By Scott Ritter, Consortium News, 1/29/25

“I’m not looking to hurt Russia,” President Donald Trump recently declared in a statement he posted on his TruthSocial account. “I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin.” 

Trump, however, comes from the school of “hard love,” where punishment is applied to achieve the desired results.

And punishment was on Trump’s mind as he expressed his love and admiration for the Russian people and their leader, Vladimir Putin.

“I’m going to do Russia,” Trump wrote, “whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.”

The odd use of capitalization aside, one would imagine that if you are in the business of expressing your love in a public fashion, you might want to make sure that your facts align with the reality of that for which you’ve declared amorous intent.

Otherwise, you will find yourself living in a fantasy world of your own construction, populated not by your ostensible paramours, but rather figments of your imagination.

If you’re sincere about doing the Russian people and Vladimir Putin a “big FAVOR,” you might want to make sure it’s a favor they want to receive.

Calling the Russian economy “failing” considering the plethora of data showing it is anything but that, probably isn’t the best way to start date night. 

“If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon,” Trump threatened, “I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”

“We can do it the easy way,” Trump warned, “or the hard way.”

Trump taking his second oath of office, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts in the Capitol rotunda, on Jan. 20. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

But what happens if Russia, like any jilted lover, opts for the “hard way”?

In short — nothing good for the United States or Trump.

First and foremost, any “deal” Trump puts on the table has to be realistic. In short the Russians must believe that they will be in a better position taking the deal than they would be turning it down (something Trump, ostensibly a master negotiator, should know).

The “deal” that Trump is putting on the table, however, is a non-starter.

There have been recent reports in the media about the existence of a “100-day Peace Plan.”

According to these reports, the proposed agreement prevents Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO, instead of officially declaring itself to be neutral. The agreement would open the door for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union by 2030, and tasks the EU with taking responsibility for post-war reconstruction. 

There would be no “demilitarization.” Rather, Ukraine would maintain its army at its present size and continue to receive military support from the U.S. and NATO. Ukraine would need to likewise cede territories occupied by Russia to Russia and recognize the sovereignty of the Russian Federation.

But there are many elements of this “leaked” plan which simply ring false — such as linking finalization of the plan to May 9 — Victory Day, one of the most important holidays on the Russian calendar. This year May 9 will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Allied Victory — the Soviet victory — over Nazi Germany.

The chances of Vladimir Putin sullying this solemn occasion by buying into a peace “deal” which allows the Banderist nationalists — whose ideology and history are closely linked with Nazi Germany — to survive after Putin declared “de-Nazification” as a primary goal for the Special Military Operation are slim to none.

Kellogg’s ‘Peace Plan’

What we do know is that Donald Trump’s designated special envoy for Ukraine — retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg — has floated a “peace plan” to the president which has been apparently well received. The elements of this plan are drawn from a paper Kellogg authored back in the spring of 2024 — a paper as nonsensical and lacking in fact-based argument as one could imagine. 

The core elements of this plan involved the establishment of “normal” relations with Russia and its president — basically stopping the Russophobic demonization that was prevalent during the Biden administration.

Once the U.S. and Russia were talking again, to then open negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine about bringing an end to the conflict.

The “carrot” for Russia included postponing Ukraine’s membership in NATO for 10 years, allowing Russia to retain the Ukrainian territories it currently occupies and gradually lifting sanctions to lead the way to the normalization of relations with the United States — all subject to the conclusion of peace agreements acceptable to Ukraine.

For Ukraine, the “deal” offered both continued military assistance from the U.S. and NATO and bilateral security guarantees. While Ukraine is not required to officially recognize Russia’s control over the conquered territories, it would need to refrain from changing the status quo by force.

If Russia refused to cooperate, the U.S. would impose crippling sanctions.

And if Ukraine refused the “deal,” the U.S. would cut off all military aid.

This “deal,” while never formally expressed, had been hinted at before and after Trump’s electoral victory in November 2024. 

And it took no one with any insight into Russia’s goals and objectives regarding the Special Military Operation by surprise when Russian President Vladimir Putin summarily rejected this “deal” in an answer to a media question on Dec. 26, 2024.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin in November 2024. (Alexei Nikolskiy, RIA Novosti, President of Russia)

Three days later Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov likewise threw cold water on the Kellogg “peace plan,” declaring that Russia was “not happy with the proposals made by members of the Trump team to postpone Ukraine’s admission to NATO for 20 years and to station British and European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.” 

The Hard Way

But what exactly does “the hard way” mean?

According to Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s new Treasury secretary, the answer lies in ratcheting up sanctions on the Russian oil industry. “I will be 100 percent on-board for taking sanctions up” that target the major Russian oil companies, Bessent said during his Senate confirmation hearing. 

But Bessent will be working against a history of the U.S. and its European allies overselling sanctions as a tool to tear down the Russian economy (the opposite, in fact, has happened.) Moreover, given Russia’s status as a leading oil producer, any successful application of sanctions could have a negative economic impact on the U.S.

This is something that seems to have escaped the attention of Keith Kellogg, Trump’s “peace deal” guru. Noting that, under the Biden administration, the United States and its allies imposed a cap of $60/barrel on Russian oil (the market price for oil hovers around $78/barrel), Kellogg observed that, despite this, “Russia earns billions of dollars from oil sales.” 

“What if,” Kellogg mused during an interview on Fox News, “you lower the price to $45 a barrel, which is essentially the breakeven point?”

The question is, “breakeven point” for whom?

Scott Bessent in December 2024. (Senator Ted Cruz, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

The concept of “breaking even,” when it comes to Russia, has two separate fiscal realities. The first is what the price of oil needs to be for Russia, which is heavily dependent upon the sale of oil for its national economy, to balance its national budget.

This number is assessed to be around $77/barrel for 2025. Let there be no doubt — if the price of oil dropped to $45/barrel, Russia would face a budget crisis. But not an oil production crisis. You see, the second “breakeven point” for Russia is the cost of production of a barrel of oil, which currently is set at $41/barrel.

Russia would be able to produce oil without any interruptions if Kellogg were able to achieve his goal of cutting the price of oil to $45/barrel.

To achieve the goal, Trump would have to get the Saudis onboard the oil-price-manipulation bandwagon.

The problem is the Saudis have their own “breakeven point” realities. To balance its budget, Saudi Arabia needs oil to be selling at around $85/barrel. But the cost of oil production in Saudi Arabia is very low — hovering around $10/barrel.

Saudi Arabia could simply flood the market with cheap oil if it wanted.

So could Russia.

How about the United States?

The Permian Basin, in West Texas, accounts for all of the U.S. growth in oil production since 2020. 

Active Permian Basin pumpjack near Andrews, Texas, in 2009. (Zorin09, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)

In 2024, for new wells to be profitable in the Permian Basin, the breakeven point was around $62/barrel. For existing wells, this number was around $38/barrel. 

If drilling were to stop in the Permian Basin, U.S. oil production would decline by 30 percent over the course of two years.

In short, if Keith Kellogg were to successfully implement his “plan” to cut the price of oil to $45/barrel, he would effectively destroy the U.S. oil economy.

And if you destroy the U.S. oil economy, you destroy the U.S. economy.

Russia can ride out $45/barrel oil far longer than the U.S. can.

Donald Trump would do well to pay the wildcat oil producers of the Permian Basin — the ones who have sunk everything they own into a business venture that hinges on the promise of $78/barrel for the foreseeable future, and ask them how they feel about $45/barrel oil.

The bottom line is that if Keith Kellogg and Donald Trump made such a trip, they’d quickly understand the errors of their way.

Because if Donald Trump opts to go the route of “the hard way” with Russia, the consequences for him and the American people will be among the hardest imaginable.

YouTube link here.

By John Varoli, Substack, 1/20/25

Donald Trump returns to the White House today. The fate of mankind is in his hands. He can save us from a third world war by doing the right thing — end all support to the regime in Kiev and disband NATO; put an end to U.S. militarism and imperialism, and restore the Republic. This should be his top priority. But that seems unlikely.

A republic doesn’t seek control over others. Trump’s ambitions towards Panama, Greenland, Canada and Iran indicate that it will be business as usual.

Empire is Trump’s vision, and Elon Musk — who bought the presidency with his $250 million in donations — shares that ambition. During Trump’s rally in Washington DC yesterday, Musk endorsed U.S. domination, calling “to make America strong for the rest of this century, for centuries and forever”. That sounds like a ‘code’ for building an American reich that will rule for 1,000 years.

No, I don’t want to live in a “strong” America because in the minds of our ruling class “strong” implies violence and coercion. I want to live in the American Republic. I want to live in a prosperous, moral, law-abiding and productive America. Why are so many Americans obsessed with ‘strength’ and ‘global leadership’, which are euphemisms for empire and global domination? How does that make the lives of Americans any better and safer?

Restoring the Republic means ending all foreign wars and conquests, bringing the troops home, shutting all foreign bases, and ending military alliances. These are not radical words or fanciful goals. This is the vision for America set by the Founding Fathers almost 250 years ago. If you don’t like what I write, don’t lash out at me. Lash out — if you have the arrogance — at George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc.

Today, America is far from its original ideals. Since the conquest of Hawaii and the Philippines in the late 1890s, the U.S. has been a rapacious and constantly expanding empire (despite the valiant but often vain efforts of those courageous Americans who are ridiculed as “isolationists”). We are told that it’s our “Manifest Destiny” — our divine right to rule the world.

But nothing is more un-American than imperialism, which has very real material consequences that we face every day — in the form of inflation and high prices due to rampant state spending and corruption. Empire also leads to a paranoid government that extinguishes our freedoms in the name of ‘national security’ as it seeks to combat exaggerated foreign threats.

The U.S. is not a “shining city on a hill”; it has no special status in the Almighty’s plan. The tragic wars of the past 35 years, as well as America’s current war against Russia and the savage slaughter in Gaza, make that very clear. For America to become truly great, we must dismantle the empire. Entirely. Without question.

Throughout the 19th century, the U.S. maintained a policy of geopolitical neutrality, allowing it to focus on economic growth and development. This policy contributed to the country’s rapid industrialization and emergence as a peaceful global economic power without the destructive conflicts that plagued Europe. As a neutral power with one of the world’s largest economies, 19th century America truly served as a model for genuine freedom and democracy for the global community.

One of the most important and now forgotten arguments for neutrality is found in George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), when he warned against permanent alliances, of which NATO is today a prime violation. Washington recognized that involvement in foreign disputes would drain national treasure, divide the nation, and endanger the very independence that the country had fought to secure. (All of which has sadly come true today).

Thomas Jefferson, too, recognized that foreign entanglements could corrupt our government and dilute its republican ideals. Also, the notion of a permanent military was condemned by the Founding Fathers, who recognized that a massive standing army would lead to tyranny, which is what we’ve had since 1945.

In 1821, John Quincy Adams, the country’s most experienced and prominent diplomat, and a future president, aptly expressed the sentiment of the early Republic. Aware that his rapidly growing country would become a global economic power, Adams warned the U.S. not to get involved in foreign wars.

“[The U.S.] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…
“[The U.S] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy,
and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force….
She might become the dictatress of the world. She’d be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….”

Yes, World War 2 was a righteous cause, but immediately after it ended the U.S. should have returned home and stayed home. Instead, under the influence of the British ruling class, the U.S. became involved in a competition with the Soviet Union, igniting proxy wars across the globe for decades. In 2001, this was followed by a crusade against a vague and undefined enemy — “global terrorism”, which in fact was merely an imperial war against the Middle East.

However, as we know all too well — the war is not meant to be won, it’s meant to drag on for decades. We could have negotiated with the Soviets in the late 1950s and ended the Cold War, but we chose not to. We could have refrained from getting involved in the Middle East, but we let Israel drag us into its affairs.

Today, our ruling class has new crusades — against Russia, Iran and China. These external threats are fabricated and exploited to scare the American people into accepting a foreign policy that is neither vital to our national interests nor aligned with our principles. In the meantime, our parasitic ruling class grows wealthy as the state spends trillions of taxpayer dollars on national security, war and conquest.

Imperial-globalists (both liberal and conservative) claim that if the U.S. retrenches from the international arena then there’ll be more wars and chaos. That is not true.

In an effort to remake the world in its image, the U.S. often imposes its values on others through the barrel of a gun. This only creates more instability and resentment, rather than fostering goodwill. We must stop being an oppressive ‘global gendarme’ that interferes in the affairs of almost every other country.

The desire to project American power and intervene in the affairs of other nations always has unintended and unforeseen consequences. Take, for example, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Bin-Laden in Afghanistan — both were on the CIA payroll during the Cold War. But those unruly vassals came back to haunt us. Likewise, I suspect Ukrainian terrorism will become a huge problem for the West in the coming years, as irate Azov Nazis will feel used and betrayed by Washington.

In reaction to the U.S. abuse of its vast economic and military power over the past 35 years, most countries today support a multipolar world based on non-interference and mutual respect for national interests. We should join them.

By adopting a policy of neutrality and non-interference, the U.S. would avoid bloody and costly quagmires, and could focus on rebuilding its own infrastructure, economy, and social fabric. Neutrality would ensure that the U.S. remains a genuine beacon of peace and stability in the world. This would be true leadership. Only then would America be great again — as the Founding Fathers envisioned nearly 250 years ago.

Reuters, 2/6/25

Summary

-Task force was focused on sanctions enforcement, seizing assets

-Department switches focus to border and drug cartels

-Foreign bribery enforcement also implicated

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department under President Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.

“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs will be redirected to countering cartels.

The effort, launched during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.

It was part of a broader push to freeze Russia out of global markets and enforce wide-ranging sanctions imposed on Moscow amid international condemnation of its war in Ukraine.

The task force brought indictments against aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and TV tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev for alleged sanctions busting, and seized yachts belonging to sanctioned oligarchs Suleiman Kerimov and Viktor Vekselberg.

Cases investigated by the task force are likely to continue, but the work will no longer be centralized at Justice Department headquarters.

“Are we going to suddenly see a surge of sanctioned oligarch wealth flood into the United States? I don’t think so,” said Andrew Adams, the first leader of the task force who is now at law firm Steptoe. “What you will see is a sharp decline in the pace of charges that target facilitators that are specific to Russia.”

Prosecutors assigned to the task force will return to their previous posts. The changes will be in effect for at least 90 days and could be renewed or made permanent, according to the directive.

Trump has spoken about improving relations with Moscow. He has previously vowed to end the war in Ukraine, though he has not released a detailed plan.

The emphasis on drug cartels comes after Trump designated many such groups as terrorist organizations, part of a crackdown on illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking.

The shift also implicates enforcement of a U.S. foreign bribery law that has led to some of the Justice Department’s largest corporate cases over the last decade. The unit enforcing that law, known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, will now prioritize bribery investigations related to cartels, according to the memo.

A wide range of multinational firms has come under Justice Department scrutiny over the law, including Goldman Sachs, Glencore and Walmart.

“It is a radical move away from traditional FCPA cases and toward a narrow subset of drug and violent crime related cases that have never been the focus of FCPA enforcement,” said Stephen Frank, a lawyer at law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan who worked on FCPA cases as a federal prosecutor.

By Peter Korotaev & Volodymyr Ishchenko, Al Jazeera, 1/23/25

Over the past few months, Ukraine has increasingly been under pressure from its Western allies to start mobilising young men under the age of 25. This came after the mobilisation law passed in April did not deliver the expected number of recruits. Even the lowering of medical requirements – allowing men who had had HIV and tuberculosis infections to serve – did not help much.

Some pro-Western Ukrainian officials, like Roman Kostenko, the secretary of Ukraine’s parliamentary security committee, have also pressed for lowering the age. Kostenko said he is being constantly queried by members of the US Congress why the Ukrainian government asks for weapons but isn’t willing to mobilise its youth.

So far President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has refused to move forward. Part of the reason is demographic fear: Sacrificing young men en masse in a prolonged conflict risks condemning Ukraine to an even bleaker future, where demographic decline undermines its ability to rebuild economically, socially, and politically.

But the Ukrainian president also fears public anger. There is growing and palpable reluctance among Ukrainians to fight in the war. And this is despite the fact that their leaders and civil society frame it as an existential struggle for survival.

Many Ukrainians are indeed fatigued after nearly three years of full-scale war, but their war-weariness is not just a matter of exhaustion. It stems from pre-existing fractures in the nation’s sociopolitical foundations, which the war has only deepened.

Public opinion polls, Ukrainian media reports, and social media posts we have examined, as well as in-depth interviews we have conducted with Ukrainians as part of our research on the consequences of post-Soviet revolutions and wars, help elucidate some of these dynamics.

The post-Soviet social contract

Like in all post-Soviet and post-communist states, a new social contract emerged in the 1990s that reflected the new sociopolitical realities in Ukraine. State-citizen relations were reduced to the following: the state won’t help you, but in return, the state won’t harm you either.

Meanwhile, politics became animated by the dramatic Maidan revolutions of 2004 and 2014. The opportunities created by these uprisings were repeatedly co-opted by narrow elite groups – oligarchs, the professional middle class, and foreign powers – leaving large portions of Ukrainian society excluded and their interests underrepresented.

Before 2022, this situation was tolerable for many Ukrainians to an extent. The borders were open, so millions were able to emigrate. In 2021, Ukraine occupied the eighth place in the ranking of countries with the most international migrants – more than 600,000 left in that year alone. Remittances from the emigrants helped those who stayed behind maintain an acceptable standard of living.

But in the long term, this path did not seem sustainable. In 2020, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal admitted that the state will struggle to pay state pensions in a decade and a half. After years of declining state capacity and de-development, Ukrainians were unsurprised. The news was received as another indication that one should save up American dollars and try to emigrate.

The war put the already weak social contract to the test. All of a sudden, a state that had hardly been present in Ukrainians’ lives demanded that they sacrifice themselves for its survival.

In the wake of the failure of Russia’s initial invasion plan, the surge of unity fuelled a wave of volunteerism. However, as the war ground on, a stark realisation emerged: the state is distributing the burdens and benefits of the war unequally. While some segments of society gain materially or politically, others bear disproportionate sacrifices, fuelling a growing sense of alienation within a large part of the Ukrainian population.

The state has done little to strengthen its relations with citizens in the face of waning war enthusiasm. Instead, government officials have bombarded the population with messaging about self-reliance.

In September 2023, Minister of Social Policy Oksana Zholnovich called on citizens not to remain dependent on benefits, since this makes them “children”. She proposed a “new social contract” in which citizens accept social spending cuts and live independently as “free swimmers”.

In September 2024, the government announced it was not going to increase the minimum wage and social security payments in 2025 despite inflation reaching 12 percent.

A crisis of motivation

As the third year of the war is about to wrap up, the consequences of this weak social contract are becoming increasingly apparent. The narrative of fighting an existential war no longer seems to move the majority of Ukrainians.

The words of one of our interviewees are quite illuminating. This person fundraises for non-lethal military equipment for the army – but not drones or other weapons, because he believes that “the state completely failed in its most critical role of preventing war”. He told us: “I don’t understand why this war should fully become my war in the truest sense of the word.”

He said he found it hard to be open about his views: “When you want to live as you wish, you only speak openly in close circles. Either you have to let go of all ambitions, part of your identity, or consider emigration because this country will ultimately become completely foreign to you.”

The attitude that this is not “our war” can be seen reflected in polls conducted throughout the past year, in which a silent majority does not seem ready to mobilise to fight.

In an April 2024 poll, only 10 percent of respondents said that most of their relatives were ready to be mobilised. A June survey showed that only 32 percent “fully or partly supported” the new mobilisation law; 52 percent opposed it, and the rest refused to answer.

In a July poll, only 32 percent disagreed with the statement “mobilisation will have no effect other than increased deaths”. A mere 27 percent believed that forced mobilisation was necessary to solve issues at the front line.

According to another July poll, only 29 percent considered it shameful to be a draft dodger.

A consistent pattern can be seen in these surveys: those supporting the continuation or strengthening conscription only constitute about a third of the population; a significant minority evade responding to such questions, reflected in the large number of “hard to say” or “don’t know” answers; and the rest openly reject mobilisation.

These attitudes on conscription may seem at odds with results from “victory” polls. The majority in such surveys still indicate that “victory” for Ukraine should mean reclaiming all territories within its 1991 borders and rejecting any concessions to Russia.

But there is really no contradiction here. It is evident that while most Ukrainians would like to see “total victory”, they are unwilling to sacrifice their lives for this goal and empathise with others who feel the same. That is why the majority also supports a negotiated peace as soon as possible.

The lack of motivation to fight is also apparent in the rates of draft dodging. Per the April mobilisation law, all men eligible for mobilisation were to submit their details to the draft offices by July 17. By the deadline, only 4 million men had done so, while 6 million had not.

And of those who entered their details, various officials have said that from 50 to 70-80 percent had medical or other reasons allowing them to legally avoid mobilisation.

Meanwhile, groups and channels have proliferated on Telegram to alert people to the presence of mobilisation officers in certain areas; they have continued to run despite some members getting arrested.

The mobilisation authorities have launched investigations against 500,000 men for draft evasion so far.

Socioeconomic tension

Draft dodging has not only revealed the scope of the crisis of motivation but also the extent to which the war has massively deepened class divides.

Over the past year, there have been regular news reports of officials accepting massive bribes in exchange for exempting men from military service.

In one case made public in early October, a top medical official who also served on a local council representing the ruling Servant of the People party, amassed a fortune taking bribes to facilitate draft-dodging through disability slips. The local police said it found $6m in cash and released a photo of a family member who had photographed themselves on a bed with piles of dollars.

Less than two weeks later, Ukrainian media reported that nearly all prosecutors in the region where the medical official operated were registered as “disabled”. In the aftermath of the scandal, Zelenskyy sacked some officials and triumphantly abolished the institution responsible for giving out disability slips. Uncomfortable questions about why top officials didn’t notice these corrupt schemes were dismissed.

Those who do not have thousands of dollars to pay for a medical exemption or bribe border police, attempt dangerous journeys at Ukraine’s western borders. As a result, a significant portion of Ukraine’s border patrol is stationed on the “peaceful” western borders.

Since 2022, 45 Ukrainians have drowned in the Tysa River on the border with Romania and Hungary in desperate attempts to flee. There have been multiple cases of Ukrainian men trying to escape the country shot and killed by their own country’s border patrol. In March, a video went viral of a border patrol guard madly shooting into the Tysa to demonstrate what he does to draft dodgers, saying: “$1000 to cross this river isn’t worth it”.

There have been cases of dozens of men attempting to cross the border at a time. Once caught, photographs of these “shameful draft dodgers” have been shared on social media, with the captions often stating that they are being sent to the front.

Thus, those who make it to the front line are usually too poor or too unfortunate to have been caught by draft officers. As parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla put it in mid-September after visiting the front lines near Pokrovsk, the people there were mainly those who could not “decide things” with a bribe. In a November TV interview, a military commander said that 90 percent of those at the front are “forcibly mobilised villagers”.

Army officers often complain of the low quality of these “busified” troops, the term referring to the minibuses into which draft-age men are dragged off the streets. No wonder there have been hundreds of arson attacks against these vehicles.

The effect of such violent coercion unleashed onto mostly impoverished Ukrainian men is the extremely low morale at the front line. As of November 2024, there were four mobilised soldiers for every volunteer.

Mass desertions by mobilised soldiers have been leading to constant retreats. In recent weeks, reports have surfaced that hundreds of “busified” men in the 155th brigade deserted before they were deployed to stop the advance of the Russians near Pokrovsk.

In a July Facebook post, a mobilised Ukrainian journalist bemoaned the lack of patriotism among his fellow conscripts. He wrote that most of the people he served with were from poor, rural regions and were more interested in discussing government corruption than anything else. His attempts to remind them of their patriotic duty failed to convince them:

“A significant portion of the people openly state: Over my 30-40-50 years, the state hasn’t given anything except a Kalashnikov. Why should I be a patriot?’” he observed.

These soldiers certainly aren’t insufficiently acquainted with the realities of war. They aren’t distant civilians tired of frontline footage on the television. But they have good reasons to be suspicious of patriotic imperatives.

Morale problems are compounded by the abuse recruits suffer during mobilisation and deployment. Each month sees a new case of someone beaten to death in the mobilisation stations. In December, media revelations pointed to systemic torture and extortion within the ranks of the Ukrainian army.

In a September interview with a local media outlet, Ukrainian officer Yusuf Walid claimed that 90 percent of officers treat the mobilised “like animals”.

Walid also said that the generation of those born in the 1980s and ’90s are “hopeless” in terms of their patriotic commitments – all they care about is economic survival. This is hardly surprising, given that the post-Soviet Ukrainian social contract convinced individuals to focus on their own survival rather than asking for “handouts” from the state.

The ‘warrior elite’

While the rural poor are coerced into fighting at the front lines, there is a well-off urban minority that lives a relatively protected, comfortable life in Kyiv and Lviv. This “warrior elite” – composed of activists, intellectuals, journalists and NGO workers – maintains the patriotic narrative that Ukraine must fight till victory.

Yet, it seems many members of this elite appear to be reluctant to join the fight at the front line. There have been a number of high-profile patriotic journalists and activists who have called for mass mobilisation, while themselves seeking exemptions on medical or other grounds.

Among them is Yury Butusov, a very well-known military journalist, who reportedly sought an exemption on the grounds of being a father of three children, and Serhiy Sternenko, a prominent nationalist “activist”, who claimed disability exemption for “bad eyesight”.

In June, the employees of 133 NGOs and enterprises receiving foreign funding were granted official exemption from mobilisation. Many of these organisations are not involved in maintaining any critical infrastructure.

While enthusiastically supporting the pro-war narrative of fighting until total “victory”, Ukraine’s patriotic intelligentsia blames all corruption and the growing failures of the state on the statist Soviet past.

In their view, the solution is simply to continue to diminish the role of the state. But austerity has not only done little to endear Ukrainians to their government, especially in times of war, but has also largely failed in terms of its stated aims.

One just has to look at the various corruption scandals in enterprises run by highly paid “reform” officials, who are supported by Western allies. These “reformed” companies mainly wage the struggle against corruption by keeping the rest on minuscule wages, like state railway company Ukrzalyznytsia, or letting go of their workers.

The anticorruption rhetoric is blind to the class divides that it helps entrench. Ordinary Ukrainians often joke about the high salaries received by “anti-corruption observers” and young “reform” members of the board of directors of top state companies.

Anticorruption serves more often than not as a justification for neoliberal policies that favour the business interests of international capital. Ironically, the dismantling of state enterprises driven by such considerations severely weakened Ukraine’s massive Soviet-era military-industrial complex after 2014, which affected its war capabilities.

But instead of blaming themselves for the current state of affairs, the nationalists tend to blame the Ukrainian people. Dmytro Kukharchuk, a well-known nationalist officer, gave a long interview in July about Ukraine’s dim military prospects. According to him, “there are many more khokhols [the Russian “colonial” slur against Ukrainians] today” than there are “true” Ukrainians. He defines “khokhols” as those unwilling to fight for Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

Kukharchuk belongs to the leadership of the extreme-right National Corps party and commands a battalion in a brigade linked to the Azov movement. The sentiments he expresses might seem confined to the fringe, but his rhetoric is far from unique. It echoes a narrative that has dominated Ukrainian, and more broadly, post-Soviet, national-liberal civil society and intelligentsia since the 1990s. This narrative, repeated endlessly, derides the majority of the population – dismissively labelled as bydlo, or “cattle”.

This disparaging term targets those who, in the view of these elites, cling to “Soviet” habits, prioritise personal wellbeing, value state-provided welfare, and resist self-sacrifice for nation-building. Such discourse is not only ethnonationalist but profoundly classist, painting a large segment of the population – primarily workers, poor people, and pensioners – as obstacles to reactionary-defined social progress while valourising a narrow, self-defined vanguard of the nation.

The disconnect

Ukraine’s growing setbacks in the war cannot be attributed to Russia’s overwhelming power or insufficient Western aid. History provides numerous examples of nations overcoming far stronger adversaries in protracted conflicts, often with little or no military or financial support from powerful allies like NATO.

Consider not only Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and Afghanistan 1979 – 2021, but also revolutionary France after 1789 and revolutionary Russia after 1917, both of which successfully repelled counter-revolutionary interventions by other great powers. These revolutionary movements not only survived but went on to dominate large parts of Europe.

Time and again, social revolutions and national liberation struggles have demonstrated the ability to forge stronger and more mobilised states against all odds.

According to the dominant narrative, Ukraine should fit into this pattern: a nation emerging from Russian and Soviet oppression, driven by successive national liberation movements, dissident intelligentsia, Maidan revolutions, and the resistance to Russia’s “hybrid war” in the Donbas. This story culminates in the unity and resilience of the Ukrainian people repelling the full-scale invasion of 2022. But this narrative appears fundamentally flawed.

This may be because Ukraine’s is simply one of many post-Soviet trajectories shaped by the modernising successes and later the degradation of the Soviet revolution. Like in many other countries in the region, the state after independence was captured by predatory and comprador elites who prioritised their own interests over the public good.

This failure to deliver meaningful opportunities and protections for the majority of Ukrainians has left the state unable to demand much from them in return. As a result, today, Ukraine is unable to fully mobilise its people who are divided by a profound sociopolitical disconnect.

Contrary to the popular narrative of national unity, there has been no cohesive project of national development to bridge the divide between those bearing the brunt of the war and the political and intellectual elites who claim to represent them both at home and abroad. This disconnect undermines the idea of a shared purpose driving the nation forward.

More and more, it seems the only emotion truly uniting the fragmented Ukrainian nation is fear. Not the lofty ideals of nation-building, but the visceral dread of personal and communal devastation. This fear stems from the apprehension of losing one’s home if the front line comes close, the anguish of becoming precarious refugees, or the terror of enduring months in basements, hiding from relentless shelling and street battles. Even for those whose homes remain intact, fear persists – of lawlessness, looting, murder, sexual violence – the grim realities that often accompany military occupations.

If Ukrainians are united only by a fundamentally negative coalition – by shared fears rather than shared aspirations – then what happens when these fears begin to shift and compete? Some people start weighing them against one another. The fear of losing one’s home to invasion is measured against the fear of enduring forced conscription, becoming cannon fodder in a war that seems increasingly difficult to win.

There is the fear of repression under occupation, juxtaposed with the fear of being arrested in a state where civil society and government increasingly diverge from their own views of freedom and human rights. There is the fear of being humiliated as a khokhol by Russians or as a Russian-speaking mankurt (a disparaging term for someone who has lost touch with their roots) by your own nationalists.

These shifting fears drive the Ukrainian population, but they do not unite it.

We talked to a Ukrainian man in his 50s who did not leave his town in the Kharkiv region even when the front line got just a few kilometres from it and there was regular shelling by the Russians. He could have left for a safer part of Ukraine, but he did not and stayed to help, distributing humanitarian aid to his neighbours.

He is not a coward; he is a patriot. But as he said, he is not willing “to die for the state we have now. Not for that Ukraine which is imposed on us now …This is my country, but this is not my state.”