Bobko
10 Mar 2024 #2701
Machines + 0 = Machines collecting dust.
When they talk to the outside world, Ukrainians still insist that weapons and ammunition are the key hurdles preventing them from succeeding. "Give us the weapons and ammo, and we'll kick the Russians out tomorrow".
Internally, however, their national discussion is very much about how a shortage of manpower is THE determining factor.
Ukraine is not behaving "stupidly", per se. There simply isn't enough money to pay an additional 500K soldiers' salaries, and what's more... Ukrainian society may simply implode. Zelensky is well aware of this, and it seems he has chosen to just keep playing a game of political hot potato - kicking the mobilization topic around between the General Staff/MoD, the Verkhovna Rada, and his own office.
The reason he's not bringing the subject up when traveling, is that it's just a very awkward subject for Zelensky to broach with the West. Acknowledging the manpower issues calls into question many fundamental assumptions about this war.
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I'll try to illustrate my meaning with an example. I was talking to an American recently, and he was asking me about Ukraine's problems with mobilization. His perspective was the same as yours - very George Washington-like, "tree of liberty must be generously nourished with blood of patriots" type shtick. He was asking me, "if a people are in a fight for their survival, why can't they be bothered to defend themselves?".
My answer to him was,
1) Things were already not great in Ukraine pre-2022
2) The people decided to give the government a last chance, and rallied around it.
3) Over the last two years the government has shown itself to be criminally incompetent, with a callous disregard towards human life.
4) Numerous "Fortress Severodonetsk", "Fortress Bakhmut", "Fortress Avdeevka" type PR campaigns fell flat on their face. Unnecessarily delayed and extremely bloody withdrawals, have convinced families that their sons and husbands would only be killed for little to no benefit. The disaster of a counter offensive also did not give people any confidence that their family members are being managed soundly.
5) The Ukrainian military is engaged in routine fraud against the families of the deceased. In tens of thousands of cases, families cannot get paid their 15 million Hrivnya "death payments", because their husband or son is constantly being requalified as "missing in action" to avoid issuing a death certificate.
Who wants to defend this type of government, that treats you like a dog?


