As Vladimir Zelensky pretends he is not losing, his citizens are increasingly rising up against forced conscription<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s self-declared above-election leader Vladimir Zelensky has found time to publicly share his fantasies with the only audience he cares about: the West, in particular the US, and specifically its president Donald Trump. Since it must be hard for Zelensky to get anyone\u2019s ear in Washington nowadays \u2013 who likes a sponger returning for the zillionth time after being shown the door? \u2013 he had to do it in public. Luckily, The Atlantic was ready to help (sort of, but we\u2019ll get to that). And yes, that would be the same Atlantic that has downplayed the Epstein monstrosities.
\nUnduly platformed in the Western mainstream media once again, Zelensky used a conversation with American journalist Simon Shuster to hold forth on his unyielding will to fight to the very last Ukrainian, or, really, the last one who isn\u2019t rich and connected. Because, in Zelensky\u2019s cozy Kiev office \u2013 nicely decorated with some of those Ukrainian unit insignia that look just like Nazi ones \u2013 Ukraine is not really losing the war. Just like Germany back then, I guess. And since Ukraine is not really losing the war in Zelensky-world, Zelensky seeks to persuade Trump that Russia can be compelled into a peace that does not correspond to the fact that, in the real world, Russia is winning the war. See? Easy! If only Donald would finally get it, too.
\nYet, hyper-focused as he is on getting back into the good graces \u2013 and purse \u2013 of Washington, Zelensky is missing the fact that ordinary Ukrainians have had enough. Or, of course, he simply could not care less. Yet a fact remains a fact: Ukrainians are not only unwilling to go to the front to die, be injured, or captured in a perfectly avoidable and absolutely hopeless proxy war on behalf of the West, they are also increasingly rebellious.
\nIndeed, they have long been reluctant enough to produce extremely high rates of going AWOL and desertion: Since February 2022, the total number of prosecutions for both \u2013 slightly different \u2013 ways of running from the military has reached about 300,000. Since the authorities do not even have the capacity to go after all cases, this is certain to be an undercount.<\/p>\n
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Zelensky claims Ukraine is \u2018not losing\u2019 to Russia<\/p>\n
Another sign of Ukrainians\u2019 refusal to die for the Zelensky regime, its obstinacy, and its insane foreign policy is, of course, \u201cbusification.\u201d\u00a0A fairly new \u2013 and already extremely popular \u2013 term to refer to the often viciously violent manhunts by forced-recruiting gangs, who frequently shove their struggling victims into minibuses, busification is a never-ending scandal in Ukraine. It has been going on for years now, is getting worse all the time, and is running into more and more widespread and determined resistance.
\nJust consider a few recent facts: As Ukrainian news site Strana.ua reports, a high Ukrainian official has just had to admit that the number of official complaints submitted against the forced-recruitment gangs from the so-called TTsK offices has doubled between 2024 and 20025. (TTsK is an abbreviation for, roughly, \u201cterritorial manpower re-supply centers.\u201d) Yet official complaints are only the tip of the iceberg. What is much more important is the rising resistance on the ground. Both the men targeted by the TTsK goons and all sorts of bystanders \u2013 family, friends, colleagues, complete strangers who happen to be present) are fighting back.
\nThis, too, is not unprecedented: Cases of open rebellion against forced mobilization have occurred for at least two years. Last fall, for instance, a TTsK office was attacked in a provincial town in Ukraine\u2019s usually hyper-nationalist extreme West. Apparently, even there, dying for Zelensky\u2019s war for NATO is not popular anymore. Three months ago, in the big port city of Odessa, a crowd attacked a TTsK vehicle to free its captives.
\nIt\u2019s not hard to understand the main reason people fight back against being dragged off into a hopeless and useless war. But there are other reasons as well: The manhunting gangs of TTsK have an awful and richly deserved reputation for excessive violence, as even Western infowar outlet Radio Svoboda has long had to admit: some of their victims have died, that is, been killed by TTsK personnel before ever getting to see the front or even basic training (which is hardly worth the label in Ukraine). TTsK manhunters also engage in petty yet brutal crime such as kidnapping for ransom and theft. It goes without saying that the whole mess is shot through, from top to bottom, with ruthless, bloodsucking corruption. This is Ukraine, after all.<\/p>\n
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\u2018Avalanche\u2019 of complaints against Ukrainian forced mobilization \u2013 ombudsman<\/p>\n
None of this abuse and the resistance it provokes has diminished. Instead, it is all getting more intense: Beatings, including so severe that they cause death, are continuing, for instance. Lawyers trying to assist the victims have their limbs broken. A state official trying to inspect a TTsK office was simply detained. You get the gist: The TTsK gangs are law unto themselves and can hardly be controlled anymore.
\nYet they can be resisted. As Strana.ua reports, the escalating struggles between the forced-mobilization goons and their victims are beginning to resemble a \u201cquiet war, but this time inside Ukraine.\u201d Ordinary Ukrainians, and again, very much including in the often hyper-nationalist West of the country with its regional metropole Lviv, are ramping up their defense against their own authorities\u2019 relentless death wish. Only over the last month, men in Dnepropetrovsk and Lviv pulled knives to fight back against the TTsK manhunters. Also in Lviv Region, other unwilling recruits have deployed at least one grenade and firearms to cover their escape. And so on.
\nZelensky may be delusional and, as that Atlantic piece admits, \u201cpetulant.\u201d He may also be unwilling to listen to even his own advisers, some of whom at least, we read, have finally understood that peace must be made soon or things will only get worse for Ukraine. But Ukrainians in general \u2013 despite the enormous manipulation of their media and the authoritarian suppression applied by the Zelensky regime are not only saying \u201cno.\u201d They are acting on it. And they are right to do so. They have been abused as cannon fodder by their \u201cfriends\u201d from hell in the West and their own regime. Ironically, what they really need is another one of their famous \u201cMaidans.\u201d But this time without Western interference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Vladimir Zelensky pretends he is not losing, his citizens are increasingly rising up against forced conscription Ukraine\u2019s self-declared above-election leader Vladimir Zelensky has found time to publicly share his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t