Ukraine on Wednesday lowered the military conscription age from 27 to 25 in an effort to replenish its depleted ranks after more than two years of war following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The new mobilization law came into force a day after Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed it. Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed it last year.
It was not immediately clear why Zelenskyy took so long to sign the measure into law. He didn’t make any public comment about it, and officials did not say how many new soldiers the country expected to gain or for which units.
Conscription has been a sensitive matter in Ukraine for many months amid a growing shortage of infantry on top of a severe ammunition shortfall that has handed Russia the battlefield initiative. Russia’s own problems with manpower and planning have so far prevented it from taking full advantage of its edge.
If you’re angry at Ukraine, you aren’t looking or thinking deeply enough. This is only happening because Russia is trying to conquer Ukraine with their own conscripted soldiers. All of this ends when Russia stops their invasion.
You want the deaths to stop? Tell Putin to fuck himself with a rusty cactus and withdraw.
Who’s angry at Ukraine?
Putin is, for some very bizarre reason of his own. That’s about it I think.
Remember when Wagner Group accidentally found out they had wide open roads all the way to Moscow from Ukraine? That’s what Ukraine is to Putin. Along with natural gas and some other economic factors. None of it inscrutable.
While Putin is undoubtedly an aggressor and the reason this entire thing is happening (and it would be amazing if someone finally stopped him), Zelensky does have power over the situation.
It’s just that he’s not gonna give anything up as well, so it ends up in a stalemate. One side tries to prove Russia’s a power to be reckoned with, the other - that you can’t just attack a country while everyone is okay with it (something that has been then dispoven in many, many cases, unfortunately, so it’s not as world-tilting as some might think)
Out of two evils, Ukraine is certainly the more righteous. But there’s a line after which you’re fine fighting with a madman who’ll be fine evaporating your entire population over something you might rather give up (and that’s not the existence of Ukraine, mind you) to save countless lives.
Zelensky has been offered to start peace talks by just about everyone in the world, not just Russian side itself, yet there he is, sending more and more men to war, men who don’t want to be there, who are not ready to sacrifice their lives in this conflict, who value themselves more than some plots of land. When you have to force people to die in order to prove your point, maybe it’s time to think again.
And of course, Putin does the same thing over a much stupider cause; this is by no means a pro-Putin or even pro-Russian argument. This is an argument for life, for the people who die in the trenches, while world leaders can’t decide who’s more right. Fuck it, stop the war, and do the talking.
P.S. Feel free to downvote if you like, but I’d be happy to see valid arguments, not just arrows down.
If you were the one who has “power over the situation”, please tell us: Which parts of your country would you be willing to hand over to Putin, when he comes asking for them?
Donbass, most likely.
That’s what Putin needs the most and at the same time the region with worst sentiment towards Ukraine, even among ethnic Ukrainians (not to mention ethnic Russians comprising ~40% of the population). There can be a lot of speculations about the true sentiment of the locals (to many of whom I talked and they mostly just don’t care or are pro-Russian, but barely ever actively pro-Ukraine), but this is the place that fought Ukraine off long before the massive Russian invasion.
Now, Donbass is a source of quite a few natural resources, which is one of the key reasons Ukraine even cares about it despite the popular local sentiment (besides territorial integrity, that is), but in order to return facilities under control, it’s not enough to stop the war and officially declare it being Ukraine, it also requires the state to keep fighting local forces who are still not happy about the perspective - something that current Ukraine is questionably capable of.
So, Donbass it is. Russia happy, Ukraine free of a lot of headache, people don’t die, yay.