The fears about the fragility of the front lines are only compounded by an unprecedented barrage of Russian attacks intended to knock out Ukraine’s electricity networks.
In recent meetings with POLITICO, the country’s political leaders acknowledged that public spirits are sagging, and although they all tried to stay upbeat, frustration with the West came through in every conversation.
“Give us the damn Patriots,” snapped Kuleba, Ukraine’s chief diplomat. Sitting for an interview in the foreign ministry, he couldn’t hide his exasperation with the delays, and the strings that come attached to Western weaponry — like not striking Russian oil facilities.
Kuleba, of course, offered his unconditional gratitude for all the support that has come from the Western allies over the past two years. But he warned that Ukraine is trapped in a vicious cycle: The weapons it needs are withheld or delayed; then Western allies complain that Kyiv is on the retreat, making it less likely they’ll send more aid in future. (Since POLITICO’s meeting with Kuleba,
Germany has agreed to supply Patriots, but the question still remains whether they will prove sufficient.)
The mood in the senior ranks of the military is even darker than Kuleba’s.
Several senior officers talked to POLITICO only on the understanding they would not be named so they could talk freely. They painted a grim forecast of frontlines potentially collapsing this summer when Russia, with greater weight of numbers and a readiness to accept huge casualties, launches its expected offensive. Perhaps worse, they expressed private fears that Ukraine’s own resolve could be weakened, with morale in the armed forces undermined by a desperate shortage of supplies.
Ukrainian commanders are crying out for more combat soldiers — one estimate from the former top commander, Valeriy Zaluzhny suggested they’d need an extra 500,000 troops.
But Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian parliament are hesitant about ordering a massive fresh call-up. In an interview with POLITICO, Yermak, the powerful Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine,
offered an important — and to outsiders perhaps surprising — reason for not launching a mass mobilization: such a call-up wouldn’t have the backing of the people. Zelenskyy is still “president of the people,” he said. “For him, that’s very important, and it’s very important that the people do something not just because they’re ordered to do it.”
And there’s the rub. The West has failed to come up with what’s needed, and it in turn is undermining Ukraine’s will to do what it takes.
The country is facing an existential crisis — Putin literally wants to scratch it from the map — and yet there apparently isn’t enough public support for a new draft.
Young Ukrainians are dodging the military draft
Admittedly, Ukraine is no different from its neighboring European countries where recent opinion polls suggest large numbers would refuse to be conscripted even if their nations were under attack. But Ukraine is the country at war. An existential fight like this can’t be won without mobilizing the entire nation.
And yet, as the conflict continues, Ukrainians living in Kyiv and the center and west of the country — away from the front lines — appear in some ways to be ready to put up with war raging in the east, as long as they can get back to their normal lives.
Hence, there is
draft-dodging: eligible young recruits find other things to do with their time, packing into
hipster bars and techno clubs in the late afternoons.
Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion now serving as Kyiv’s mayor, said he understood why people wanted to get back to normal, arguing that it is healthy. He told POLITICO the desire to resume daily activities was an expression of defiance in the face of Putin’s attempts to wear the people down.
Maybe so. But faced with a relentless enemy, driving home its advantage against a badly equipped army of defenders, such a hands-off attitude seems high risk.
As Ukraine’s ousted chief commander Zaluzhny found to his cost, rational warnings that things may not turn out well can get commentators and analysts in trouble. But suspending critical thinking won’t win this war either.
The West has placed too much faith in sanctions, believing they’d bring Russia to heel. There’s also been
wishful thinking about Russians turning on Putin over casualty figures, or hopes he may be ousted in a Kremlin coup. Instead Russia’s economy has remained resilient and Putin has strengthened his grip on power.
It’s true that before launching the 2022 invasion, the Russian leader may have been misled by his bungling intelligence chiefs into believing a short war would offer a quick win.
But Putin can afford to wait. Last month he awarded himself another six-year term as president. He can settle for a stalemate: Keeping Ukraine stuck between victory and defeat, shut out of both NATO and the EU, would still amount to a win.
And what would a deadlocked conflict do to Ukrainian resilience?
The early burst of patriotic fervor which saw draft centers swamped with volunteers has evaporated. An estimated 650,000 men of fighting age have fled their country, most by smuggling themselves across the border.
Two years ago, the trains heading out of Ukraine were almost exclusively carrying women, children and the elderly to seek refuge. This week, around a third of the passengers on one train carrying this correspondent out of the country were men of fighting age. Somehow they’d managed to get waiver papers to leave.
In Zelenskyy’s presidential office in Bankova Street, his officials insist they are still positive. But that Western aid, especially President Joe Biden’s long-delayed $60 billion package of support, can’t wait much longer.
What would Putin do if Ukraine doesn’t get the Western help it needs to win? “He would completely destroy everything. Everything,” Zelenskyy told Axel Springer media. Ukrainian cities will be reduced to rubble; hundreds of thousands will die, he said.
“People will not run away, most of them, and so he will kill a lot of people. So how it will look like? A lot of blood.”
The West’s failure to send weapons to Kyiv is putting Putin on course for victory.
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