YouTube link here.

By Shola Lawal, Al Jazeera, 10/21/24

More Ukrainian soldiers have deserted the army this year than ever since the onset of a war that analysts say has seen both sides make gains and report losses.

Prosecutions for desertion from Ukraine’s army are thought to have hit at least 30,000 – quite possibly much more – already this year. This is several times the number in 2022, the year the war began when citizens and foreigners voluntarily poured into the military to push Russia back.

Those found guilty are given between five and 12 years in prison. However, some defectors say that is a better option than facing what might be an endless, undefined period on the battlefield.

Desertion has become so common that Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, took the unprecedented step of decriminalising first-time attempts to flee the army on August 20, 2024, as long as those caught agree to return to duty.

Here’s why analysts say more men are leaving the army and why it is not just a problem for Ukraine:

How many have deserted the Ukrainian army?

The numbers vary depending on who you ask.

According to the Kyiv Post, it is believed that about 60,000 people have been facing criminal charges for fleeing their posts since the war started. The Ukrainian daily cited documents from the prosecutor general, with almost half of those cases initiated this year.

However, British daily The Times also cited figures from the prosecutor general which, it said, showed some 51,000 criminal cases were initiated for desertion and abandonment of a military unit between January and September of this year. El Pais newspaper cited a closer figure of 45,543 desertions between January and August this year, which it said was data from the Prosecutor General’s Office which had been leaked to the Ukrainian press.

All these figures are much higher than the 22,000 criminal charges filed for the same offence in 2023 and just 9,000 cases in 2022.

It is unclear if those fleeing the army are mostly conscripts, or if some who earlier volunteered are also abandoning their posts. Volunteers who are not Ukrainian are allowed to withdraw from the army after six months of fighting.

However, for Ukrainian conscripts – that is, those mandated to join the fighting by a general mobilisation law that has been in force since March 2022 – conscription is for life. There is no time limit placed on it.

Why are so many soldiers deserting?

Low morale caused by exhaustion is the main reason.

Soldiers complain of having to grind through for days on end under heavy fire without a pause because there is no one to relieve them. Those on the front lines have told the media that they have gone from battle to battle with little rest since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Troops are allowed to take 10 days off twice a year, but manpower shortages sometimes delay even those vacations. Soldiers and their families are pushing for breaks that range between a month’s vacation and a three-year rotation.

One soldier placed under investigation for desertion – Serhii Hnezdilov, who is also a journalist – told The Times newspaper in the UK: “At least in prison you know when you will be able to leave.” He was arrested after writing about his decision to leave the army on Facebook in protest against conditions in the army.

What condition is the army in?

It is not clear how many men Ukraine has lost in the war, but analysts say they might be in the tens of thousands. Western estimates put it at 80,000 soldiers.

Experts say the rising number of desertion cases comes as Ukraine faces a shortage of soldiers on the battlefield – a problem it is trying to solve by forcefully mobilising fighters.

As few as five to seven Ukrainian soldiers are having to face some 30 soldiers from the Russian side in some cases, Simon Schlegel, an analyst with the Crisis Group, told Radio Free Europe, a Prague-based publication.

Analysts estimate there are about one million military personnel in the Ukrainian army compared with some 2.4 million on the Russian side, but neither country publishes those figures. Ukrainian army commanders put the ratio of Russian versus Ukrainian combatants at 10 to 1.

Insufficient manpower is an old problem for Ukraine, even before the start of the war and despite early enthusiasm to join the military right after the invasion, analyst Keir Giles of the United Kingdom’s Chatham House think tank told Al Jazeera.

“Ukraine has been grappling with this for a long time,” he said, adding that the low numbers could also be fuelling further desertions. “There’s exhaustion, there’s shell shock … The initial flush of excitement about the war has worn off, and some people have started to realise that this is for the long haul.”

Alongside the mental and physical fatigue that many soldiers are suffering from prolonged periods at the front line, the Ukrainian army has to deal with inadequate weaponry and ammunition as well.

Despite some wins, including a major incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August, Ukrainian troops have often found themselves on the back foot in the nearly 32-month-long war with Russia.

Crucially, soldiers say they are poorly armed and complain of having the enemy in sight, watching them advance, and being unable to fire because they have no ammunition, according to accounts from soldiers reported by CNN. Many said they felt guilt for not being able to provide infantry units with adequate cover. Commanders have also told journalists that they have been forced to watch men from entire units die in the war because of the weapons shortage.

Speaking in the United States Congress during a testimony on April 10, General Christopher Cavoli, head of US European Command, described Russia’s five-to-one advantage in artillery shells, predicting that would soon grow to 10 to one.

Why is the army in such a poor state?

Ukrainian officials blame Western allies – the European Union and the US – for being too slow to provide military aid. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly urged Washington, with Congress split on the issue of allocating more aid to Ukraine, to speedily deliver promised funds to allow the country to buy more artillery shells and air defence systems.

On April 24 this year, the US passed a bill after a delay of almost a year, granting a $61bn aid package largely meant for Ukraine. Military aid deliveries to the country as part of the package included vehicles, Stinger air defence munitions, ammunition for high-mobility artillery rocket systems and antitank munitions.

In a statement on April 29, Zelenskyy thanked the US government and said the support had “started arriving” but reiterated a need for speedier help.

“The speed of deliveries means stabilising the front,” Zelenskyy said.

European countries collectively delivered 118.2 billion euros ($128.2bn) to Ukraine between April 2022 and September 2024, while the US has delivered 84.7 billion euros ($91.9bn), according to data from the Germany-based Kiel Institute. Analysts say the upcoming US election that could see former President Donald Trump return to the White House is causing more uncertainty for Ukraine. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut US funding to the country and many of his Republican Party members back him on the topic.

Are conscription laws fuelling desertions?

Ukraine’s martial law, which entered into force at the start of the war, mandates young men to join the military.

Zelenskyy’s government says the army needs to enlist 500,000 out of about 3.7 million men of fighting age who are eligible for service.

Since the president signed a renewed mobilisation law in April 2024, men between the ages of 25 and 60 are now eligible. Previously, the range was 27 to 60.

The updated law obliges men of fighting age to update their information with the authorities and tightens punishments for draft dodging, with fines increased from about $13 to $215 and violators facing several days in detention.

Some criticise the conscription decree as a whole for its seeming rigidity: there are no legal ways to leave the military as a conscript, unless under special circumstances such as raising a minor or a child with a disability or caring for a spouse with a disability or severe sickness.

Debates around drafting ages are also raging: some factions want to keep more young men at home to run the economy. Others, especially those in the military, say more active men are needed on the battlefield.

Under Ukraine’s martial law, men are first drafted into military service in readiness for mobilisation or “call-up” when they actually go to fight.

President Zelenskyy faced some pressure before agreeing to sign the April law, reducing the drafting age to 25, according to Ukrainian media, amid calls to lower the drafting age to 20 or 18.

Videos on social media show men from the Ukrainian army raiding bars and restaurants and forcefully dragging young men away if they refuse to be drafted under the new law. The decree requires eligible men, at home or abroad, to register and carry their drafting papers on them at all times.

Elena Davlikanova, a professor at Ukraine’s Sumy State University (SSU), says the age debate fails to focus on the real reasons why people do not want to sign up.

“It is the lack of weapons and munitions that is the major stopper from mobilisation,” Davlikanova told Al Jazeera. “It would have been way cheaper to supply enough air defence systems on time than plan Ukraine’s reconstruction, the cost of which is close to half a trillion US dollars,” she added, referring to the estimated cost of rebuilding the devastated country.

Is there any way to avoid conscription?

Not officially. Martial law means those in the drafting age groups and categories are not allowed to leave the country. However, hundreds of young men have fled to neighbouring countries fearing conscription. Some have risked the freezing waters of the Tysa River, on the border with Romania, to get away, and many have drowned, according to Ukraine’s border patrol, which did not give specific numbers.

Those caught trying to leave the country are often fined and then released.

Is Russia facing the same problem?

Manpower and weaponry problems are also putting pressure on the Russian side, experts say. However, there are still more Russian soldiers than Ukrainian at the moment, and Russia has taken about 19 percent of Ukraine’s territory since the war started.

“We have to keep this context in mind when we talk about Ukraine because we don’t see what’s happening on the other end – Russia has years and years of practice keeping its information about losses secret,” Giles said.

Russian men aged between 18 and 30 are eligible to be drafted for a year. At present, conscripts are supposed to be legally exempt from combat if they do not have at least four months of training, although this is not happening in practice, analysts say.

Since the war started, Russian courts have tried some 8,000 cases of violations involving military personnel, more than 80 percent being desertions, according to Russian media outlet Mediazona.

Earlier this year, however, Ukrainian military intelligence reported that 18,000 soldiers in Russia’s southern military district had deserted.

The main reasons some give are a fear of getting wounded – or worse, dying – in a war that has no end in sight. By May, at least 500,000 Russian soldiers had either died or been wounded since the war began, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

Alex Gatopoulos, Al Jazeera’s defence editor, noted that while Russia’s troop numbers might be bigger, “they’re not necessarily better”. The country is just catching up with Ukraine’s effective drone strategy, but Russian troops have lost an “exceptionally high number of tanks to Ukrainian attacks” as well as troops, he said.

“For Russia, the only path to a military victory is through attrition and the use of its larger armed forces to grind down the smaller Ukrainian army,” Gatopoulos said, referring to a “meat grinder” strategy that sees Russia push soldiers to the front lines despite high death tolls.

Russia has tried to entice men to join the army. Authorities in August quadrupled a one-time payment for enlistment since August. Soldiers who sign up now receive nearly 1 million roubles ($11,500) – almost 23 times the average monthly pay of about $500.

However, there is still little enthusiasm for joining up, analyst Kseniya Kirillova wrote in a paper for the US-based Center for European Policy Analysis.

“Russia’s regions only achieved 50-60 percent of their recruitment targets in 2023 … some recruitment offices are now focusing on coercing conscripts,” Kirillova noted.

YouTube link here.

By Andrew Howard, Politico, 10/8/24

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin “maybe as many as seven” times since leaving office in 2021, journalist Bob Woodward reports in a forthcoming book obtained by CNN.

Woodward also writes that Trump, while in office, sent Putin Covid-19 testing machines for his private use during the height of the pandemic. The reporting, which the Trump campaign vehemently denied, quickly reignited allegations of an overly cozy relationship between the two leaders that Trump has for years worked to downplay and dismiss.

Trump campaign aide Jason Miller told Woodward for the book that he had not heard of such calls. Campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung was adamant in denying Woodward’s reporting and vicious in leveling personal attacks against the veteran journalist best known for his work at The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal.

“None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Cheung said in a lengthy statement that also called Woodward an “angry, little man.”

The Trump campaign spokesperson said Woodward’s book “either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was swift to jump on the reporting, telling Howard Stern on Tuesday the reporting “is just the most recent stark example of who Trump is.”

“People in America were struggling to get tests, and this guy is sending them to Russia, to a murderous dictator for his personal use?” Harris said.

Woodward also reports that President Joe Biden blamed former President Barack Obama’s handling of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula for the Kremlin’s wider invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “They fucked up in 2014,” Biden said to a friend, according to Woodward. “That’s why we are here. We fucked it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.”

Biden saved especially harsh language for the Russian president and his ongoing war in Ukraine.

“That fucking Putin,” Biden told advisers in the Oval Office, according to the book. “Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”

The book, according to CNN, details Biden’s conversations with national security officials leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. After seeing details that Russia planned to invade, Biden replied: “This would be so crazy.”

“Jesus Christ!” Biden said. “Now I’ve got to deal with Russia swallowing Ukraine?”

The book also details exchanges between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including Biden accusing Netanyahu of having “no strategy” for the war in Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people. Woodward details a moment when Biden called Netanyahu a “bad fucking guy,” which POLITICO reported in February.

Other details of the book, which chronicles the many tensions of Biden’s time in office, include Biden saying he should have never chosen Attorney General Merrick Garland, Sen. Lindsey Graham comparing Mar-a-Lago to North Korea — “everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in,” Woodward reports the South Carolina senator saying — and Biden calling Trump “that fucking asshole” in private.

Biden’s propensity to use bad language in private is nothing new. POLITICO detailed his private language back in October of 2021, where he would repeatedly use the F-word with aides and in meetings.

Kremlin, 10/18/24

Dmitry Kiselev: Mr President, you have mentioned the Ukrainian crisis. Just yesterday, while addressing the EU summit in Brussels, the ‘expired president’ Vladimir Zelensky said that the sole alternative to Ukraine joining NATO would be acquiring nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, the Bild newspaper published an interview with some anonymous Ukrainian tech-savvy, who claimed that Ukraine only needs a few weeks to build its own nuclear weapons and then make a strike at Russian troops.

What does it all mean?

Vladimir Putin: This is yet another act of provocation. In the modern world, creating nuclear weapons is not a difficult task. I do not know whether Ukraine is capable of doing this now though. It is not easy for Ukraine today, but generally there are no big difficulties in this regard, with everyone knowing how it is done.

This is a dangerous act of provocation, because, obviously, any step in this direction will meet an adequate response. This is the second point.

And third, most importantly, the current Ukrainian leadership claimed that Ukraine should have nuclear weapons. As I have mentioned on many occasions, they had stated that even before the crisis entered its hot stage; although it was a soft statement, it was made anyway. And such a threat will elicit a corresponding response from Russia.

I can say straight away: under no circumstances will Russia allow this to happen.

Dmitry Kiselev: But could it happen that, say, the British secretly provide these nuclear weapons to Ukraine and then claim that it was Ukraine that built them?

Vladimir Putin: Let’s avoid making any hypothetical assumptions and wild guesses about the British or whoever secretly supplying weapons. Such efforts cannot be hidden; they require proper resources and actions. It cannot be done covertly just as you cannot hide a cat in a bag. And we are capable of tracking any steps in this direction….

Nadim Koteich (retranslated): Mr President,

As someone who has a thorough understanding of military strategies, do you see any surprises or perhaps feel any disappointment in the Russian army’s performance in this war that has been going on for a long time, longer than you expected?

And the second question: could you determine when you will achieve victory in Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: You know, setting any deadlines is a very complicated and even counterproductive action.

We have just spoken about the possibility of peace talks. We are all for it. I described how it could be implemented. If this is a totally earnest stance that both sides adhere to, then the sooner the better.

Regarding the army: you know, the character of warfare is ever-evolving in today’s world due to technological progress. It is rather difficult today to give a totally accurate assessment of tomorrow’s events.

Moreover, just recently, people were saying that the today’s warfare was a confrontation of technologies. Today, I have already heard our participants in combat operations saying that the today’s warfare is a “war of mathematicians.”

Here is a specific example: electronic warfare means are used to intercept [the enemy’s] means of destruction and suppress them. The other side makes certain assessments and makes changes to the strike weapons software. Within a week, ten days, three weeks, the other side increases its efforts and makes adjustments to the software in its electronic suppression means. The process continues endlessly. Of course, it is totally evident that the Ukrainian army is unable to do it, neither can they use high-precision and long-range weapons as they simply do not have them. It is evident that this is being done by NATO, its member countries, and military specialists.

Do you see the difference? NATO is fighting us, but they are fighting this proxy war using Ukrainian soldiers. Ukraine does not spare its soldiers in the interests of third states. But it is NATO that uses high-tech weapons, not Ukraine, while the Russian army fights by itself, creating its own military products and developing its own software, which makes an immense difference. I have noticed that the Russian army is definitely becoming one of the most high-tech and efficient ones, especially recently. When will NATO get weary of fighting us? Well, ask them. We are ready to continue this fight – and we will be victorious….

Dmitry Kiselev: Mr President, the sentiment in the West regarding Ukraine has changed. Earlier there were talks about Ukraine’s inevitable victory and settling everything on the battlefield, but now there are active speculations about ceding territories in exchange for the remaining part of Ukraine joining NATO. How do you like this idea?

Vladimir Putin: I do not understand when you talk about ceding territories, because those territories which our soldiers are fighting for on the battlefield, these are our territories. These are the Lugansk People’s Republic, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. This is the first thing.

Second. Without any doubt, apart from this, we need to resolve the issue of ensuring long-term interests of Russia in the security sphere. If we are talking about some specific peace processes, then these should not be the processes connected with a truce for a week or two or for a year what would allow NATO countries to re-arm and stockpile new ammunition. We need conditions for a long-term, stable and lasting peace which would ensure equal security for all participants in this difficult process. This is what we should aspire for.

And if someone spoke at some point about the necessity to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, ensure victory over Russia on the battlefield, they already saw for themselves that this is impossible and unrealistic, and changed their point of view. Well, they were right to do so, I commend them for that….