With broken arms and Airbnb, draft-dodging, Google-eyed Russians give a pacifist new hope

As a career pacifist, I’m greatly inspired by the various ways Russian men and women aged 18 to 50 have found to skip their national duty to fight in the war against Ukraine.

When Vladimir Putin announced the partial call-up of civilians, Google searches by Russians for ways to break one’s own arm shot up.

Now, this wouldn’t have been my go-to as a solution to avoid the carnage. Self-inflicted arm breakage as a way to avoid violence seems to make no sense.

Yet it’s clearly a favourite among the conscientious objectors of today, and you can’t deny that presenting yourself to the recruitment office with a shattered forearm or a shoulder smashed to a pulp would give the officer in charge food for thought. It most definitely beats pointing to your flat feet as your two best reasons not to go forth and kill people, as was the case, I’ve heard, in World War 2.

Modern medicine seems to have caught up with young people trying to get out of going to war, and my suspicion is that army generals have got wind of Green Cross shoe inners and are handing them out to anyone complaining about their flat feet. So now you can show up with your arm in a sling made of your bed sheet and get out of mass killing that way, all thanks to Google and the many ways you can incapacitate yourself.

Airbnb to the rescue