social justice. We don’t talk about the countryside as much as we used to as listener questions take us off into all sorts of different areas that are all worth considering.</p> <p>Today's listener's question, from Peter in Ostergotland, Sweden, led to a conversation around what is it to be Russian as it is a very vast country, with a lot of different ethnicities? Behind it all though isn’t it true that ultimately we’re all the same?</p> <p>Peter’s question runs as follows:</p> <p>“Putin, the President of Russia drafted loads of male reservists to help in the Ukrainian war, yet it seems large amounts were targeted through this process amongst the minority groups in some far flung parts of Russia. Is this a hidden technique and a hidden form of ethnic cleansing within his own country, with the aim to assimilate everyone to look, sound and behave like he wants, who won’t rebel. Or is this a valid recruitment process?”</p> <p>William feels that Putin was recruiting people from further away as they are more remote from the Ukrainians. This idea came from what he’d read about how the fighting during the 1st World War became less intense after the Christmas truce, with both sides meeting each other and realising they were similar. If you know who your enemy is, you’re less likely to want to fight them.</p> <p>William feels we should all investigate the whole idea of what far flung means, as the phrase has been brought up a few times in this episode. He also raises that the conflict in Ukraine is still seen as a special military operation in Putin’s eyes, it is not seen as a war.</p> <p>Suzi thinks that any kind of conflict does pick out minority groups. People with more power can find ways to avoid being drafted, whereas those with less power, and minority groups fall into this category, find it harder to avoid being sent into conflict.</p> <p>She raises the question of whether the Russians in the east are less likely to assimilate than western Russians, and that maybe it is easier for Putin to commit people to conflict that are so far away from him?</p> <p>Stuart points out that maybe we’re assuming that Putin has an agenda, maybe it is more that Russia is a vast country, and he needs to recruit from these far flung areas of the country? Stuart mentions that Russia is such a vast country that you are always going to get rebels, because it is uncontrollable. He also raises a potential void in connection between the Russian and Ukrainian people.</p> <p>What do you make of this discussion? Do you have a question that you'd like us to discuss? Let us know by sending an email to <a href="mailto:thepeoplescountryside@gmail.com">thepeoplescountryside@gmail.com</a></p> <p>We like to give you an ad free experience, so be assured, that will never happen. We also like our audience to be relatively small and engaged, we’re not after numbers.</p> <p><br>Help us to spread the impact of the podcast by sharing this link with 5 friends<a href="https://podfollow.com/the-peoples-countryside-environmental-debate-podcast/view"> https://podfollow.com/the-peoples-countryside-environmental-debate-podcast/view</a> , support our work through Patreon<a href="https://www.patreon.com/thepeoplescountryside"> https://www.patreon.com/thepeoplescountryside</a> or just 'follow' to avoid missing any public posts. Find out all about the podcast via this one simple link:<a href="https://linktr.ee/thepeoplescountryside"> https://linktr.ee/thepeoplescountryside</a></p> --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thepeoplescountryside/message
