Eugene Doyle
Jan 25, 2025
Back at the very start of the war retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman, an eloquent critic of many aspects of his government’s international conduct, warned that the US was prepared “to fight to the last Ukrainian”. Some want to prove him right. Others want to save the remaining young men of Ukraine.
The US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz suggested this week that Ukraine isn’t trying hard enough. The Trump administration continues the Biden administration’s pressure campaign to get Ukraine to drop the conscription age to 18. Despite finally admitting that the Russians can’t be beaten, they want to send younger and younger men to the slaughter. Why?
“If the Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all-in for democracy, we need them to be all-in for democracy. We need to see these manpower shortages addressed,” says Waltz.
In other words, the Americans want the Ukrainians to literally put more skin in the game – skin that is currently attached to the bodies of a couple of hundred thousand Ukrainian youths whom the US want drafted, quickly trained and thrown at the battle-hardened, better-equipped Russians.
Waltz told Fox last week, “They have real manpower issues. Their draft age is 25 years old, not 18. I don’t think a lot of people know that. They could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.”
Right. There’s the problem: the Ukrainians just haven’t been trying hard enough. More skin, please, More blood, please. More guts. No one can definitively say what the total number of dead and injured is on the Ukrainian side – some estimates say it is approaching 1 million. Tens of thousands are hobbling around minus limbs thanks to landmines. Which would help explain why the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 42 years old and why the US has been pressuring Ukraine for months to drop the draft age.
In an interview with Ukrainian news outlet TSN on January 19, General Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian forces, said that current mobilisation efforts were insufficient to meet the needs of the Armed Forces. The air force had even been depleted to fill frontline infantry positions. The problem is Ukraine is running out of willing recruits; a majority of the population want peace now. According to US Gallup polling more than half want their government to open negotiations. This is a dramatic reversal from two years ago when 75% of Ukrainians in the west of the country thought fighting should continue.
Armchair Putin-haters in the West are baying for more Ukrainians to hit the frontlines but such a move is hugely unpopular in Ukraine. Mothers have seen enough of war to know what fate awaits their sons, some fresh from school, who would be given rudimentary training and then rushed to the front line. Even Western media outlets, like
Deutsche Welle, are showing footage of parents, sisters and older friends fighting conscription gangs who are manhandling unwilling young men into vans.
I saw footage last week of parents seeing their 17-year-olds onto trains to get them out of Ukraine before they hit 18 – the current age at which males are no longer legally allowed abroad. Since the war broke out millions of Ukrainians – perhaps 10 million – have fled the country, most will likely never return. A recently published CIA report stated that Ukraine has the highest mortality rate and the lowest birth rate in the world. Mental health is also a cause for serious concern in any war zone.
To rebuild in the longterm Ukraine needs births, and that requires healthy young men and women. The United Nations Population Fund made clear in a recent report that
recovery for Ukraine hinges on peace. It said there is an urgent need for comprehensive recovery strategies focused on human capital and socioeconomic reform.
Staring down the barrel of another lost proxy war the Pentagon and the mainstream media are flailing to cobble together a narrative that will be swallowed by the populations of the West who were told, “That man Putin cannot stay in power” and “The Russians must be driven out of Ukraine”. This from Time Magazine earlier this month:
“But in rallying the world to the fight, the implication Biden embedded in his own goals was that defending Ukraine against Russia is not the same as defeating Russia. So it is not surprising if that goal remains far from Zelensky’s reach.”
Did that make sense to you? Verily, the new narrative is still a work in progress. And while the scribes workshop narratives young men are sent to die – for no valid reason whatsoever. Each passing day without peace will see more territory slip into Russian hands and, given the enormous sacrifice in blood and treasure that Russia has paid to end NATO expansion and protect ethnic Russians in the east, that territory will be off the table in any eventual negotiations.
Incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck a much more realistic tone in a recent hearing in Washington: “I think it should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end. The truth of the matter is there is no way Russia takes all of Ukraine and there is no way that Ukraine will push [Russia] back to where they were on the eve of the invasion, given the size dynamic.
“The problem Ukraine is facing is not that they are running out of money – they are running out of Ukrainians.”
The US position on Ukraine shifted some months ago from “victory” to putting it in the strongest possible negotiating position with Russia. Both sides need ‘leverage’ so, according to US strategy, doomed gambits like the Kursk incursion or driving increasingly young men into uniform are necessary for Ukraine to have ‘leverage’.
The very real danger is that the red-line positions of the different sides – US, EU, Russia and Ukraine – may be incompatible with each other and the outcome then has to remain in the hands of the warriors rather than the diplomats. That will spell demographic disaster for whatever is left of Ukraine.
Russia will not accept NATO membership for Ukraine, will insist on its return to neutrality, and wants long-term agreement on security arrangements for Europe. Ukraine and the US will likely refuse to formally concede the loss of Crimea and other oblasts. Ukraine needs security guarantees against Russia renewing its attacks. The ethnic Russians and other minorities who remain inside Ukraine want guarantees of rights denied to them by the ethnic Ukrainian regime in Kiev. Hatred and distrust seethe on all sides. These are tough nuts to crack.
But at least the idea of talking is coming back into fashion. Snubbing, shunning, denigrating and refusing to talk have been the trademarks of US “diplomacy” in recent years, so I’ll give the last word to Marco Rubio who is the first American official I have heard from in a long time who seems to believe in diplomacy rather than bombs and bombast:
“This war has to end. It will require bold diplomacy. There will have to be concessions made – by the Russian Federation but also by Ukraine and the United States.”
johnmenadue.com
Jan 25, 2025
Back at the very start of the war retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman, an eloquent critic of many aspects of his government’s international conduct, warned that the US was prepared “to fight to the last Ukrainian”. Some want to prove him right. Others want to save the remaining young men of Ukraine.
The US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz suggested this week that Ukraine isn’t trying hard enough. The Trump administration continues the Biden administration’s pressure campaign to get Ukraine to drop the conscription age to 18. Despite finally admitting that the Russians can’t be beaten, they want to send younger and younger men to the slaughter. Why?
“If the Ukrainians have asked the entire world to be all-in for democracy, we need them to be all-in for democracy. We need to see these manpower shortages addressed,” says Waltz.
In other words, the Americans want the Ukrainians to literally put more skin in the game – skin that is currently attached to the bodies of a couple of hundred thousand Ukrainian youths whom the US want drafted, quickly trained and thrown at the battle-hardened, better-equipped Russians.
Waltz told Fox last week, “They have real manpower issues. Their draft age is 25 years old, not 18. I don’t think a lot of people know that. They could generate hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.”
Right. There’s the problem: the Ukrainians just haven’t been trying hard enough. More skin, please, More blood, please. More guts. No one can definitively say what the total number of dead and injured is on the Ukrainian side – some estimates say it is approaching 1 million. Tens of thousands are hobbling around minus limbs thanks to landmines. Which would help explain why the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 42 years old and why the US has been pressuring Ukraine for months to drop the draft age.
In an interview with Ukrainian news outlet TSN on January 19, General Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian forces, said that current mobilisation efforts were insufficient to meet the needs of the Armed Forces. The air force had even been depleted to fill frontline infantry positions. The problem is Ukraine is running out of willing recruits; a majority of the population want peace now. According to US Gallup polling more than half want their government to open negotiations. This is a dramatic reversal from two years ago when 75% of Ukrainians in the west of the country thought fighting should continue.
Armchair Putin-haters in the West are baying for more Ukrainians to hit the frontlines but such a move is hugely unpopular in Ukraine. Mothers have seen enough of war to know what fate awaits their sons, some fresh from school, who would be given rudimentary training and then rushed to the front line. Even Western media outlets, like
Deutsche Welle, are showing footage of parents, sisters and older friends fighting conscription gangs who are manhandling unwilling young men into vans.
I saw footage last week of parents seeing their 17-year-olds onto trains to get them out of Ukraine before they hit 18 – the current age at which males are no longer legally allowed abroad. Since the war broke out millions of Ukrainians – perhaps 10 million – have fled the country, most will likely never return. A recently published CIA report stated that Ukraine has the highest mortality rate and the lowest birth rate in the world. Mental health is also a cause for serious concern in any war zone.
To rebuild in the longterm Ukraine needs births, and that requires healthy young men and women. The United Nations Population Fund made clear in a recent report that
recovery for Ukraine hinges on peace. It said there is an urgent need for comprehensive recovery strategies focused on human capital and socioeconomic reform.
Staring down the barrel of another lost proxy war the Pentagon and the mainstream media are flailing to cobble together a narrative that will be swallowed by the populations of the West who were told, “That man Putin cannot stay in power” and “The Russians must be driven out of Ukraine”. This from Time Magazine earlier this month:
“But in rallying the world to the fight, the implication Biden embedded in his own goals was that defending Ukraine against Russia is not the same as defeating Russia. So it is not surprising if that goal remains far from Zelensky’s reach.”
Did that make sense to you? Verily, the new narrative is still a work in progress. And while the scribes workshop narratives young men are sent to die – for no valid reason whatsoever. Each passing day without peace will see more territory slip into Russian hands and, given the enormous sacrifice in blood and treasure that Russia has paid to end NATO expansion and protect ethnic Russians in the east, that territory will be off the table in any eventual negotiations.
Incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck a much more realistic tone in a recent hearing in Washington: “I think it should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end. The truth of the matter is there is no way Russia takes all of Ukraine and there is no way that Ukraine will push [Russia] back to where they were on the eve of the invasion, given the size dynamic.
“The problem Ukraine is facing is not that they are running out of money – they are running out of Ukrainians.”
The US position on Ukraine shifted some months ago from “victory” to putting it in the strongest possible negotiating position with Russia. Both sides need ‘leverage’ so, according to US strategy, doomed gambits like the Kursk incursion or driving increasingly young men into uniform are necessary for Ukraine to have ‘leverage’.
The very real danger is that the red-line positions of the different sides – US, EU, Russia and Ukraine – may be incompatible with each other and the outcome then has to remain in the hands of the warriors rather than the diplomats. That will spell demographic disaster for whatever is left of Ukraine.
Russia will not accept NATO membership for Ukraine, will insist on its return to neutrality, and wants long-term agreement on security arrangements for Europe. Ukraine and the US will likely refuse to formally concede the loss of Crimea and other oblasts. Ukraine needs security guarantees against Russia renewing its attacks. The ethnic Russians and other minorities who remain inside Ukraine want guarantees of rights denied to them by the ethnic Ukrainian regime in Kiev. Hatred and distrust seethe on all sides. These are tough nuts to crack.
But at least the idea of talking is coming back into fashion. Snubbing, shunning, denigrating and refusing to talk have been the trademarks of US “diplomacy” in recent years, so I’ll give the last word to Marco Rubio who is the first American official I have heard from in a long time who seems to believe in diplomacy rather than bombs and bombast:
“This war has to end. It will require bold diplomacy. There will have to be concessions made – by the Russian Federation but also by Ukraine and the United States.”
Reality hits home: “Ukraine is running out of Ukrainians,” says US Secretary of State - Pearls and Irritations
Back at the very start of the war retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman warned that the US was prepared “to fight to the last Ukrainian”.
johnmenadue.com
