Een einde aan de oorlog is nog niet in zicht, integendeel

[kelt]

Dit is ondertussen al dag 10 dat de Russen in de omgeving van Avdiivka in het offensief zijn....

Zelfs pro-UKR Blogger Denis Davydov vraagt zich ondertussen af wat er scheelt aan het denkvermogen van Russische bevelvoerders.......het is een ongehoorde slachting van Russische soldaten die ,feitelijk kansloos,opgeofferd worden....

moord....het is gewoon moord.....De methode van de officieren van het Russische Leger lijkt te zijn om het Russische Leger te doen afmaken....


Overigens wordt gemeld dat de PMC "Redut" in Oekraine al zowat 7000 man telt.Maar gezien deze militie strikt onder directe Russische militaire controle valt is het maar de vraag of ze ooit de doelmatigheid van Wagner gaat bereiken,zelfs al zitten er ex-Wagners tussen....

Het is juist de Russische Legerleiding die,evident problematisch is....

[satiper]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door kelt

Dit is ondertussen al dag 10 dat de Russen in de omgeving van Avdiivka in het offensief zijn....

Zelfs pro-UKR Blogger Denis Davydov vraagt zich ondertussen af wat er scheelt aan het denkvermogen van Russische bevelvoerders.......het is een ongehoorde slachting van Russische soldaten die ,feitelijk kansloos,opgeofferd worden....

moord....het is gewoon moord.....De methode van de officieren van het Russische Leger lijkt te zijn om het Russische Leger te doen afmaken....


Overigens wordt gemeld dat de PMC "Redut" in Oekraine al zowat 7000 man telt.Maar gezien deze militie strikt onder directe Russische militaire controle valt is het maar de vraag of ze ooit de doelmatigheid van Wagner gaat bereiken,zelfs al zitten er ex-Wagners tussen....

Het is juist de Russische Legerleiding die,evident problematisch is....

Wie weet, misschien een (mogelijks de enige in hoofde van de officieren?) manier om het bestuur te doen vallen?

[Universalia]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door kelt

Dit is ondertussen al dag 10 dat de Russen in de omgeving van Avdiivka in het offensief zijn....

Zelfs pro-UKR Blogger Denis Davydov vraagt zich ondertussen af wat er scheelt aan het denkvermogen van Russische bevelvoerders.......het is een ongehoorde slachting van Russische soldaten die ,feitelijk kansloos,opgeofferd worden....

moord....het is gewoon moord.....De methode van de officieren van het Russische Leger lijkt te zijn om het Russische Leger te doen afmaken....


Overigens wordt gemeld dat de PMC "Redut" in Oekraine al zowat 7000 man telt.Maar gezien deze militie strikt onder directe Russische militaire controle valt is het maar de vraag of ze ooit de doelmatigheid van Wagner gaat bereiken,zelfs al zitten er ex-Wagners tussen....

Het is juist de Russische Legerleiding die,evident problematisch is....

Het Russische leger???

Drugs richten zware schade aan binnen Russische leger

Verschieten doe ik daar nu niet echt van.

[Erw]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door kelt

Dit is ondertussen al dag 10 dat de Russen in de omgeving van Avdiivka in het offensief zijn....

Zelfs pro-UKR Blogger Denis Davydov vraagt zich ondertussen af wat er scheelt aan het denkvermogen van Russische bevelvoerders.......het is een ongehoorde slachting van Russische soldaten die ,feitelijk kansloos,opgeofferd worden....

moord....het is gewoon moord.....De methode van de officieren van het Russische Leger lijkt te zijn om het Russische Leger te doen afmaken....


Overigens wordt gemeld dat de PMC "Redut" in Oekraine al zowat 7000 man telt.Maar gezien deze militie strikt onder directe Russische militaire controle valt is het maar de vraag of ze ooit de doelmatigheid van Wagner gaat bereiken,zelfs al zitten er ex-Wagners tussen....

Het is juist de Russische Legerleiding die,evident problematisch is....

OE? OE?? OE???
De Russen in het Offensief?
Moh?
DA KAN NIE!
Ik geloof er niks van.
De soldaten van het OEK leger zijn daar natuurlijk gewoon teruggekeerd naar huis om mama en papa te helpen oogsten, en ze hebben met de Russen afgesproken dat die doen alsof ze offensieven, opdat Zelenskye dat niet in de mot zou krijgen.
De Russen lachen zich daar waarschijnlijk rot, als collega's zich in "afgeslacht" positie op de grond leggen voor hun fotograaf.

[Boduo]

Een einde v.d. oorlog is nog niet in zicht: natuurlijk niet.
Poetin wil een uitputtingsoorlog.

[Universalia]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Boduo

Een einde v.d. oorlog is nog niet in zicht: natuurlijk niet.
Poetin wil een uitputtingsoorlog.

Een uitputtingsoorlog die 'zijn' eigen land ook schade toebrengt...

Rusland nadert economische instorting door Poetin

[Erw]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Universalia

Een uitputtingsoorlog die 'zijn' eigen land ook schade toebrengt...

Rusland nadert economische instorting door Poetin

Wat moet ik me voorstellen bij "economische instorting"? Wat ontbreken ze om te blijven produceren? Bvb Duitsland had specifieke tekorten als rollagers, brandstof, wolfraam, die de oorlogsvoering belemmerden.

[kelt]

Laat ons bij de feiten blijven,en die zijn helaas al lang,heb ik gemerkt,niet te vinden in de kreten en de video-clips van "de pers"....

De Russische economie is zogezegd al meer dan een jaar de instorting aan het naderen....het pad is breed en lang blijkbaar......Net als het imminente verscheiden van de Russische President wegens een zogezegd acuut ziektebeeld.Medische definities schijnen in Rusland dan anders te zijn dan alhier?

Het zijn mooie voorbeelden van de vermolming van de journalistiek tot het bedenken van titels om "hoog" te verschijnen in de zoekfuncties van het internet...samen met de reclame...

[Boduo]

Morgen is het 20 maanden geleden dat Rusland de oorlog met Oekraine begon.
In die periode zijn er 150.000 Russen dood. 40.000 zijn zwaar gewond. Bijna 100.000 gewonden zijn hersteld & terug naar het front.
De doden & gewonden v.d. Wagner militie zijn hier NIET inbegrepen.
+ De oorlog zal tenminste nog 15 maanden duren.



Wat denken de moeders/vrouwen van die doden voor "het Groot Russisch Rijk
" ?

[Universalia]

Zo onderscheid je de echte Poetin van zijn dubbelgangers

Of het klopt, geen idee van.

Sommige mensen die ik sprak verschieten ervan dat die zijn hoofd nog steeds op zijn lijf staat van Poetin.

Ik had daar niet echt een geldige reactie voor in de maak op misschien 'hun probleem' na??

[kelt]

De slachtpartij bij Avdiivka (Donetsk Oblast) gaat vrolijk verder.....Ten Noorden van het stadje maakten de Russen,mits betaling van een zwaar tolgeld vorderingen....De spoorlijn vanuit Avdiivka is nu een soort frontlijn geworden en onbruikbaar geworden voor de UKR's....
In dat landschap met de infrastruktuur van de mijnindustrie in vredevoller tijden ligt ook,prominent,een gigantische hoop mijnafval....
Vanop die hoop kan je de ganse omgeving zien,maar gezien deze heuvel dood is,er geen strukturen op te maken zijn wegens nogal losse grond,en bovendien iedereen en zijn schoonmoeder in de buurt over artillerie beschikt om die top te bombarderen......ben je daar beter niet....

Niettemin zaten er nog wat UKR soldaten op die top,die zijn (weg)gebombardeerd geweest,(lokale Oekrainse officieren zullen waarschijnlijk binnenkort een en ander mogen verklaren aan de hogere echelons,want dit heeft vermoedelijk cargo 200 en cargo 300 gevalletjes opgeleverd en, was NIET nodig)

Russische soldaten zijn op die top geweest,hebben er een hoge paal met een Russische vlag en een eenheidsvlag gehesen en zijn,wijsleijk ,weer verdwenen....

Later heeft een Oekrainse zelfmoorddrone die vlaggenmast weer kapotgemaakt....

Ja...dit begint allemaal zo een soort cynisch-humoristisch aanzien te krijgen....


Het blijft zeer waarschijnlijk dat de Russische troepen "persoonlijk bevel" hebben vanuit Moskou om Avdiivka te veroveren...Gezien de directe approch vanuit Donetsk stad (geen 5 km) gewoon onmogelijk is ,dus via brede omsingelingspogingen...........cargo200 en cargo300 stapelen zich op als gevolg van die "ambities"....

[kelt]

In het ISW rapport 26 oktober staat dat de Russische wetgeving zowat klaar is dat toelaat om mensen die vrij recent genaturaliseerd zijn tot Rus (typisch inwoners uit de vroegere Soviet-Centraal-Aziatische Staten) bij een ruim te interpreteren aantal misdrijven hun Russische Nationaliteit weer af te nemen tenzij ze "vrijwilliger" worden in de Russische Strijdkrachten......

handig......want de "Storm-Z" eenheden hebben aanhoudend vers vlees nodig....



Overigens zien we wel degelijk een flexibele Russische aanpak...
Die "Storm-Z" eenheden waren vorig jaar bedacht als een gespecialiseerd soort stormtroopers,ruwweg georganiseerd als de Wagner-eenheden....Met een paar peletons "vlees" aangestuurd door een bevelssectie,een drone-sectie en een peleton professionals dat dan de laatste push doet.....

Door de omstandigheden echter is dat "elite" vervallen en zijn het grote hompen vlees die geslingerd worden tegen gelijk welke Oekrainse frontsectie die de lokale generaal maar wenst aan te wijzen......Soms zelfs succesvol


Maar lid worden van een Storm-Z eenheid is een beetje een rattenval.Je kunt er in maar niet meer terug dan als 200 of 300....

[kelt]

YT-er D.Davydov toont wat er gebeurd in de stellingen en loopgraven nu het kouder wordt...

Muizen,gigantische hoeveelheden muizen zoeken schuilplaatsen en eten .....te vinden bij de soldaten.....

Werk voor de "taktische katten",maar die kunnen dat voorzeker niet aan.....
De Oekrainse- en de Russische soldaten zitten met een gelijk probleem,het is een muizenjaar

[Erw]

Heb je de grote lijn van je Oekrainse propaganda al eens gevolgd?
Moet je doen!
Zie je de haha ervan in.
Oekrainse Grote Lente Offensief.
Russen die na grote verliezen van wapentuig en vanalles zonder wapentuig en vanalles zonder gingen komen zitten.
Grote Lente Offensief start in de zomer.
Na 3 maanden zomeren hebben ze 5 hooimijten veroverd.
Maar geen probleem de Russen gingen zonder vanalles komen te zitten en na 3 maanden moet dat komen te zitten effectief geworden zijn.
Ahnee, oe, de Russen zijn ergens zelf aan 't offensieven.
Switch.
We klappen nie meer over het Grote Lente Offensief.
We klappen over grote verliezen en trage vooruitgang die de Russen boeken.
En gigantische hoeveelheden muizen en andere muizenissen.
En de Russen die hun WW2 tanks uit musea zouden hebben gehaald, komen met nieuwe versies van huidig wapentuig af.
Tjonge!

[Erw]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Boduo

Morgen is het 20 maanden geleden dat Rusland de oorlog met Oekraine begon.
In die periode zijn er 150.000 Russen dood. 40.000 zijn zwaar gewond. Bijna 100.000 gewonden zijn hersteld & terug naar het front.
De doden & gewonden v.d. Wagner militie zijn hier NIET inbegrepen.
+ De oorlog zal tenminste nog 15 maanden duren.



Wat denken de moeders/vrouwen van die doden voor "het Groot Russisch Rijk
" ?

Wat te denken van die oekrainse mannen die pogen te vluchten naar 't buitenland om onderuit de "service" van het Oekrains regime te raken?
Wat te denken van die oekrainse mannen die hun gekregen westers wapentuig bij de eerste kartets voor de Russen achterlaten?
Veel animo is daar precies niet in die oekrainse gelederen.
Ze zouden beter hun propagandadivisie naar 't front sturen, die gaan daar wat korter op de bal kunnen spelen, en ook en vooral, zèlf spelen. Maar ze zijn een beetje als de Westblok legers, die gaan NATO oefenen op veilige afstand van de Russen. Allez, 't is te hopen, want als de Russen zeggen van die peizen dat ze daar safe zijn maar we gaan ze eens van dat gedacht af helpen, gaan we van hun goesting in 't echt eens een idee krijgen.

[Boduo]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door kelt

Dit is ondertussen al dag 10 dat de Russen in de omgeving van Avdiivka in het offensief zijn....

Zelfs pro-UKR Blogger Denis Davydov vraagt zich ondertussen af wat er scheelt aan het denkvermogen van Russische bevelvoerders.......het is een ongehoorde slachting van Russische soldaten die ,feitelijk kansloos,opgeofferd worden....

moord....het is gewoon moord.....De methode van de officieren van het Russische Leger lijkt te zijn om het Russische Leger te doen afmaken....


Overigens wordt gemeld dat de PMC "Redut" in Oekraine al zowat 7000 man telt.Maar gezien deze militie strikt onder directe Russische militaire controle valt is het maar de vraag of ze ooit de doelmatigheid van Wagner gaat bereiken,zelfs al zitten er ex-Wagners tussen....

Het is juist de Russische Legerleiding die,evident problematisch is....

De Russische generaals denken misschien dat door achtereenvolgende aanvalsgolven de Oeks zonder munitie vallen.
Denk aan Stalingrad.

[kelt]

Te vrezen valt dat de Russische generaals die zware verliezen gewoon incalculeren....

Ze WILLEN Avdiivka........
Er zijn rondom die saillant al 12 brigades geteld en er komen er nog af van elders......

Op luchtfotos is te zien hoe verschillende UKR loopgraven aan de perimeter nu leeg zijn,met ervoor en errond de uitgebrande wrakken van Russische voertuigen.........

De spoorlijn vanuit Avdiivka is onbruikbaar geworden en de ernaast liggende "dirt road"(niet overal goed verhard) is rond deze tijd van het jaar toch al amper bruikbaar...

Meer in het centrum van de enclave ligt een verharde weg,vanuit Avdiivka stad en de grote industriezone,die weg is nog operationeel......

Maar een complicatie voor de UKR's is dat aan het begin van die saillant een netwerk van rivieren en grote beken ligt......Als de Russen er in zouden slagen de bruggen op te blazen dan zitten de UKR's opgesloten in de saillant.....Potentieel is de situatie slechter dan indertijd in de strijd tegen Wagner in Bahmut omdat daar de UKRs al die tijd gewoon tegen hun eigen bevoorradingslijnen in achteruit geduwd werden.....

De Oekrainse legerleiding zal,vrees ik,deze week een zware beslissing moeten nemen......terugtrekken of in de regio zwaar in het tegenoffensief gaan....Want laat ons wel wezen,de Russen gaan nergens heen,kompleet bereid gelijk welke kost te dragen zo te zien,dat is perfect duidelijk......

Het lijkt wel een lopende band van vlees en voertuigen....

[Boduo]

Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door Universalia

Een uitputtingsoorlog die 'zijn' eigen land ook schade toebrengt...

Rusland nadert economische instorting door Poetin

Ik geloof NIET in de ekonomische instorting van Rusland.
Rusland is méér dan het Europees deel.
Siberië is enorm groot. Dat is iets wat wij meestal onderschatten.

[vanderzapig]

Ontnuchterend artikel in Time.

‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’

Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight
_________________


By Simon Shuster
October 30, 2023

Volodymyr Zelensky was running late.

The invitation to his speech at the National Archives in Washington had gone out to several hundred guests, including congressional leaders and top officials from the Biden Administration. Billed as the main event of his visit in late September, it would give him a chance to inspire U.S. support against Russia with the kind of oratory the world has come to expect from Ukraine’s wartime President. It did not go as planned.

That afternoon, Zelensky’s meetings at the White House and the Pentagon delayed him by more than an hour, and when he finally arrived to begin his speech at 6:41 p.m., he looked distant and agitated. He relied on his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, to carry his message of resilience on the stage beside him, while his own delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with. At one point, while handing out medals after the speech, he urged the organizer to hurry things along.

The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win. “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip. Instilling that belief in his allies, he said, “takes all your power, your energy. You understand? It takes so much of everything.”

It is only getting harder. Twenty months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support. “The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” he says. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”

Public support for aid to Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S., and Zelensky’s visit did nothing to revive it. Some 41% of Americans want Congress to provide more weapons to Kyiv, down from 65% in June, when Ukraine began a major counteroffensive, according to a Reuters survey taken shortly after Zelensky’s departure. That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner. With the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.

After his visit to Washington, TIME followed the President and his team back to Kyiv, hoping to understand how they would react to the signals they had received, especially the insistent calls for Zelensky to fight corruption inside his own government, and the fading enthusiasm for a war with no end in sight. On my first day in Kyiv, I asked one member of his circle how the President was feeling. The response came without a second’s hesitation: “Angry.”

The usual sparkle of his optimism, his sense of humor, his tendency to liven up a meeting in the war room with a bit of banter or a bawdy joke, none of that has survived into the second year of all-out war. “Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out,” says one longtime member of his team. Another tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.

But his convictions haven’t changed. Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, he does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message. As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians. Judging by recent surveys, most Ukrainians would reject such a move, especially if it entailed the loss of any occupied territory.

Zelensky remains dead set against even a temporary truce. “For us it would mean leaving this wound open for future generations,” the President tells me. “Maybe it will calm some people down inside our country, and outside, at least those who want to wrap things up at any price. But for me, that’s a problem, because we are left with this explosive force. We only delay its detonation.”

For now, he is intent on winning the war on Ukrainian terms, and he is shifting tactics to achieve that. Aware that the flow of Western arms could dry up over time, the Ukrainians have ramped up production of drones and missiles, which they have used to attack Russian supply routes, command centers, and ammunition depots far behind enemy lines. The Russians have responded with more bombing raids against civilians, more missile strikes against the infrastructure that Ukraine will need to heat homes and keep the lights on through the winter.

Zelensky describes it as a war of wills, and he fears that if the Russians are not stopped in Ukraine, the fighting will spread beyond its borders. “I’ve long lived with this fear,” he says. “A third world war could start in Ukraine, continue in Israel, and move on from there to Asia, and then explode somewhere else.” That was his message in Washington: Help Ukraine stop the war before it spreads, and before it’s too late. He worries his audience has stopped paying attention.

At the end of last year, during his previous visit to Washington, Zelensky received a hero’s welcome. The White House sent a U.S. Air Force jet to pick him up in eastern Poland a few days before Christmas and, with an escort from a NATO spy plane and an F-15 Eagle fighter, deliver him to Joint Base Andrews outside the U.S. capital. That evening, Zelensky appeared before a joint session of Congress to declare that Ukraine had defeated Russia “in the battle for minds of the world.”

Watching his speech from the balcony, I counted 13 standing ovations before I stopped keeping track. One Senator told me he could not remember a time in his three decades on Capitol Hill when a foreign leader received such an admiring reception. A few right-wing Republicans refused to stand or applaud for Zelensky, but the votes to support him were bipartisan and overwhelming throughout last year.

This time around, the atmosphere had changed. Assistance to Ukraine had become a sticking point in the debate over the federal budget. One of Zelensky’s foreign policy advisers urged him to call off the trip in September, warning that the atmosphere was too fraught. Congressional leaders declined to let Zelensky deliver a public address on Capitol Hill. His aides tried to arrange an in-person appearance for him on Fox News and an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Neither one came through.

Instead, on the morning of Sept. 21, Zelensky met in private with then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before making his way to the Old Senate Chamber, where lawmakers grilled him behind closed doors. Most of Zelensky’s usual critics stayed silent in the session; Senator Ted Cruz strolled in more than 20 minutes late. The Democrats, for their part, wanted to understand where the war was headed, and how badly Ukraine needed U.S. support. “They asked me straight up: If we don’t give you the aid, what happens?” Zelensky recalls. “What happens is we will lose.”

Zelensky’s performance left a deep impression on some of the lawmakers present. Angus King, an independent Senator from Maine, recalled the Ukrainian leader telling his audience, “You’re giving money. We’re giving our lives.” But it was not enough. Ten days later, Congress passed a bill to temporarily avert a government shutdown. It included no assistance for Ukraine.

By the time Zelensky returned to Kyiv, the cold of early fall had taken hold, and his aides rushed to prepare for the second winter of the invasion. Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have damaged power stations and parts of the electricity grid, leaving it potentially unable to meet spikes in demand when the temperature drops. Three of the senior officials in charge of dealing with this problem told me blackouts would likely be more severe this winter, and the public reaction in Ukraine would not be as forgiving. “Last year people blamed the Russians,” one of them says. “This time they’ll blame us for not doing enough to prepare.”

The cold will also make military advances more difficult, locking down the front lines at least until the spring. But Zelensky has refused to accept that. “Freezing the war, to me, means losing it,” he says. Before the winter sets in, his aides warned me to expect major changes in their military strategy and a major shake-up in the President’s team. At least one minister would need to be fired, along with a senior general in charge of the counteroffensive, they said, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s slow progress at the front. “We’re not moving forward,” says one of Zelensky’s close aides. Some front-line commanders, he continues, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” he says. “But we can’t win a war that way.”

When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

The picture looked different at the outset of the invasion. One branch of the military, known as the Territorial Defense Forces, reported accepting 100,000 new recruits in the first 10 days of all-out war. The mass mobilization was fueled in part by the optimistic predictions of some senior officials that the war would be won in months if not weeks. “Many people thought they could sign up for a quick tour and take part in a heroic victory,” says the second member of the President’s team.

Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.

The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”

In recent months, the issue of corruption has strained Zelensky’s relationship with many of his allies. Ahead of his visit to Washington, the White House prepared a list of anti-corruption reforms for the Ukrainians to undertake. One of the aides who traveled with Zelensky to the U.S. told me these proposals targeted the very top of the state hierarchy. “These were not suggestions,” says another presidential adviser. “These were conditions.”

To address the American concerns, Zelensky took some dramatic steps. In early September, he fired his Minister of Defense, Oleksiy Reznikov, a member of his inner circle who had come under scrutiny over corruption in his ministry. Two presidential advisers told me he had not been personally involved in graft. “But he failed to keep order within his ministry,” one says, pointing to the inflated prices the ministry paid for supplies, such as winter coats for soldiers and eggs to keep them fed.

As news of these scandals spread, the President gave strict orders for his staff to avoid the slightest perception of self-enrichment. “Don’t buy anything. Don’t take any vacations. Just sit at your desk, be quiet, and work,” one staffer says in characterizing these directives. Some midlevel officials in the administration complained to me of bureaucratic paralysis and low morale as the scrutiny of their work intensified.

The typical salary in the President’s office, they said, comes to about $1,000 per month, or around $1,500 for more senior officials, far less than they could make in the private sector. “We sleep in rooms that are 2 by 3 meters,” about the size of a prison cell, says Andriy Yermak, the presidential chief of staff, referring to the bunker that Zelensky and a few of his confidants have called home since the start of the invasion. “We’re not out here living the high life,” he tells me in his office. “All day, every day, we are busy fighting this war.”

Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

Even the firing of the Defense Minister did not make officials “feel any fear,” he adds, because the purge took too long to materialize. The President was warned in February that corruption had grown rife inside the ministry, but he dithered for more than six months, giving his allies multiple chances to deal with the problems quietly or explain them away. By the time he acted ahead of his U.S. visit, “it was too late,” says another senior presidential adviser. Ukraine’s Western allies were already aware of the scandal by then. Soldiers at the front had begun making off-color jokes about “Reznikov’s eggs,” a new metaphor for corruption. “The reputational damage was done,” says the adviser.

When I asked Zelensky about the problem, he acknowledged its gravity and the threat it poses to Ukraine’s morale and its relationships with foreign partners. Fighting corruption, he assured me, is among his top priorities. He also suggested that some foreign allies have an incentive to exaggerate the problem, because it gives them an excuse to cut off financial support. “It’s not right,” he says, “for them to cover up their failure to help Ukraine by tossing out these accusations.”

But some of the accusations have been hard to deny. In August, a Ukrainian news outlet known for investigating graft, Bihus.info, published a damning report about Zelensky’s top adviser on economic and energy policy, Rostyslav Shurma. The report revealed that Shurma, a former executive in the energy industry, has a brother who co-owns two solar-energy companies with power plants in southern Ukraine. Even after the Russians occupied that part of the country, cutting it off from the Ukrainian power grid, the companies continued to receive state payments for producing electricity.

The anticorruption police, an independent agency known in Ukraine as NABU, responded to the publication by opening an embezzlement probe into Shurma and his brother. But Zelensky did not suspend his adviser. Instead, in late September, Shurma joined the President’s delegation to Washington, where I saw him glad-handing senior lawmakers and officials from the Biden Administration.

Soon after he returned to Kyiv, I visited Shurma in his office on the second floor of the presidential headquarters. The atmosphere inside the compound had changed in the 11 months since my last visit. Sandbags had been removed from many windows as new air-defense systems had arrived in Kyiv, including U.S. Patriot missiles, which reduced the risk of a rocket attack on Zelensky’s office. The hallways remained dark, but soldiers no longer patrolled them with assault rifles, and their sleeping mats and other gear had been cleared away. Some of the President’s aides, including Shurma, had gone back to wearing civilian clothes instead of military garb.

When we sat down inside his office, Shurma told me the allegations against him were part of a political attack paid for by one of Zelensky’s domestic enemies. “A piece of sh-t was thrown,” he says, brushing the front of his starched white shirt. “And now we have to explain that we are clean.” It did not seem to trouble him that his brother is a major player in the industry that Shurma oversees. On the contrary, he spent nearly half an hour trying to convince me of the gold rush that renewable energy would see after the war.

Perhaps, I suggested, amid all the concerns about corruption in Ukraine, it would have been wiser for Shurma to step aside while under investigation for embezzlement, or at least sit out Zelensky’s trip to Washington. He responded with a shrug. “If we do that, tomorrow everybody on the team would be targeted,” he says. “Politics is back, and that’s the problem.”

A few minutes later, Shurma’s phone lit up with an urgent message that forced him to cut our interview short. The President had called his senior aides into a meeting in his office. It was normal on Monday mornings for their team to hold a strategy session to plan out the week. But this one would be different. Over the weekend, Palestinian terrorists had massacred many hundreds of civilians in southern Israel, prompting the Israeli government to impose a blockade of the Gaza Strip and declare war against Hamas. Huddled around a conference table, Zelensky and his aides tried to understand what the tragedy would mean for them. “My mind is racing,” one of them told me when he emerged from the meeting that afternoon. “Things are about to start moving very fast.”

From the earliest days of the Russian invasion, Zelensky’s top priority and perhaps his main contribution to the nation’s defense had been to keep attention on Ukraine and to rally the democratic world to its cause. Both tasks would become a lot harder with the outbreak of war in Israel. The focus of Ukraine’s allies in the U.S. and Europe, and of the global media, quickly shifted to the Gaza Strip.

“It’s logical,” Zelensky tells me. “Of course we lose out from the events in the Middle East. People are dying, and the world’s help is needed there to save lives, to save humanity.” Zelensky wanted to help. After the crisis meeting with aides, he asked the Israeli government for permission to visit their country in a show of solidarity. The answer appeared the following week in Israeli media reports: “The time is not right.”

A few days later, President Biden tried to break through the impasse Zelensky had seen on Capitol Hill. Instead of asking Congress to vote on another stand-alone package of Ukraine aid, Biden bundled it with other priorities, including support for Israel and U.S.-Mexico border security. The package would cost $105 billion, with $61 billion of it for Ukraine. “It’s a smart investment,” Biden said, “that’s going to pay dividends for American security for generations.”

But it was also an acknowledgment that, on its own, Ukraine aid no longer stands much of a chance in Washington. When I asked Zelensky about this, he admitted that Biden’s hands appear to be tied by GOP opposition. The White House, he said, remains committed to helping Ukraine. But arguments about shared values no longer have much sway over American politicians or the people who elect them. “Politics is like that,” he tells me with a tired smile. “They weigh their own interests.”

At the start of the Russian invasion, Zelensky’s mission was to maintain the sympathy of humankind. Now his task is more complicated. In his foreign trips and presidential phone calls, he needs to convince world leaders that helping Ukraine is in their own national interests, that it will, as Biden put it, “pay dividends.” Achieving that gets harder as global crises multiply.

But faced with the alternative of freezing the war or losing it, Zelensky sees no option but to press on through the winter and beyond. “I don’t think Ukraine can allow itself to get tired of war,” he says. “Even if someone gets tired on the inside, a lot of us don’t admit it.” The President least of all.

[Erw]

De oorlog gaat voorbij zijn als de beoogde som gespendeerd is, en hun gewenste prijsstijgingen/inflatie bereikt.
Dat tijdsstip is dan bekend als we kunnen achterhalen wat die beogingen zijn.
Ik denk dat die gerelateerd zijn aan de som spaargeld die het sparende deel van de bevolking heeft. Want om prijsstijgingen onder controle te houden (ze willen hun dollar ook niet buitengebonjourd zien) moet je bestaand geld in de gewenste mate uit eigendom van spaarders weg kunnen nemen.