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Ukraine’s Top Military Leadership: We Are Starting to Win, Russia Is Starting to Lose
(www.kyivpost.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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I hope they win is probably good. I hope they continue to fight might be out of touch. OP sounds fake though, who has a friend in ~~Kyiv~~ "Kiev" that repeats Russian propaganda narratives to them?
if you go on reddit to certain pro-russian combat footage subs dedicated to the war, you'll see one or two new videos a week of Ukrainian men being kidnapped off of the streets and stuffed into a van
they really are taking people off the streets there. they're low on manpower and the men remaining are all those that don't want to die so they've been ignoring any draft summons. so the Ukrainian gov has been resorting to increasingly brutal measures.
i'm honestly just so glad i wasn't born in post-soviet slavic country , lol. i swear the value of life there is not nearly what it is here. on the Russian side they'll force thousands of men forwards into a meat grinder trying to win with pure brute force. if a soldier tries to go backwards, the Russians themselves will shoot you as a motivation for the others to go forwards. hundreds of thousands of men dead or maimed for what? a couple miles of land a day?
then on the Ukrainian side they'll keep you defending some worthless piece of land forever as all the supply lines slowly close around you. once you're cut off, you know you and the wounded with you are all gonna die. command promised reinforcements when they had no intention of sending reinforcements. to them , the political benefit of holding onto that land for just a little longer is worth more than the lives of real human beings. you are a soldier and you are expendable. (this also coincidentally makes it harder to get fresh recruitment because ukrainian men aren't stupid and propaganda can only hide so many deaths)
i've seen confirmed cases of both sides killing POWs. men walking out of a trench with their hands up surrendering just to get mowed down anyways. men trying to surrender to drones only to get blown up anyways.
war is hell. it's barbaric and highlights the absolute worst nature of humanity.
having said all that, yeah the commenter does seem like an astroturfer or at least a biased pro-russian poster if organic. but the statement with ukrainians being kidnapped, at least from what I've seen, is true. it has been happening at increasing frequencies
When it's the police, we just call it "detained", even though it's the same thing. Saying "kidnapping" and "brutal measures" is a little saucy when this is exactly how the police where I live operate, too. We don't have conscription or a war on right now, but we have in the past, and we might in the future.
That's pretty much the job description of a soldier. For example, this describes the recent American wars. They had lower tolerance for casualties, but that's just because it was an optional war rather than an existential one.
It was less that OP pointed out this stuff, and more that their "friend in Kiev" apparently phones them up about this and doesn't mention anything about the Russians who are perpetuating all this and could leave at any time.
Well, it is extreme. Let's not pretend like it isn't. Legal technicalities aside, it's not a good look. People walking with their families down the street suddenly get ambushed and then thrown into a van? Old woman or wife trying to fight off the military recruiters?
The Russians don't do this. The Americans didn't do this back during Vietnam. Etc. It's understandable because of the existential nature of this war, like you pointed out, but it is abnormal when you look at other drafts in other countries.
Part of the reason they're having such a hard time is again, the recklessness with which they have, at certain points of this war, treated human life. Russia's running into this same issue. Although Russia has a bigger population and is able to offer higher incentives in the form of payouts, along with a more centralized and mature propaganda system. Because of this, they haven't had to rely on a draft and mobilization. They are still mostly a volunteer force.
Lower tolerance for casualties is a bit of an understatement. Over the course of 5 years or so there were less than 5,000 American deaths. Since 2022, we're looking at a very conservative at least 100k dead from just the Russian side. The more generous estimates have 200k+ dead on both sides.
We're talking at least an order of magnitude difference
When military strategy is controlled by the generals, they will prioritize manpower over political goals. When military strategy is controlled by the political regime, political goals become more important.
Retreating from a piece of land that has little strategic significance is the correct move so that you conserve resources and manpower. A soldier is a human being, a life. Not only does this have some sort of moral worth and should not be thrown away recklessly, it has real strategic value.
Both Russia and Ukraine in this war have made awe-inspiringly bad decisions at specific points. If I were a man who was being compelled to serve in either army, I would run away as far as possible.
I agree.
I'm pretty sure the Russians did in their last existential war. During Vietnam, Wikipedia says 3,250 were jailed for draft violations.
Jailing involves someone being taken by force to a place they don't want to be, and if they don't go voluntarily the police definitely will interrupt a family outing. I got detained when out with family once.
All war has political goals (there's a famous Clausewitz quote about that) and involves loss of manpower.
By both official figures and anecdote, multiple Russians die for every Ukrainian. You don't achieve that with recklessness. Given that Ukraine has a quarter of the population but better supplies and training, it's just good strategy to be as cautious as possible with personnel anyway.