Cruel Tactics Used to Hold Front Together Show Ukrainians 'No Longer Committed' to Fight
17:35 GMT 02.01.2024 (Updated: 17:53 GMT 02.01.2024)
© AFP 2023 / GENYA SAVILOV
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More and more Ukrainian troops are refusing to carry out combat missions, with others risking getting shot in the back by blocking units deployed behind their lines for attempting to retreat. Sputnik asked a respected international affairs observer what this means for Ukraine’s war effort and President Zelensky’s chances of political survival.
Recent reports from the front are painting an increasingly gloomy picture for Ukraine’s military after the failure of last year’s counteroffensive, an unprecedented new round of Russian missile and drone attacks, concerns that Kiev’s NATO allies may abandon Ukraine, and fears of the possibility of a Russian breakthrough somewhere along the 1,000 km long frontline.
On Tuesday, Sputnik obtained audio of a radio intercept of communications between Ukrainian servicemen revealing that some Ukrainian units are outright refusing to go into battle against Russian forces.
Two days earlier, Sputnik received grizzly footage appearing to show Ukrainian troops being shot at and having grenades thrown at them by their own comrades during a Russian advance by so-called ‘anti-retreat’ forces.
Before that, Ukrainian PoWs told Sputnik and other Russian media resources that some Ukrainian units were rife with cases of insubordination and desertion, with Ukraine’s security services reportedly stepping in in some situations to ‘motivate’ troops refusing to fight.
All this comes against the backdrop of growing concerns in Kiev and in NATO capitals that the US and its allies may not be able to justify funding the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine indefinitely as the House and Senate wrangle over the White House’s proposed $61 billion in new appropriations.
“In short, the Ukraine war may be lost in the first half of 2024,” former US ambassador to NATO, Clinton-era National Security Council official and Council on Foreign Relations fellow Ivo Daalder warned in an op-ed in Politico Europe on Tuesday.
“With primary elections starting in mid-January, former President Donald Trump may well seal his nomination as the Republican nominee as early as the end of the month. And Republicans on Capitol Hill will then want to march in lockstep with their presidential frontrunner – which [is] halting aid to Ukraine.”
That means time is running out for Congress to sign the 2024 Ukraine aid bill before then, Daalder indicated.
To top it all off, President Zelensky gave an emotional interview to the UK’s top business magazine on Monday, attacking the West for losing its ‘sense of urgency’ in supporting Kiev, and blaming Ukrainians for losing their ‘sense of existential threat’ against Russia. “Giving us money or giving us weapons, you support yourself. You save your children, not ours,” Zelensky said, claiming Russia will take away Western children and “violate the rights in the world” if given the chance, and that Vladimir Putin would “eat you for dinner with all your EU, NATO, freedom and democracy.”
“The most important profession a Ukrainian can do at the moment is to be in Ukraine…and for our Western partners, it is to be with Ukraine…If you don’t have the strength, then either get out or step aside,” Zelensky said.
Shaky Situation at the Front Ominous Sign for Kiev
“Even Zelensky says that many of his countrymen are no longer committed to this war and what I am hearing from people on the ground is that those who have not left are trying to live as normally as possible and avoid being drafted or directly brought into the armed conflict,” geopolitical analyst Come Carpentier de Gourdon told Sputnik, commenting on the difficulties at the front amid Kiev’s use of blocking detachments and units refusing to perform combat actions.
“It is evident that Zelensky’s political and personal fate is tied to the success of his policy of waging war ‘until Russia is defeated’. The growing improbability of that declared, self-imposed goal (which is required of him by NATO) has caught him in a trap of his own making. He can’t acknowledge de facto defeat without bowing out of politics and possibly suffering difficult and dangerous consequences,” the analyst stressed, remarking on Zelensky’s latest media interview.
“He is of no more [use] to the American and British governments if he signs a peace deal with Russia that would consecrate Moscow’s victory,” Carpentier de Gourdon added, alluding to the Ukrainian president’s fate trapped between a rock and a hard place.
“The Zelensky government and its Western allies often claim that they are not fighting Russia but only Putin and his 'world-conquering ambitions' of which the Russian people would be the victims. However, this rhetorical position rings hollow because there is wide support among Russians for the policy of the Kremlin against Ukraine/NATO and there has been no popular revolt or widespread dissidence so far, whereas many Ukrainians have voted with their feet, going either to EU countries or to Russia. If Americans and Europeans are not convinced that Russia wants to conquer Ukraine and then all of Europe, they are not willing to support Ukraine in the war beyond a point that has already been crossed,” the observer said.
Secretly, Carpentier de Gourdon says, Western political and military leaders and Zelensky recognize that there is no hope to recover Ukraine’s lost territories anytime soon. “Zelensky has to admit what his generals have told him. The war cannot bring about a reversal of the current situation. All it can achieve is killing more Russians at an even higher human and infrastructural cost to Ukraine,” the observer summed up.
Come Carpentier de Gourdon is a French-born, India and Europe-based writer, researcher and analyst, and a member of several academic and cultural institutions in Europe, Asia and the United States. He is the convener of the New Delhi-based World Affairs Journal, and a distinguished fellow of the India Foundation think tank.
