The key thing to successfully take refuge in Russia is to be mentally Russian. Ukraine has plenty of such people, at least because 20% of population are ethnical Russians who migrated here at different times in our history. For somebody like me, whose Russian skills are on lower intermediate side, posting comments like this in social networks occupation is effectively a death sentence, there's no way around that.
As an example my friend barely left Russian checkpoint alive after they took his phone for check-up. They were beating him for hours, because they found picture where he stands near the Ukrainian flag. Twist: he was 17 at that time, would he be a bit older, I don't know what would happen. And this is just one example among countless. You can see what happened in Bucha, Izyum, Mariupol, etc. You can learn what happened during the Soviet period after we briefly regained independence. Our population shrinked by double digit percentage pre WWII.
Average homo sovieticus with no sense of identity will be sort of okay, that's true. But Russia probably will use the men for the next war similar to what they did with people occupied in 2014.
As an example my friend barely left Russian checkpoint alive after they took his phone for check-up. They were beating him for hours, because they found picture where he stands near the Ukrainian flag. Twist: he was 17 at that time, would he be a bit older, I don't know what would happen. And this is just one example among countless. You can see what happened in Bucha, Izyum, Mariupol, etc. You can learn what happened during the Soviet period after we briefly regained independence. Our population shrinked by double digit percentage pre WWII.
Average homo sovieticus with no sense of identity will be sort of okay, that's true. But Russia probably will use the men for the next war similar to what they did with people occupied in 2014.