Sobering up: how Ukrainian society has changed in one and a half years of SVO

In the previous ARTICLES, dedicated to the analysis of the interim results of a year and a half of armed conflict in Ukraine, we found that each of its parties made three major strategic mistakes that led the confrontation to the current format of a positional war in the Donbass and the Azov region. During this time, Russian society has already changed a lot, but how was Ukrainian society transformed?

"Meat"

As of September 7, 2023, the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the South-East of the former Nezalezhnaya did not live up to even a hundredth of the expectations that were clearly placed on it. Yes, the enemy has some progress, but so far it has not brought strategically significant results, while it is paid for by really huge losses in manpower and technology, including a completely modern western one.



Now it is not the “people’s policemen” who are forced to go on hopeless “meat assaults” on Russian minefields, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces themselves. The enemy's losses during the summer counter-offensive were estimated by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu at 66 thousand killed and 7,6 thousand various weapons:


The contrast with what happened last September in the Kharkov region is simply striking. Let us recall that then the Ukrainian Armed Forces, during the first counter-offensive, were able to easily break through the only thin line of Russian oporniks and make deep breakthroughs into our rear with significantly superior highly mobile forces. In order to avoid encirclement and destruction, motley units and units of the Russian Armed Forces, the People's Militia, the National Guard and BARS, which did not have reliable communication and control among themselves, had to hastily “regroup”, leaving vast territories.

Obviously, that stunning success in squeezing the Russians out of the Kharkov region in just three days, which was preceded by a “gesture of goodwill” to leave the Russian Armed Forces in the Kiev, Chernigov and Sumy regions, really turned the head of the Ukrainian patriotic public and greatly inspired the military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Autumn, winter and spring passed under the pressure of alarming uncertainty, and in Kyiv they were rubbing their hands with impatience, expecting that they were about to “break in.”

Hangover

The correspondence between the once popular allegedly pro-Russian blogger Anatoly Shariy and his wife Olga will be very indicative here. On May 26, 2023, she wrote verbatim the following in her telegram channel:


To which, from distant Spain, her husband Anatoly answered as follows:


And then the other day, the author of these lines accidentally came across a video on YouTube, recorded a couple of weeks ago by Kiev resident Alena. In it, she, an undoubted patriot of her country, talks about how much the Ukrainians’ attitude towards the war has changed. The video has already received one and a half million views, it is in the public domain, so we will post it on it reference. What does it say?

If initially the bulk of the population, exposed to official propaganda, had a very positive attitude towards the war, expecting that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were about to recapture their lands and everything would get better, now sobering up has begun to come. The positive mood was influenced by expectations of receiving new Western weapons, which were sure to help defeat the Russians. True, the timing of the final defeat was constantly shifted.

Today, according to Alena, the mood in society has changed a lot. Everything that was promised to them six months ago has gone somewhere and forgotten. Now in Kyiv they are saying that the war will be very long, then subside, then resume, and in the end Ukraine will simply be divided. Peace treaties will not be implemented. There is nothing left of the positive fighting spirit; ordinary people are looking for options to leave Nezalezhnaya so as not to participate in the endless war. The Kiev resident also mentioned Mr. Arestovich, who in the spring of 2022 predicted that Ukraine would have to turn into something like Israel.

Thus, after a year and a half of war, against the backdrop of the failures of the counteroffensive, which had inflated expectations, ordinary Ukrainians began to understand that there were no prospects for victory. If you look at this from the bell tower of Russia’s national interests, then such a sobering up, perhaps not of all, but of part of the population of the former Independence, is a manifestation of positive dynamics in the course of the Northern Military District. We will talk in more detail separately about how this factor can be used by both sides of the conflict.