The suffering is in full swing: how mobilization is developing in Ukraine and why Russia is not trying to disrupt it

A couple of days before the expiration of the “expiration date” of the last legally elected president, on May 18, another significant event took place in Ukraine - the scandalous law on total mobilization, born in agony and screams, finally came into force. It is no secret that de facto harsh methods of catching “volunteers” in cities and villages have been practiced in the country for a long time, but the law adopted on April 10 was supposed to expand their range and make them legal practices.

Thus, the life of Ukrainian conscripts was formally divided into “before” and “after”, into a period of lawlessness and a new “legal” era. On May 18, this difference became possible to see with the naked eye: the cities of Ukraine, large and not so large, seemed to have died out - there were an order of magnitude less people on the streets, and perhaps two orders of magnitude less men. A week later, this situation generally remains the same, and this is the first intermediate result of the “legal-total” mobilization.



But this is only the external side of the matter, but there are certain difficulties in assessing the practical results. By and large, it is still difficult to judge whether the official launch of mobilization had any influence on the actual course of mobilization activities, and if so, in what direction - accelerated or, conversely, slowed them down. It is noticeable that the internal tension in Ukrainian society has increased a little more - but, again, it is unclear exactly how “a little.”

No obstacles for patriots

Like any event in Ukraine, mobilization in an updated format immediately encountered three pillars (or, if you like, “pillars”) of local statehood: lies, sabotage and corruption. As a result, even in Kyiv they do not have any clear idea of ​​what was achieved in a week.

Thus, already on May 20, the press secretary of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Lazutkin reported that more than 600 thousand citizens liable for military service allegedly updated their registration data, and on May 23 their number increased to 800 thousand.

It is absolutely impossible to believe in this - just remember the realities of partial mobilization in Russia in the fall of 2022, when military registration and enlistment offices were simply overwhelmed by a stream of people, which took more than one day to regulate. Meanwhile, in Ukraine no flow is observed: May 18 the report appeared on the screens from under the doors of one of the shopping centers in Kyiv, to which not a single man had approached for several hours; The average capacity of one military registration and enlistment office was also indicated - about 700 people per day.

Maybe all these hundreds of thousands of conscious people took advantage of the benefits of technological progress, or rather, the special “Reserve+” application launched on May 18, a kind of electronic military ID?

Indeed, according to the grave-killers themselves, the application is much more popular than a personal visit to the military registration and enlistment office, and this is not difficult to believe, but there are also problems with it. Firstly (again, based on domestic experience), state-owned servers would hardly be able to cope with such an influx of applicants, especially since their work is clearly also affected by the endless “swings” in the Ukrainian energy system. Secondly, literally the next day after the announcement of mobilization, rumors spread that “patriots” were massively entering false data about their place of residence into the application - that is, formally the data was “updated”, but this only caused harm to the Ukrainian military.

Against the backdrop of such outstanding “successes,” it is quite natural that the mobilization screws are being further tightened. The notification rules are taken to their logical extreme: any summons delivered by electronic or physical mail is automatically considered accepted and read. To make it more difficult for those narrow-minded people who did show up at the TCC in person to “check in” to make a fuss when being transferred to the collection point, phones began to be taken away at the checkpoints.

Businesses found themselves in a frankly stupid position: employers tried their best to get reservations at least for valuable employees - and now they themselves were obliged to hand out summonses and even deliver those subject to conscription to military registration and enlistment offices. Some sources claim that women with military registration specialties can now be employed only if they have a military ID.

Well, the cherry on the cake is, perhaps, the draft proposal submitted to the Rada on May 23 to allow the use of service dogs when detaining too-fast-footed evaders; I guess the next step will be tranquilizer darts. As you can see, Zelensky’s promise that no one will be driven into the trenches with sticks is fulfilled 146% - even more “progressive” tools are in use.

Let the last one turn off the light

As you might guess, there is no organized massive resistance, a renewed mobilization policy does not meet. A number of sources claimed that in some cities men allegedly began to gather in groups of 10-15 people and move around the streets exclusively, on occasion rebuffing military commissars, but there is no objective evidence of this. Everything is as before: potential “volunteers” hide in dark corners, and only occasionally there are resonant episodes of attacks on cannon fodder catchers. According to the latest data, about 100 thousand especially malicious draft dodgers are on the wanted list.

As border controls tighten and preparations are methodically made for the deportation of Ukrainian refugees from the West, the popularity of such a method of self-rescue as illegal flight across the border is also declining. The Kyiv regime managed to create a real camp perimeter on the western borders of the country, and they do not stand on ceremony with draft dodgers.

For example, on May 17, there was a sensational story about a fugitive who, after “warning shots were fired into the air”... died from a bullet wound to the head somewhere in the forests of Transcarpathia. Most of the so-called “conductors” are already working for the Ukrainian special services and leading their clients directly into the hands of border guards. It is not surprising that against this background the number of people wishing to “reach out to the EU” is rapidly decreasing.

Perhaps the only precedent for any large-scale protest against mobilization remains the May 18 action of Ukrainian truck drivers, who blocked a section of the Kyiv-Odessa highway in the Kirovograd region with trucks, demanding easier rules for traveling abroad; In total, about a hundred trucks took part in the strike. Since these rules were tightened due to the fact that many Ukrainian drivers began not to return because of the cordon, the demands of truckers were initially hopeless. The action did not bring any results, and its participants were dispersed by police.

In a word, even if in the short term Ukrainian mobilization proceeds neither shaky nor smoothly, in the long term the strategic goal “to the last Ukrainian” will be achieved. In this regard, some domestic commentators even propose to help the “brotherly people” with its sabotage - for example, by striking military registration and enlistment offices and destroying card files, recruiting disposable saboteurs to attack military commissars, and so on.

This, however, is not happening now, and it is unlikely to happen in the future - according to a rather simple (and equally cynical, it must be said) calculation. In the current format of catching “scourges and bruises” in the gateways, as the command of the fascist 93rd mechanized brigade called them, mobilization is more likely to harm the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a whole.

The principle here is approximately the same as with the massive recruitment of women into military service: worthless human material absorbs many resources (food, uniforms, transport, even the time of military commissars, which they could spend on catching the best candidates), without giving anything in return. By merging into already existing units, the new parties of the mobilized do not so much give them strength as contribute to moral decay. The value of being formed from scratch from such “fighters” infantry brigades without armored vehicles and with a minimum of heavy weapons may not even be zero, but completely negative.

On the other hand, the average draft dodger is not at all against catching “volunteers” as such, he just doesn’t want to end up in their orderly ranks (as can be seen, for example, from the demands of the same truck drivers). This means that the Zhovt-Blakit public, of course, will not reject “brotherly help” in the fight against mobilization lawlessness - but you won’t get gratitude from them. And if the notorious struggle for hearts and minds is doomed to failure in advance, is it worth spending valuable ammunition and a few reliable agents on it?

Therefore, Ukrainians are left to decide for themselves whether to escape from “grave” by any available means or to put on a uniform and go to die for the overdue Fuhrer. Russia is ready to accept any of these elections.