cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/30140601
Oleksandr deserted from the front line in eastern Ukraine after watching his fellow servicemen being pulverised by Russian bombardments for six months. Then, those remaining were ordered to counterattack.
It was the final straw for Oleksandr, 45, who had been holding the line in the embattled Lugansk region in the early months of the war. Even his commanding officer was reluctant to send his men back toward what looked like certain death. So when Oleksandr saw an opening to save his life, he did.
"We wanted to live. We had no combat experience. We were just ordinary working people from villages," the soft-spoken serviceman, who declined to give his last name, told AFP.
His decision is just one of many cases plaguing the Ukrainian military, which has already suffered at least 43,000 losses in nearly three years of fighting, President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed this month. The government is also struggling to recruit new troops. Together, these manpower problems present a critical hurdle for Ukraine, which is losing territory to Russia at the fastest rate since the early days of the February 2022 invasion.
The issue was put under the spotlight in September when 24-year-old serviceman Sergiy Gnezdilov announced in a scathing social media post that he was leaving his unit in protest over indefinite service. "From today, I am going AWOL with five years of impeccable soldiering behind me, until clear terms of service are established or until my 25th birthday," he wrote.
Figures published by the Ukrainian general prosecutor's office show that more than 90,000 cases have been opened into instances of soldiers going absent without leave or deserting since Russia invaded in 2022, with a sharp increase over the past year.
Oleksandr said that after leaving the frontline, he remembered little from the year he spent at home in the Lviv region owing to concussions he suffered while deployed. He recounted "mostly drinking" to process the horrors he witnessed but his guilt was mounting at the same time. He ultimately decided to return after seeing young Ukrainians enlist or wounded troops return to battle -- despite pleas from his family.
His brother was beaten during the historic Maidan protests in 2013 that toppled Ukraine's pro-Kremlin leader, and later died. His sister was desperate. "They're going to kill you. I would rather bring you food to prison than flowers to your grave," he recounted his sister telling him during a visit from Poland.
It was guilt, too, that motivated Buch, who identified himself by a military nickname, to return to battle. The 29-year-old deserted after being wounded in fierce fighting in southern Ukraine in late 2022 during the liberation of Kherson city. "Just staying under constant shelling gradually damages your mental state. You go crazy step by step. You are all the time under stress, huge stress," he said of his initial decision to abscond.
In an effort to address manpower shortages, Ukrainian lawmakers in August approved an amnesty for first-time offenders who voluntarily returned to their units.
Both the 47th and 53rd brigades in December announced they would welcome back servicemen who had left the front without permission, saying: "We all make mistakes." Prosecutors said in early December that 8,000 servicemen that went absent without leave or deserted had returned in November alone.
Still, Siver, commander of the 1st Separate Assault Battalion, known as Da Vinci, who also identified himself by his military nickname, said the number of Ukrainian troops fleeing the fighting without permission was growing. That is partly because many of the most motivated fighters have already been killed or wounded.
"Not many people are made for war," said Siver, describing how his perceptions of bravery had been reshaped by seeing those who stood their ground, and those who fled. "There are more and more people who are forced to go," he told AFP, referring to a large-scale and divisive army mobilisation campaign.
But other servicemen interviewed by AFP suggested that systemic changes in military culture -- and leadership -- could help deter desertions.
Buch said his military and medical training as well as the attitudes of his superiors had improved compared to his first deployment, when some officers "didn't treat us like people". Siver suggested that better psychological support could help troops prepare for the hardships and stress of battle.
"Some people think it's going to be like in a movie. Everything will be great, I'll shoot, I'll run," he said. "But it's different. You sit in a trench for weeks. Some of them are knee-deep in mud, cold and hungry." He said there was no easy solution to discouraging desertion, and predicted the trend would worsen. "How do you reduce the numbers? I don't even know how. We just have to end the war," he said.
Euromaidan was a confluence of a lot of different factors. It's virtually impossible to quantify and categorize it under one umbrella term. Some call it a coup, some call it a revolution.
I think it's complicated. For example, there was a a genuine discontent among the population- with a lot of emphasis on the item you mentioned, the decision to not move closer to the EU. But there was more at play. Far-right organizations orchestrated and escalated the protests and intentionally provoked more violence. They understood, as many on the far-right do, that violence begets more violence. And violence is a great way to start a chain-reaction that topples the establishment.
It's something that's been increasing in frequency, some successful and some failing. Ie Jan 6th in the US and Jan 8th in Brazil. both right-wing storming of the capital in an attempt to disrupt the democratic process. In the US and Brazil, where there are stronger and more stable Democratic institutions... the establishment remained intact.
In Ukraine, it toppled like a house of cards.
Here's some leftist reading material
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
https://voxukraine.org/en/denial-of-the-obvious-far-right-in-maidan-protests-and-their-danger-today
and here's a research article looking at the violence that led to the eventual dismantling of the government
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26532701
Lots of this was funded by opposition parties
Which likewise received a lot of funding by the US - through organizations like NED. With billions spent in Ukraine since their independence in 91, roughly $200M annually, a lot of this money ultimately trickled down to the correct sources.
So here's the rub-
You talk about your anarchist comrades, so I'm guessing you're a leftist. But what Euromaidan was, if we're going try boil down a complex multifaceted event into a single sentence: a far-right coup supported by the US that toppled a democratically elected government and allowed a new government to be appointed unconstitutionally. That same government immediately started cooperating with the CIA after which Russia invaded literally only a couple days later.
Do you see why I think Ukraine is not some beacon of democracy? Of course Russia is a hellhole. But Ukraine is a banana republic. It's like Guatemala in the 50s or Cuba before the revolution. It's a government propped up for a purpose and it will be disposed of when it's no longer useful. And that moment is coming soon.
So if I put myself in the shoes of some joe schmoe, why should I risk my life and my family's life for this? It's a joke. The bigger the lie, the more people believe.
We're seeing such a large right-wing resurgence all over the globe that even self-identified leftists are supported right-wing causes. We're starting to see this in the US, for example, with the left becoming progressively more and more anti-immigrant. I don't know. I think we're doomed, if I'm being honest
Wasn't me but I'm also an Anarchist so w/e.
The fuck. A coup would not have resulted in elections. A far-right coup would not have resulted in the likes of right sector and svoboda losing seats. The "US support" narrative is complete BS, the type of work the US did in Ukraine is above board, also, the EU is way more involved.
Your whole line of reasoning here is contingent on wanting to prove the "US is exceptionally powerful and evil" narrative, shared by both the Kremlin and certain portions of the US left (or at least they think they're leftists).
You know what? Don't talk to me, it probably won't do a thing. Talk to people from Ukraine.
It doesn't want to be. Its people do not want it to be one, and they're willing to fight for it. And before you get confused, now: If Ukraine ever was anyone's banana republic at any point then Moscow's.
...there's not a single far-right party with a seat in the Rada. It's completely ALDE and EPP, with Opposition Platform being banned (those would be S&D if they weren't Russian stooges).
Really?
Iran 1953, US-supported coup that led to an election that coincidentally resulted in a pro-US government coming to power Chile 1973, US-supported coup that led to elections which resulted in top 3 tier list Latin American dictator Pinochet Guatemala 1954, US-supported coup that led to elections which resulted in a military junta that perpetuated the worst genocide in Latin America Cuba 1952, Batista, supported by US, led a coup and then immediately held elections. Resulting in a brutal violent government that terrorized people so deeply they went full commie
Brazil 1945 Brazil 1964 Iraq 1963 Egypt 2013 Thailand 2006 Sudan 1985
All led to elections immediately or shortly after the coup
Do I really need to go on? In a country that is ostensibly a democracy, it'd be more surprising if there aren't elections after a coup.
Billions of USD flowed into Ukraine. There's history of US involvement in Ukraine. It's even in the public record they tried a coup shortly after WW2. We don't have to speculate on that one, you can look it up.
I don't understand why this is so hard for people to believe. Here let me ask a few basic questions
Do you believe the US acts in its own interests?
Do you believe that the US is willing and capable of acting covertly in order to advance its own interests?
Do you have even a shallow understanding of 20th century history? If so, have you read about or heard about any of the myriad of different coup and coup attempts that the US has attempted all across Latin America and the Middle East?
If you answered yes to all of these things, why the hell do you think it's so outrageous that the US was involved in Euromaidan?
There's plenty of evidence. You say Europe was more involved but that isn't true. US has not only given more than all of Europe for this war, but it had pumped more money into Ukraine since Ukrainian independence than all of Europe. It's not hard to understand why. It's the expansion of western power eastwards.
What I find interesting is people like you when you're talking about domestic policy, you're perfectly rational.
"The government is run by an oligarchic elite who look out for their own interests and don't care about the working people or the ideology they claim to represent." I have a feeling you agree with that statement.
But all of a sudden we talk about foreign policy and you turn into a patriot jingoist.
But you know what's interesting? That jingoism has a short half life. The same thing happened with the invasion of Iraq. During the invasion of Iraq, everybody believed it was for freedom and democracy. Nation building and WMDs.
Today though, you won't find a soul defending the American aggressive invasion of Iraq. Why? Because everybody understands, both implicitly and explicitly, that the US acted in a pragmatic and amoral way to advance its own interests. The propaganda that created justifications was just that, propaganda.
Today, it's obvious. Yesterday, it wasn't. Tomorrow, this Ukraine proxy war will be obvious. Today, there's too much active manipulation for people to see straight.
Do you have any data to back up that insinuation? Like, at least a believable hypothesis of how the CIAFBIATF managed to falsify an election in a way that OSCE observers aren't even suspicious?
It's not outrageous at all. You're just vastly overstating the influence the US has on anything. People from the US on the ground during Euromaidan btw wanted protestors to talk to Yanukovich and to come to a compromise, and the protesters wanted to hear none of it, they wanted Yanukovich gone after the shit he pulled. Euromaidan, if anything, shows how little influence the US has, not how all-powerful it is.
Also can you stop treating a whole fucking nation as nothing more but puppets of foreign influence, with no agency of its own. Ukraine has a vibrant civil society, in many, many ways more healthy than the US one not to speak of the Russian one (which is basically non-existent because Putin made sure Russians slid back into fatalism). They have every right to decide their own fate and here you stand, saying "no they cannot be acting on their own accord, they cannot do anything on their own, it must be foreign influence because CIA evil". That's what your argument boils down to and it's silly and several light-years removed from material analysis.
Talk. To. Ukrainians. I know it's a bit harder in the US than it is over here because you don't have refugees living literally next door but there's plenty of them online, plenty who speak English. Talk to them. Ordinary people.
Oh and also watch Servant of the People if you have any time to kill at all.
Note that your quote is in reference to the Iranian 1953 coup.
I explained it. US support of both civil organizations that promote pro-western policies and far-right organizations. The money trail is there. NED used to share their recipients on their website up until a couple years ago, but you can still find it on the internet wayback archive. Whatever was sent openly through NED you can count on another amount of money being sent covertly to uglier groups
Here's the thing- I'm not trying to take away agency from Ukrainians. The US did not create Euromaidan. They promoted it and they tried to support the material conditions that allowed Euromaidan to happen. But the outrage was real. The protests were real. It's not so much the US created it as the US took advantage of it. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
Small powers get subjugated by big powers. Are you claiming somehow Ukrainians are unique in this? That they are racially or culturally superior to every other small country that the US supported and instigated coups in? Are you taking away the agency of Guatemalans, Cubans, Iranians, etc? Why is Ukraine special?
That's great, I 100% agree. But I'm not sure if you're ever been in a liberal democracy. It's not the people that actually get to decide what happens. It's the powerful private interest groups that happen to control the levers to power.
Again, the same argument could be made for every single other US-supported coup. Do you deny these have ever happened? Have you read about any of them?
Two things here. a) I have a couple Ukrainian friends and their views are more nuanced than yours. b) just because somebody comes from a country that does not make their opinion magically correct. Exhibit A talk to some Trump voters and determine whether or not they have an accurate representation of reality. Exhibit B look back at the invasion of Iraq. Do you believe the average American had an accurate understanding of what was happening at the time? War = massive amounts of propaganda being pumped into our media systems. It obfuscates the truth and most people do not care so they just take the official narrative and run with it. As it turns out, however, official narrative is the last thing you should trust in a war
Far-right organisations and parties have less influence in Ukraine right now than in pretty much any other European country. Money trail or not, that's not speaking towards the US being able to influence things.
"Pro-western", whatever that means, has been popular in Ukraine for quite some time. Ukrainians only have to look over the border to Poland (you're aware that they're bordering each other and the languages are almost mutually intelligible? Just making sure) how beneficial being part of the EU is. Tons and tons of Ukrainians, year after year, went into the EU as seasonal workers. They're no strangers to us, we're no strangers to them. I shared a lecture hall with Ukrainians, that was still back in Kutshma times and boy what progress Ukraine made in the meantime. What wasn't universally popular was a hard break with Russia, many people had faith in Russia, too, being able to work towards shaking off the shackles of kleptocracy, of autocracy. That changed with Crimea and by now it has completely shifted.
While I'm at it: Are you claiming that these elections were not fraudulent. That fraud was the cause for the Orange revolution.
...the sum of that money is peanuts, btw. Every single Ukrainian oligarch can, and indeed has, outspent the NED. Fun thing about Ukrainian oligarchs is that plenty of them don't like to be under Moscow's thumb, either, they don't want to pay dues to Russia's mob.
You read too many geopolitical "realists", as they call themselves. Small powers band up and beat large powers. Small powers fight wars of independence that ruin big powers.
Cuba, Vietnam. Did the US achieve what it wanted, there. What about Afghanistan. Afghanistan broke both the USSR and the US. Tell me more about how small powers get dominated.
I have also more nuanced views than I'm expressing here. I don't get to express them because you're being a conspiracy theorist, before we can get to nuance we'll first have to deal with the elephant in the room.
Somehow, Europeans had a much clearer picture. Maybe you should listen to us more. Americans are notoriously self-absorbed, the upper echelons might be less uninformed but y'all are still just as jingoistic. Case in point: Your assertion, against all evidence, about domination. Left, right, educated, dropout, doesn't matter, it's very hard to find yanks who don't buy into that shit. It's the water you swim in and I'm currently trying to get you to see it.
Go back to your school days. How often have you heard that America is the biggest and greatest and most powerful? How prevalent is that kind of thinking in the minds of your compatriots? Even if you disagree with how that power is used: Do you still believe that it, indeed, exists? That is what I'm talking about. You may question one thing, but you're not questioning, even examining, the deeper layer of y'alls national delusion.
Show me, please, another European country where the far-right was able to fund hundreds of protests which they purposely escalated to violence (following traditional right-wing patterns, ie Mein Kampf) and those protests were key in toppling the government.
They played kingmaker. In return they get incorporated and legitimized. Ie Azov which started as a neonazi militia becomes an official part of the government. Now they're "tolerant and inclusive" but if you look at the leadership, it turns out they're the same guys who joined when it was neonazis.
"pro-western" means messages that bring Ukraine closer to the Western block and away from the Russian block. US money has been openly flowing since independence in 1991, with covert money almost certainly going back much longer (remember, the US tried a coup in Ukraine after WW2. you can read a history book about it)
i'd imagine it's like spanish to italian. close and if you have had exposure you'll be able to pick up more than someone who hasn't.
invasion of Crimea happened because of Euromaidan. literally a few days after there was a coup that installed a pro-western government. Russia got desperate and decided it was now or never. at the time, less than half of people supported the protests. mostly split on west/east. it was not so universally supported even though history is slowly being rewritten.
right now, ukraine has lost almost a quarter of their population. and that included their most pro-russian citizens (crimea+donbas). so now they are more ideologically homogenous. it may seem like there was a major change but it's deceptive
i haven't made a single claim about any election in ukraine being fraudulent or legitimate. in the west we don't have to fake votes. elections are bought in other ways. you know what's the greatest correlation for campaign success in the US? $$$
billions of pure liquid cash in the right hands is not peanuts, especially in a poor country like Ukraine. $200M a year is enough to hire thousands of people full time.
it's history. do you deny this? small powers get subjugated by big ones. big ones have a gravitational orbit and pull in small powers to advance their interests. it's a tale that goes back to Athens and the Delian League. I'm not really sure what you're arguing against here. it's not a controversial take i'm making
ok let's back track.
whether or not US was successful does not change the fact that the US had a long track record of coup attempts
only Cuba had a US-supported coup attempt. and they succeeded. about a decade later there was a communist revolution, but for that decade American companies owned a majority of the arable land in Cuba.
similar story in Guatemala. Chiquita owned the majority of farmland there. It's why the CIA overthrew the government. for $$$. The fact that there happened to be a military dictatorship that perpetuated genocide did not matter
similar story in Iran (your Europe was involved in this one too, by the way) except with oil
it's a cheap way to shut down a conversation. if the US has done something like 20+ times in the last century and it's actually done that thing in Ukraine before, you cannot pretend like it's such a wild thing.
Europeans were involved in Iraq too, buddy. Propaganda was just as strong over there. People were just as misinformed. Same thing in Libya. Same thing right now in Israel. When US says "let's go" the Europeans go
Just an FYI I was born in Latin America. In a country where the CIA toppled a democratically elected government which resulted in a military dictatorship.
I'm not sure if I'm willing to defend here with you basic geopolitics and history. for example Germany and Japan were subjugated by the US after WW2. Small power bends to big one. This is basic stuff. I have a feeling you are young and have not yet had time to read and absorb information yet.
"Another" implies that that was the case in Ukraine. The right wing is not close to big enough to field those numbers. Them being at the protests doesn't mean that they run it. You could just as well accuse pretty much any other party of paying protesters.
But there's actually a case: Germany. And it wasn't protests, but brownshirt militias. Backed by among others US money, e.g. Henry Ford.
If Canada were to invade the US, would you mind the KKK volunteering to die on the front? Would you stop them from dying?
Ukraine did not have a functioning army when Crimea went down, everything had to be rebuilt, meanwhile, a defensive line had to be held. You don't ask deep questions in those kinds of situations: If someone wants to defend the homeland, you have them defend the homeland.
In case you're curious btw it's not precisely Azov but Dylan Burns has an interview with Right Sector soldiers. Right Sector were the ones participating in Euromaidan.
The first accurate assessment I'm hearing from you. Yes, Russia realised that if it did not act militarily, Ukraine would actually escape the empire. Like the Baltics did, like Poland did, like Romania did, like Georgia well it's still up in the air but shit's certainly going down over there. Right now.
Figures people don't like to be ruled by Moscow. Can you blame them? The most compelling argument for a "pro-western" direction is Moscow itself.
Who the fuck cares. Who asked. Who called the US a democracy. We're talking about Ukraine, you'll not only have to look beyond the brim of your burger, you have to step out of it.
But on the flipside you get to say it happened, against all evidence?
No. The UK and some other nations who wanted to suck up to the US participated. Germany knew that the Curveball intelligence was BS the moment Rumsfeld fielded it, that intelligence came from Germany. Attached to it a note "use for possible leads only, guy lies through his teeth".
Last I checked I was, technically, born under British occupation, not American. Also the term we use over here is "liberated". You're comparing apples and oranges.
Latin American countries aren't known to have particularly strong civil societies which can act in unison. Maybe that's what you're missing, where this "nothing ever happens if a shady cabal doesn't orchestrate it and pays people off" attitude comes from.
You ever heard that infamous quote by the founding general secretary of NATO? "keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Russians out" ?
NATO was designed to be and still is a tool to subjugate Europe and expand American power. Everything the German politicians wrote in the aftermath of WW2 had to be approved by the Allied powers and the US by far had the strongest gravitational orbit. To this day, Germany is not allowed anything beyond a defensive military.
A country who cannot voluntarily build up a military is a country that is not fully independent.
Ok, so we acknowledge that far-right protests can lead to coups and that money helps finance these. We are getting somewhere. Right-wing tactics are nothing new. The same things they tried in the early 20th century, they are trying again today.
https://voxukraine.org/en/denial-of-the-obvious-far-right-in-maidan-protests-and-their-danger-today
Far-right organizations were by far the most important players in these protests. They organized them, they funded them, they escalated tensions at the protests. This falls in line with far-right tactics, like we spoke about above. Violence begets more violence. Enough violence and the government can topple.
These groups, Svoboda being the largest, had a large access to $$$. This $$$ came from somewhere.
Then we leave quasi-legitimacy of Svoboda and go directly to militancy.
If you look at the data, if you look at the protests, if you look at what happened- the far-right was instrumental in toppling the Ukrainian government. They were organized, ideologically heated, and had lots of resources backing them.
If I were a Ukrainian and I could snap my finger and choose whether to be part of the West or part of Russia's orbit... I would immediately choose the West.
But look at the costs they paid for this independence war. They've lost a fifth of their land, nearly a quarter of their population, nearly a third of their economic output. Cities are ruined, families are scattered, their demographics are destroyed for the next century.
Ukraine will never be a Poland. They are a sacrificial lamb. This is what really fucks me up about the whole thing. We participate in the destruction of Ukraine in the name of democracy, sovereignty, international law, bla bla bla. But in 10 years they will be no better off. They will not get a Marshall Plan
I'm not criticizing the morality of allowing the far-right to fight in a war. I'm using that as an example to show their outsized influence. Have you seen any left-wing militias that got officially incorporated into the Ukrainian military? No, you haven't. Because the far-right is not only more common in numbers, but in influence.
Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, & the United Kingdom
It's not "against all evidence" There is a wealth of circumstantial evidence. You can track American money openly flowing into Ukrainian organizations that directly participated in the overthrow of the Kiev government and instituted a pro-US regime.
That new regime on the very first day already started cooperating with the CIA. There's a nice Reuters or Washington Post article about it I can find if you're interested.
There's the diplomatic phone call leaked by Russia, I don't know if you've heard it. Basically two US officials were debating which Ukrainian politician they wanted to win. Turns out, the guy they wanted to win did become PM. There's more, if you're willing to read leftist news.
Yeah, because Ukraine is a strong civil society. Where the government was toppled and one was unconstitutionally appointed.
Germany is allowed whatever is allowed by international law. Unlike other countries we actually care about that stuff and no we were never limited to pure defence.
Oh I see you're a Nazi, they're talking like that all the time here. "Germany has no constitution". "We're actually still in the Reich, the current government is a limited liability company".
Seriously. Here, you can read up on your kin in thought. In reality, Germany gained full sovereignty with the 2+4 treaty. It took until 1990 because Russia insisted on instituting a dictatorship in the east. You might have noticed that I'm not shy with my anti-Americanism but that one wasn't their fault.
That's not even what your source says. Yes, they were the most organised. People welcomed the e.g. riot shields they organised, you also wouldn't ask about the idology of whoever is handing you something to duck behind while getting shot at by government snipers. Who the fuck needs funding to buy a metro ticket to the square on a day off to get shot at by government snipers. Have you any idea how small those organisations are, and how many people were on the streets back then.
And they would lose even more if they were to stop fighting. And they know that, and that is precisely why they fight. Have a look at the polls. Or I suppose the US is paying Ukrainians off to answer in particular ways?
How much money. Name it. Name the sum. Then laugh at it. Ukraine is poor but not that poor.
Nuland is entitled to her opinions, it's a free country, even Americans can have opinions in Ukraine. Figures that the people in the Rada are also politicians and came to the same conclusion: Jazenjuk would make a good interim PM. Bog-standard Christian Democrat, kinda boring, honourable, not a red flag for anyone, experienced.
The very reason that two people sharing an opinion, "I think so and so would be a good choice", is considered smoking gun evidence by the people peddling that narrative should make you think.
No. If anything Yanukovich was unconstitutionally removed from office -- as said, the Rada had the votes, it has the power, but they didn't keep to standard procedure. All the appointments were completely constitutional.
The civil society was strong enough to remove a Russian asset from power, yes, to make him go AWOL. That's what happens in democracies: If politicians don't follow the people's will, they get deposed of. Euromaidan was not a regular impeachment, no, but Yanukovich' betrayal of his platform wasn't ordinary, either, and neither was him opening fire on protestors. Call it a special electoral operation, and any doubts about constitutionality were fixed soon after with new elections.
That is how things are done in democracies. That's how crises are resolved.