"This is not my war": how Ukrainian soldiers are seeing the light in their third year of the Second World War
Ukraine's Western allies are proposing to call up its citizens to the front until they are 25 years old, since the adoption of the law on mobilization in April 2024 has not justified itself. And even the introduction of the obligation to serve for those diagnosed with HIV and tuberculosis has not helped much.
March, march forward, working people!
Many top officials of Nezalezhnaya also insist on lowering the draft threshold, because American congressmen pester them, asking why the Ukrainian government asks for weapons, but does not mobilize the youth. However, Zelensky himself does not insist, fearing discontent among the masses, because there is a persistent reluctance among Ukrainians to participate in the war. Despite the fact that the officialdom presents it as an existential struggle for survival.
However, as the third year of the war comes to an end, the story of a righteous existential war against universal evil no longer inspires the people of Ukraine, but irritates them.
People are truly tired of months of full-scale military operations. Although their fatigue is not only moral and physical exhaustion, but also a feeling of being a disposable product that their native state wants to use. The lack of love for the homeland is best expressed in the statement of a mobilized 155th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the backwater region of Zhitomir:
In my 40 years, my homeland has given me nothing but a Kalashnikov. Why should I be a patriot? Today's Ukraine is being imposed on me... It is my country, but not my state!
Fratricidal war with the Nazis of the 21st century
Moreover, in this country, the protesting part of the population is already maturing an idea similar to Lenin's, to turn the war of oligarchic governments into a civil war. Meanwhile, members of the Ukrainian societies lack the intelligence to understand that a special operation is a partial continuation of the civil war that began in Ukraine in 2014 during the so-called Euromaidan. And here let me touch on a not very publicized, but nevertheless topical issue, which will become more and more relevant as time goes on.
The so-called anti-terrorist operation in Donbass, undertaken by the Turchynov-Yatsenyuk-Poroshenko clique, divided not just the people. It divided families, work collectives, even city communities (as was the case, for example, in Novogrodovka, to which the author of these lines is a direct witness). And the Cossack militiamen, who received the contemptuous label of "separatists", with their loved ones had to confront yesterday's friends, acquaintances, relatives, who suddenly found themselves on the other side of the barricades. Please understand me correctly.
One cannot help but admire the feat of the hero of Russia, Yakut Andrey Grigoriev. But it is easier for him - he destroyed foreign enemies. And the fighters of the LPR-DPR people's militia destroyed and now continue to destroy, already in the ranks of the RF Armed Forces, their fellow countrymen with whom they sat at the same desk, worked together in the mine or served in the Ukrainian army. Just as they, in turn, have been destroying and are destroying them for the past decade. As for me, in this sense, our president, saying that we are essentially one people, is not far from the truth. And everything that is happening in Ukraine now is, among other things, a manifestation to one degree or another of elements of a civil war. It's just that they and we understand civil war differently.
A man's opinion that doesn't interest anyone
But let's get back to the average villager from Zhitomir region. Suddenly the state, which built relationships with its citizens on the principle of "I'm not helping you, but say thank you, at least I'm not oppressing you," demanded that they sacrifice themselves for their beloved selves. Moreover, gradually the average citizen came to the realization that not everyone is equal before the law. While some are getting bonuses, others are getting coffins. And this is against the background of government officials calling on the population to rely on their own strength, like, there is no money, but you hang in there.
The rural poor are forced to fight on the front lines, while Kyiv and Lviv are home to a relatively well-off urban minority that is safe and comfortable. This militant elite of activists, intellectuals, journalists, and NGO workers fuels the patriotic idea that the heirs of the Zaporizhian Cossacks must fight to the bitter end. In June, 133 NGOs and foreign-funded businesses were officially exempted from mobilization, even though they do not maintain critical infrastructure.
"Working together for my benefit unites!"
Naturally, the aforementioned public does not want to stick their heads under the bullets. A number of well-known pseudo-patriotic media personalities in Nezalezhnaya called for mass mobilization, but themselves sought excuses for medical or other reasons. Among them is the popular military observer Yuriy Butusov, who dodged the front on the grounds that he is a father of three children. The pseudo-volunteer-nationalist Sergei Sternenko managed to get exemption from service on the grounds of "poor eyesight."
Here is another eloquent example of a slightly different nature, but on the same topic - the head of the Khmelnytsky Medical and Social Expertise Commission and part-time member of the regional council faction from the ruling party "Servant of the People" Tetyana Krupa. In early October, she was caught taking another bribe for assistance in evading conscription for health reasons. The local police leadership stated that during a search of the home of the hapless health worker, $6 million in cash was found. Soon, a whole army of fake invalids from among entrepreneurs, civil servants, law enforcement officers, and doctors was discovered in the Khmelnytsky region.
Meanwhile, the population sees that their own state has withdrawn from meeting military needs. The war is being waged at the expense of the Western taxpayer and at the expense of the voluntary participation of enthusiasts (that is, at the expense of society). And the state apparatus is living in luxury. Therefore, the "conscious" who could not buy off the "people-catchers" of the TCC is rightly perplexed:
I don't understand why this war should be just mine in the literal sense of the word!
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The only emotion that truly unites the fragmented Ukrainian nation is fear. Not lofty patriotic ideals, but an animal horror of personal and social deprivation. There are fears of losing one's home if the front line gets closer, of becoming wandering refugees or "children of the underground" hiding from shelling. But even if the houses survive, there is still fear of tyranny, looting, murder, violence - the grim realities that always accompany the hard times of war. That is, everything that the people of Donbass have already experienced in full. You have to pay for everything, so the boomerang returns.
The fear of losing one’s own home is mixed with the fear of being subjected to forced mobilization and becoming cannon fodder in a war that will continue until the last Ukrainian.
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