Sending weapons to Ukraine will soon be irrelevant

President Obama is considering sending lethal weapons to Kiev. So is Canadian PM Stephen Harper.
Even Democrats in Congress want to give Ukraine guns. Senator McCain wants to force Obama to give them guns.

However, the reality of Ukraine having weapons or not is no longer the critical issue.
The critical issue is: who is going to be pulling those triggers and pushing those buttons?

The Kiev government has been forced to turn to the draft to fight the separatists in the Donbass. It has exposed the near complete lack of enthusiasm in the war effort.

"According to unofficial sources, hostels and motels in border regions of neighboring Romania are completely filled with draft dodgers," newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda quoted the deleted post as saying...
More than 1,300 criminal investigations have been launched against citizens suspected of avoiding military service, according to the defense ministry.

And yet that isn't the half of it. There is now a face to refusing to fight a war that more and more Ukrainians view as pointless.

Ruslan Kotsaba posted a video addressed to the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, last week in which he said he would rather go to prison for five years for draft-dodging than fight pro-Russia rebels in the country’s east. Now he faces 15 years in jail after being arrested for treason and obstructing the military.

Some human rights organizations are calling for leniency in the case of Ruslan Kotsaba because of his obvious opposition to the war based on ideology reasons, but the Kiev government has felt it necessary to remain tough in the face of the already present mass draft dodging.

The true failure of the mobilization can be seen further down in this article.

“At least here mobilisation has been a total failure,” said Iryna Vereshchuk, mayor of the small town of Rava-Ruska, in the far west of Ukraine. “People don’t understand what they are fighting against. If it’s a war, why has no war been declared?"..
Vereshchuk said attitudes have hardened in her town as locals who went to fight returned in coffins. Of about 100 call-up papers meant to be distributed as part of the latest wave of mobilisation, only six had been given out. In the other cases, the men had hidden or could not be found, she said.

The example of Rava-Ruska is not unusual. Similar cases can be found all over western Ukraine.

“Each day, new facts about mass, draft evasion are emerging” reports the Ukrainian daily Korrespondent. It writes, “In the first wave of military mobilization in 2014, 20 per cent of those who showed up for the conscription call did so voluntarily. In the second wave the same year, it was ten per cent.
“This year, only six per cent of those conscripts showing up for the call to service have done so voluntarily“.
In the Trancarpathia region in western Ukraine, entire villages have scattered across various borders to escape conscription of their menfolk. The head of the village council of Kosiv district in Ivano-Frankivsk region reports that the entire population of the village booked buses and have moved to Russia to wait out the war.
In the village of Colchino, authorities could find only three of the 105 eligible males to whom to serve papers.

Historically, populations don't get more enthusiastic for a war as the war drags on and the casualties become more numerous.
There is one reported case where the Ukrainian villagers forced the authorities to tear up the call-up papers before letting them leave.
In other cases the military authorities have been met with mass protests. In the village of Limansky the peasants nearly lynched the recruiters. In other cases, local authorities are warning their young men in advance so that they can flee.

And then there is the case of this young woman. It doesn't matter whether you agree with her or not. What matters is that so many people in the crowd were receptive to her message.

That isn't the only problem for Kiev's war effort.
Another problem even more immediate is that Kiev's economy is collapsing and the west doesn't seem to be too troubled by it.

Earlier reports, including my own, that Ukraine’s currency lost 30% of its value were not entirely accurate. The reality was actually quite a bit worse: the hryvnia shed roughly 50% of its value over the course of just two days, a stunning rout that places the country a hair’s breadth away from default.
Ukraine’s foreign currency reserves are now down to a minuscule $6.42 billion (and falling!), enough to cover just five weeks worth of imports. The usually accepted rule of thumb among economic analysts is that a country needs at least six months worth of “import cover,” and that anything less than 3 months is a crisis situation.

The Ukrainian economy shrank by 7% last year, an amount exceeded only by South Sudan and Libya. Their inflation rate is 25%.
According to the IMF's SOP, they are pushing Ukraine toward austerity measures even while their economy collapses.

Of course this doesn't work very well when you are trying to run a war.

Justification has nothing to do with it: without money, it just isn’t possible to field a modern military. Someone has to pay the salaries of the soldiers fighting in the Donbas, someone has to buy the gasoline necessary for to get them there, and someone has to pay for the ammunition they use.

And that is the point that our western leaders don't get. They can't see past the Russian aggression.
Ukraine is collapsing. It's people are losing faith in the war effort, in the economy, and in the government. More guns won't change that. Even more loans (attached to mandatory austerity measures, of course) would only delay the inevitable.

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

gulfgal98's picture

to decide if they want to fight the war. The United States has already made that decision. The United States has been pushing for a war with Russia using Ukrainians as our proxy army. The PTB in the US want NATO on Russia's doorstep and Ukraine is that doorstep. It is all about empire, sadly.

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

snoopydawg's picture

Good for them to resist fighting without even knowing what they're fighting for.
Unbelievable that the US is funding neo nazis. Any WW2 vet alive should be screaming about this.
I wonder what Putin's plan is? So far it looks like he hasn't let Russia get dragged in to war.
I'm so sick of our taxes going to murdering other people who haven't threatened us so that the corporations can get their hands on other countries resources.
China and other countries negotiate for resources, the US steals them.
Still to many people in this country thinks that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine. And that ISIS is a group of people that just want to slaughter each other. They never look at the role the US plays in funding groups to fight each other.
I wonder if the day will ever come that the people in the US finds out what it's like to be invaded by another country. If that day ever comes, it would be blowback for what the US has done for over 100 years.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

A lot of people forget, or never knew, that WWI ended when the German soldiers refused to fight anymore, and the German workers refused to work.
The German people simply said "enough".

up
0 users have voted.
Tammany Tiger's picture

up
0 users have voted.
Big Al's picture

That video, pardon my French, is fucking awesome.
It should be required viewing for anyone who wants to know what's happening in Ukraine.
It's simple. People in the east didn't want anything to do with an illegal government filled with
Nazi's and right wing hard liners so that illegal government decided to go kill them, with the help
of the CIA/USA.
And Obama and McCain want to send even more help to that illegal government so they can kill
more citizens who don't want to be ruled by that government.

up
0 users have voted.
Big Al's picture

you think we're going to sell them to America?"

The final line in that video from a woman saying they want to be friends with Russia, not enemies.

This is a complete travesty and to think Obama is supporting this should override any other sentiments anyone has
had lately about that dude.

up
0 users have voted.
Big Al's picture

"A ceasefire was agreed upon late Tuesday night by Russian and Ukrainian officials and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe -- collectively known as the Trilateral Contact Group -- along with pro-Russian separatists, according to a Russian source, just hours before talks among Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande were to begin Wednesday in Minsk, Belarus."

http://www.ibtimes.com/ukraine-crisis-ceasefire-agreed-upon-russian-sour...

up
0 users have voted.
Big Al's picture

"This report is the result of collaboration among scholars and former practitioners from the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for a New American Security, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. It is informed by and reflects mid-January discussions with senior NATO and US officials in Brussels and senior Ukrainian civilian and military officials in Kyiv and at the Ukrainian “anti-terror operation” headquarters in Kramatorsk."

Michelle Flournoy and others. She was once a front runner to replace Hagel.

http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/ukraine

"The Obama administration is rethinking its earlier reluctance, and secretary of defense nominee Ash Carter told a Senate hearing he was “very much inclined” to favor this course as well."

There is a literal battle going on in D.C. All hands on deck.

up
0 users have voted.
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

excellent work.

up
0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mimi's picture

I got so annoyed about one poster that I spoke my mind about his character and attitude. How nice of them to prove to me how much I am surveilled. I am still so angry about certain people's debate styles that I was inclined to not acknowledge the warning.

I have no inclination anymore to comment at all. Come here only to cry at your shoulders. Then I am going "home". It has become an emotional burden to read dailykos.

up
0 users have voted.

that's why this site was created, as a lifeboat to get away from the crap. Cry on our shoulders any time you like.

up
0 users have voted.