Ukraine is facing shortage of manpower for war, said Western media reports.
An opinion piece in The Telegraph – Ukraine’s army is running out of men to recruit, and time to win (Robert Clark, August 22, 2023) – said:
The war in Ukraine is now fought on terms that increasingly favour Moscow. A shortage of manpower – which Kiev is already having to confront may prove fatal.
It said:
Perhaps more important is the heavy toll the fighting is taking on the people of Ukraine.
Ukraine had a pre-war population of 44 million. By the end of the first year of the war, some six million had fled abroad. The armed forces number around 200,000 active personnel, roughly the same again in reserve, and can draw on another 1.5 million fighting-age males.
It is a brutal but simple calculation: Kiev is running out of men. U.S. sources have calculated that its armed forces have lost as many as 70,000 killed in action, with another 100,000 injured. Ukraine struggles to replace soldiers in the face of a seemingly endless supply of conscripts.
The opinion piece by Robert Clark, director of the Defence and Security Unit at Civitas, said:
Volunteers are no longer coming forward in numbers sufficient to keep the army at fighting strength: those most willing to fight signed up years ago. The latest recruitment slogan is “it’s OK to be afraid”, but there are still many attempting to dodge being drafted to fight on the front lines.
Manpower is a resource Ukraine simply cannot match Russia, and one that the West cannot supply.
It said:
For Vladimir Putin, victory may at last be in sight as Western support begins to waver. If Kyiv cannot break through the Russian lines now, it may never be able to. If it runs out of willing men to recruit, the West cannot help.
People In Ukraine Are Losing The Will To Fight, Says The Economist
British weekly The Economist has claimed: Ukrainian society is showing increasing signs of fatigue over the conflict with Russia, with some frontline soldiers hoping for a ceasefire, despite the government’s determination to keep fighting.
“The public mood is somber” the British publication reported on Sunday, pointing to the heavy losses suffered by Ukrainian troops during the summer counteroffensive.
The public increasingly perceives the conflict as “a war that has no end in sight” and is reluctant to pay for it in treasure and blood, the article said, adding that people who were keen to fight “volunteered long ago,” so Kiev is now “recruiting mostly among the unwilling.”
“It makes the air so thick that you can actually feel it,” an activist supporting the troops told the magazine. With the cost of prolonging hostilities becoming obvious, “even hoping for success in the counter-offensive has become an act of self-destruction.”
The attitude is apparently shared by those doing the fighting, The Economist suggested, citing an interview with a sniper, which went viral in Ukraine earlier this month. The soldier, Konstantin Proshinsky, claimed that fellow troops would take a truce with Russia “absolutely fine.”
“I am not speaking for everyone, but I do not believe that in that scenario the army would turn around and march to Kiev to topple the government,” he told local media.
He branded as “self-gratifying populism” Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky’s maximalist goal of retaking all land that Kiev claims to be under its sovereignty, including Crimea.
The Russian Defense Ministry assessed Ukrainian battlefield casualties during the counteroffensive at over 43,000 as of early August.
Kiev has taken an uncompromising stance on talks since last year, after what Moscow claimed to be a U.S. order to ditch a draft peace agreement and fight on. Russian officials have accused Western powers of fighting a proxy war against their nation “to the last Ukrainian.”
Ukrainian Draft Dodgers Aggravating Troop Shortages, Says BBC
The British broadcaster BBC reported on Tuesday:
Ukraine is struggling to reinforce its troop numbers due to “constant” heavy casualties suffered in the conflict with Russia and the population’s unwillingness to replace those no longer able to serve.
“The country constantly needs to replace the tens of thousands who have been killed or injured,” the British state broadcaster said, adding that many Ukrainian troops are exhausted following 18 months of hostilities with Moscow.
According to BBC, Ukrainians have formed mass chat groups on social media to share ways of dodging conscription, including providing tip-offs on Telegram of draft patrol officers’ routes. The groups exist throughout Ukraine and some have as many as 100,000 members, the BBC added.
Thousands have already fled Ukraine in an attempt to avoid the draft, while others are planning to do so, the BBC claimed. It said that those fleeing often bribe officials, including recruitment officers, to ensure safe passage abroad.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Zelensky dismissed every single regional military official responsible for conscription following a series of corruption scandals. The Ukrainian authorities had previously opened 112 criminal cases against territorial draft center officials, Zelensky revealed at the time.
Kiev’s Heavy-handed Tactics To Conscript Ukrainian People
According to the BBC, officers involved in the recruitment campaign stand accused of employing increasingly heavy-handed tactics. People have allegedly been summoned to recruitment centers for registration, often only to be seized on the spot and deprived of the chance to return home, the broadcaster claimed. Draft officials are also accused of using “harsh or intimidating tactics,” the British broadcaster said, while fresh recruits can reportedly find themselves on the front lines “with just a month of training.”
The report comes as Kiev struggles with the much-hyped counteroffensive against Russian forces launched in early June. According to Moscow, Ukrainian troops have failed to make any significant progress, often only reaching the first line of Russian defenses.
Last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told the Moscow Conference on International Security that Western weapons and tactics have failed to grant Kiev’s troops any edge on the battlefield. Western military equipment has also proved not to be “unique or invulnerable to Russian weapons,” he added.
Ukrainian Law Enforcement Searches Hundreds Of Military Enlistment Offices, Medical Commissions
The Kyiv Independent reported on August 23, 2023:
Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have simultaneously conducted hundreds of searches at enlistment offices and military medical commissions across Ukraine, revealing large-scale corruption schemes.
Officials in all Ukrainian regions are involved in the schemes, the National Police reported after carrying out over 200 searches on Aug. 22 together with prosecutors.
Among other misdeeds, suspects helped draft-age men obtain fake documents on having a disability or being temporarily unfit for military service in exchange for a financial reward, according to the report.
The Ukrainian National Police added it had opened criminal cases against all suspects and would publish the pre-trial investigations’ results separately.
Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation reported carrying out searches at military medical commissions in Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, and Kyiv oblasts.
A total of 388 people are suspected of illegally issuing documents of unfitness for service, the Bureau wrote.
The law enforcement body reportedly opened multiple criminal cases, including for power abuse committed by a military official under martial law.
Last week, the State Bureau of Investigation searched 15 military enlistment offices in Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Kherson oblasts.
“Institutions are checked for possible corrupt actions of personnel during general mobilization, illegal ‘exemption’ from the mobilization of reserve officers and other conscripts,” the agency added. “Such actions pose a direct threat to the national security of Ukraine and undermine trust in state institutions.”
The report said:
President Zelensky said on Aug. 11 that the heads of all regional military enlistment offices across Ukraine would be dismissed.
The decision came after a nationwide inspection of Ukraine’s recruitment offices revealed multiple violations, including corruption, power abuse, and fraud.
Ukrainian authorities launched the country-wide inspection after journalists discovered that the family of Yevhen Borysov, the former head of the Odesa Oblast military enlistment office, had acquired property worth $4.5 million in Spain during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Deaths – Close to 70,000
A Reuters report cited a report by The New York Times that said:
The number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022 is nearing 500,000, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed U.S. officials.
The report said:
Ukrainian deaths were close to 70,000, with 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.
The NYT quoted the officials as saying the casualty count had picked up after Ukraine launched a counter-attack earlier this year.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, commenting on the NYT article, said only the General Staff could disclose such figures.
“We have adopted a model that only the General Staff has the right to voice the figures on the wounded, the disabled, people who lost limbs, and the missing, and, of course, the number of people who died in this war,” he said in a live broadcast on the YouTube channel of journalist Yulia Latynina on Friday.
West Perplexed By Ukraine’s Strategy, Says New York Times
Ukraine’s counteroffensive is struggling because some of Kiev’s best troops are “in the wrong places,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing senior U.S. and UK officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
The offensive’s main objective is to reach the Sea of Azov, cutting off Crimea from the Russian mainland, but Ukraine currently has more troops on the eastern front – facing Artyomovsk, also known as Bakhmut – than in the “far more strategically significant” south, according to the New York Times.
“American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process,” the American newspaper said.
“Only with a change of tactics and a dramatic move can the tempo of the counteroffensive change,” a U.S. official told the newspaper, though others argued that even that may be too little, too late.
Kiev’s insistence on keeping a large force in the east is particularly “perplexing” to the American and British officials, as Western doctrine calls for commitment to a clear main effort. They argue that a smaller force could serve to pin down the Russian defenders, and while Ukraine theoretically has enough troops to retake Artyomovsk, doing so would “lead to large numbers of losses for little strategic gain.”
General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, his British counterpart Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli all urged Ukraine’s top general Valery Zaluzhny to focus on the southern front in the August 10 call, the newspaper said. Zaluzhny supposedly agreed.
Just five days later, however, President Vladimir Zelensky was touring the “Soledar sector” near Artyomovsk, visiting the neo-Nazi ‘Azov’ unit and speaking about the importance of that front.
According to the report, Ukraine has started to redeploy some units to the south, but “even the most experienced units have been reconstituted a number of times after taking heavy casualties.”
Kiev is currently “tapping into its last strategic reserves,” and unnamed Western analysts worry that Ukrainian forces “may run out of steam” by mid-September, even before a change in weather turns the ground into impassable mud.
The newspaper itself noted that U.S. criticism comes from the perspective of officers “who have never experienced a war of this scale and intensity,” and that the U.S. war doctrine “has never been tested in an environment like Ukraine’s, where Russian electronic warfare jams communications and GPS,” and there is no air superiority.
Ukraine Has Not Reached a ‘Stalemate’ Against Russia, Says White House
U.S. news outlet The Hill said on August 22, 2023:
The White House on Tuesday said it did not assess that Ukraine has reached a stalemate in its defensive war against Russia, as reports from the battlefield detail Kyiv’s struggles to oust Moscow’s forces from dug-in positions on the front lines.
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, responding to a reporter’s question, said that Ukraine is taking territory on a “methodical, systematic basis.”
“We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate,” he said in a briefing with reporters.
The report said:
Ukraine’s second, major counteroffensive that was launched in June has proceeded much slower.
“There is attacking and defending taking place on both sides at multiple points along a very extended front line of trace,” Sullivan said.
“And it is true that the Russians have been attacking up in the northeast. It is also true that the Ukrainians have been defending up in the northeast quite effectively.”
Sullivan said that critics of Ukraine’s counteroffensive “should approach the question of battlefield conduct with a level of humility,” in response to a question over U.S. government frustration with Ukraine’s war strategy.
“We do our best to provide our best advice and then Ukraine makes its own sovereign decisions about how it is going to proceed,” he said. “That is how I look at it, that’s how the president looks at it, that’s the policy of the United States.”
Sullivan said the White House had observed Ukraine making gains in the south in the past 24 hours and said that the Ukrainians are continuously probing the Russian lines for weaknesses while trying to carry out the fight “sustainably.”
“It is a dynamic battlefield,” he said. “It is one where we need to continue to move the fundamental elements of both defense and offense, in particular, the artillery ammunition and the mobility that Ukraine needs to be able to both hold ground and take ground, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do, working with the coalition of nations that has been supporting Ukraine since it started this conflict.”
Still, there is concern that Ukraine’s slow pace of pushing Russia back, while Russian forces continue to adapt their defenses, risks straining U.S. and international support to provide economic and military assistance to Kyiv for as long as the fight takes.
The Biden administration released a request to Congress earlier this month for $24 billion in funding related to support for Ukraine and other international needs, but that is likely to face a tough battle on Capitol Hill, where GOP voices critical of U.S. assistance for Ukraine are putting pressure on House leaders.
Sullivan said that bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine is strong despite “dissident voices.”
“We believe that at the core, there is still a strong bipartisan foundation of support for our Ukraine policy and for supporting and defending Ukraine. And so we have communicated that to our friends in Kyiv and to our allies and partners,” he said.
