Who is resisting Ukraine’s conscription – and who supports it? | DW News Desk

Who is resisting Ukraine’s conscription – and who supports it? | DW News Desk

Ukraine needs soldiers but it’s struggling to find them conscription rules are in force but getting young men to go fight is proving hard but those on the front line say there’s no other way first of all we need more people of course I realize that war is terrible no normal person without mental disorders wants to fight but lately you are no longer thinking about the fact that you don’t have am you don’t have drones you don’t have something else something else something else you think about the fact that there are some positions that there’s no one to replace I don’t know how to motivate the youth I entered the Army by myself I decided to go by myself acquaintances tried to talk me out of it but I went on my own how to motivate them I say if you don’t want the Russians to come to you then you go and drive them away because at this pace with such losses Mor and physical condition everyone is tired everyone’s exhausted I have my illnesses my boys have other illnesses and if there’s no fresh recruitment then there’s no fight it will not end and we will lose the war is conscription therefore existential for Ukraine and is that why Ukraine is forcing its young men to fight that’s what we’re discussing here today on news desk I’m B P welcome and I’m Michelle Stockman and I will be paying special attention to your comments your questions that that are in the chat so please put them in there and thanks to all of you who have already commented I just want to bring out a couple of those already first of all uh we’ve got crypto Rose saying uh personally conscription is generally wrong but people who are acting like their country wouldn’t do the same thing if they were invaded are just dumb and then there’s another one I found in our community chat before the show from n shreni 1971 saying send all politicians journalists and their relatives to the warfront you will see the war will end Within a few days world needs peace and progress well brush I have definitely thought about that as a journalist you know we’ve got skin in the game but not necessarily really skin in the game and journalists and politicians are decision makers in this but to really get the war to stop you need both sides but I’m not really sure if journalists are decision makers I mean I’d like to hear what Arman has to say who’s been to the Frontline maybe decision influencers maybe yeah not decision makers I mean I don’t know what you think about that aan well that is a good question because a lot of journalists AR are actually going into the trenches and they are right I think the comment is probably mostly about the media in general just kind of like um you know since the beginning of the Ukraine war Western media has been uh sympathetic to the need for military um equipment and soldiers and I think that common is probably talking to this idea that like we can sit here and talk about okay is conscription good for the military is a bad for Ukraine in the long term but um if you you personally were served a draft order by a police officer what would you be thinking would you say okay yeah fine I’m going to go to the trenches and maybe die in the next six months you know it’d be like for some people worse than finding out they had cancer so I think there’s a lot of emotions in this situation I think it’s true that a lot of journalists are far away from where the action is happening and can judge people uh for making their own decisions but um it’s a lot more serious when that decision is your decision haven’t some journalists I mean those who were working as journalists in Ukraine being forced to fight on the front line yeah that’s another issue as ordinary citizens right exactly yeah I mean if you’re not because they were journalists but because they were of a certain age because they’re males in Ukraine and a certain age and then they can fight and a lot of volunteer a lot of them volunteered in the beginning of the war some journalists decided I want to fight I can’t sit here and hold a camera I want to hold a gun so well let’s not forget Terry though Terry also is involved in the chat and uh tell us what you’re going to be doing yeah I’m quite glad that the chat has been quite Lively already we started just a few minutes ago and people have been talking already and um we also have a poll question today um for everyone um the poll question is is conscription fair when a country is at War there are three options um the first only if everyone is treated fairly or no one should be forced to fight or there’s no other way um so we will discuss the results later uh in our in our discussion and so don’t forget to vote and you can find the poll on top top of your life chat so be be sure to vote we are curious to hear what you all think we are already getting a taste of uh what youall are thinking at the moment so keep those comments uh uh coming in and those observations as well just to go back to Aman who was who’s a special correspondent whom you all have seen on uh on DW news and if you’re a subscriber of the channel you have seen him on uh uh DW news YouTube page Arman just returned uh from Ukraine I forget exactly you told me where you were you were in definitely there was another place I’m forgetting where you were and if you can tell us where that was and what exactly uh are the laws to do with conscription that are currently in effect in Ukraine right now yeah um I was in Kev and also in Western Ukraine in shepetivka It’s a Small Town 40,000 people before the war anyway and I actually filmed with a group of young people between the ages of 12 and 17 I think the oldest one was 17 uh who had like an after school club where they did military drills and training for military so looking at the future of Ukraine’s military young kids who uh actually want to be soldiers when they grow up and are training to be professional soldiers um what kind of training yeah they um well they’re kind of led by a military commander or a junior lieutenant in the air defense and she um has some experience and so she taught them like how to dismantle and reassemble Kalashnikov um they do like little practice drills where they’re you know if you’re you’re in a firing line you don’t want your comrade to be in front of you that kind of thing so basic training for the military but these are but these are students up to the age of 17 right and in Ukraine so basically kids those below 18 don’t need to fight or is it above 25 my is confused right so the conscription law is is confusing also for ukrainians it’s confusing there’s a lot of bureaucracy like in any country when you’re dealing with something on this scale so the law is right now every man between the ages of 18 and 60 is required to register for the draft so as an American we don’t have a draft but I have to register for the draft and um that’s how it works in a lot of countries so that’s a little bit separate from being conscripted into the military they everybody between 18 and 60 has to register now between 25 and 60 you could actually be mobilized so once you registered then the military can say we need more men we’re going to take a thousand now we’re going to take the fittest thousand so they go through their documents and they see okay this this person in chapaa or Kiev um they’re not going to be recruited into the military um so they have to register a lot of men haven’t done that because um it’s very hard to enforce and um what you’ve seen is that zalinski passed uh just in April and then it came into effect in May uh a new conscription law which was um very unpopular for a lot of people in Ukraine but for other people they said it was necessary they need a lot more men so they passed this new conscription law um that made a couple of changes the first one is uh it dropped the conscription a age so the mobilization age from 27 to 25 so younger men um could be drafted into the military uh it changed the rules so that any Ukrainian men living abroad and there’s millions of them so Ukrainian passport holders some of them have been living abroad since they were kids some of them the past 10 years they actually have to register for the draft now so if they’re over 18 they have to go to their consulate and say okay um here’s my information you can’t get a new passport uh or renew your documents if you haven’t registered for the draft if you’re living abroad that’s affected probably millions of Ukrainian men um and another thing that zalinsky did was made it a lot easier to um stop men on the street and check their documents so now you have to carry your documents with you uh to show okay I’m over 18 and I’ve registered for the draft and if you don’t do that then you’re not in compliance and you could have like pay a fee or get your driver’s license taken away and things like this and the thing is that you can see you can see the change in Ukraine um for most of the war it wasn’t really spoken about it was kind of like um some people did register some people didn’t but nobody really knew who didn’t and who did and now you can see groups of police officers on the street just wandering around with like a clipboard and stopping people um you know some of our journalists who uh have already registered and so they’re in full compliance but they’ve been stopped for the first time in two years of war on the street by officers who want to check their papers he’s a journalist who work with when you back in Ukraine the these journalists you work with when you’re back in Ukraine is that right I mean what’s that these are journalists you work with when you’re back in ukra exactly Ukrainian journalist can you just explain to us you said uh men between the ages of 18 to 60 have to register but the fighting age is only above 25 25 and above so why register if you under 25 um I think that’s in place in all countries uh that have had some kind of draft in the past like in the US you have to register once you’re 18 because you become an adult and so now you’re on the books basically but I think practically it’s because now they can lower the um conscription age without having to uh get everybody to to register already so they want to make sure that these people are on file plus who knows how long the war is going to go on um if it continues for another five years or so then these people are going to be eligible to to fight if the draft age is is lowered even more so if you’re a Ukrainian man and you’re over 18 you should be informing the Ukrainian military where you are yeah and that what your status is in terms of being able to fight yeah you have to go to your local office say okay I’m here and then you do a medical exam too because don’t forget there’s deferments so it’s um it’s not like everybody who signs up for the draft um is going to be taken and um sent to the front lines if you have a medical problem um if you’re student you don’t have to fight um if you are have a job that is considered um necessary to support the country so if you work in the defense industry if you’re a civil servant if you’re a judge if you’re a police officer then you can get a deferment and you don’t have to fight in the milit so sorry Matthew I know Matthew though is before you Matthew said you know we’re talking about uh men here but uh Matthew says why is Ukraine’s government only focusing on drafting men there are millions of women who could be conscripted yeah um the women yeah that’s a good question right now it does not affect the women what you have seen is that a lot of women have volunteered either they’ve signed up to join the military um Ukraine’s military is very diverse you don’t see that many women in the trenches um loading the Cannons and Stu like that but you do see a lot of women um in the military um either in air defense like this Lieutenant that I met or you see a lot of women in the medical services and you see a lot of women volunteering um so there’s besides the military you have hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who are volunteering so they’re going um with their own funds their own tools and everything to go help the soldiers usually medical or delivering supplies doing Logistics work and stuff like that and that’s where you see like a lot of women so going back to what you were just saying earlier that they are enforcing for the first time since The War Began this requirement to to register and enlist uh at enlistment centers to at least provide their data so that the government can decide whether they want to mobilize you or not they’re enforcing that quite a lot where has that left the mood in Ukraine I mean are people okay with that are people still as patriotic as ever and doesn’t really matter to them or what is the mood well first of all I know that a lot of ukrainians get upset when they see Western media portraying Ukraine as like a divided Society because because of the mobilization the conscription it’s not divided soci side if you go there you see still a lot of unity um that uh the Russian invasion is a serious uh it’s a horrible thing for most ukrainians even in Kev where the coffee shops are open it feels like normal life but that’s just because people have gotten used to the bombs exploding in the middle of the night um and the air raid sirens constantly and uh their friends and family dying on the front lines so it’s not back to normal and the country is very much in favor of um their their military uh they’re divided over how that should be done um how long they should fight what they their demand should be how long it should take before they negotiate with Russia things like that but there is a lot of unity so the second part of my answer is that the context is really important here because there was a lot of Hope in let’s say uh summer last year before Ukraine’s second counter offensive against Russia the first counter offensive if you remember pushed a lot of the mil the Russians out of uh the Kev region out of the har region um even in the south took back hon and so you saw a lot of momentum on the Ukrainian side they had a second counter offensive that lasted until about November and it failed they made no gains um and a lot of people were depressed the winter came Russia started bombing infrastructure again lights went out and things like that and so there’s a there’s a sense there that the front line is fixed um Russia has a little bit of momentum right now but generally the front line is fixed and so that raises a lot of questions um thousands of of people are still dying weekly thousands of uh soldiers are dying on the front line um the question of whether or not they G you who have been living the past two years as an engineer or whatever supporting Ukraine’s military are you going to go to the front line and die um in like a World War I style fixed front line if there’s no Prospect in the next five years of gting any territory back so that has changed the mood and a lot of people are talking openly which was very taboo subject at the beginning of the war a lot of people are talking openly now about how to avoid ending up on the front line whether or not that means leaving the country either by illegal means or legal means and then not coming back or if that means actually signing up for the military and getting a job where you don’t have to go to the front line but you’re maybe um in charge of some P person personnel and you know doing an office job in the military and you did speak to somebody right who who does live abroad and has been able to avoid a conscription right can you tell us more about that yeah uh that’s right it’s somebody that I’ve been talking to since the beginning of the war because he had a particular case which sounds a little bit like maybe he was the only guy that this happened to but I found hundreds of guys that were his his predicament so there men who live abroad like me I live in Germany but I’m a US passport holder uh my whole life is here in Germany their whole life was somewhere else in the world they happened to be in Ukraine when the war broke out and then martial law went into effect and any man over 18 couldn’t leave Ukraine anymore so they were kind of stuck in a country that seems like their home home but isn’t really their home is where their life is their job their family maybe okay interesting um he was able uh to get back out of Ukraine um through bureaucratic measures I mean it was possible actually at that point to get out of Ukraine as a resident abroad this is last year or yeah that was in 2022 so first year of the full scale War but now with the new mobilization law um even if you’re a resident abroad you have to you’re supposed to come back Ukraine to fight basically that’s what Ukraine is asking for so I talked to him again to ask how the mobilization law affects him and we can listen to what he said I heard about this new changes uh as I understand they requested even for those people who leave abroad to be registered in some special system uh and funny part they they say like if you leave abroad and you don’t have any like say IDs which allow you to do some remote stuff you have to visit Ukraine you know and register with this special uh T they call it I’m not sure how to translate in English so it’s places where actually zru is in place so frankly I’m not going to do that uh because I don’t understand if I will uh travel to Ukraine I will stuck once again and definitely probably this time till the end of the war and I will have only probably two choices uh one choice is to be to be put in the Army and to to be on front line another choice is I’m not sure maybe to be jailed because of not not my my willing to to do so so yeah um anyway I’m still support still support Ukraine uh actually funny part of overall this I’m I’m paying taxes in us so as you remember uh us they provided this uh huge amount of money to support Ukraine like financially and the military stuff and actually part of of this money is my money as well for sure so yeah I’m playing that for my laptop because I did the interview with him uh yesterday um but yeah I get a sense of that divide internal divide because you said you know people in Ukraine they really are united and yet there is that internal divide he says he supports Ukraine he pays taxes to the US which is sending Aid to Ukraine but yet not willing to put his life on the line not thinking worth it yeah yeah um it’s interesting that um a lot of men in his situation are not only um yeah so I talked to other men that he put me in contact with one of the guys actually was living in Poland for years had his whole family there wife and two very small kids and he went to Ukraine after the war broke out to fight because he used to be a soldier so he fought and then he he did like like 3 months or something and then he wanted to go back uh to Poland just for a little while to get his Affairs in order see his family um he also had a business that he was running so he wanted to go back to get his fairs in order but he couldn’t get out of the country so finally when he managed to get like the passport stamp and everything he got out of the country he’s like I’m not going back so his plan was originally to keep coming back to fight in Ukraine but because of the restrictions um it actually encouraged him to not come back to Ukraine so there is this kind of secondary effect where people who would support Ukraine in certain ways are are deciding against that because the incentives are um not in their favor speaking of the effect that this has for example with with this person whom you interviewed based on what he’s saying it effectively means as long as this war is on he can’t travel back to Ukraine or he’ll be trapped or he’ be stuck yeah and he has family there um it also means that he couldn’t get his passport renewed so if he if his Ukrainian passport fires before the war is over then you can’t get a new passport um and we saw maybe we could play that video we saw once this law was put into effect huge lines outside of Ukrainian embassies across the world because people living abroad were afraid that they weren’t going to get a passport and that was earlier this year oh yeah April that was in Warsaw I think yeah that was in Warsaw this is in the embassy in Warsaw if I’m not wrong uh and the moment that this law was announced people queuing up to try and renew their their passports and their documents but then uh yeah facing troubles as one can see and just putting morality and ethics aside whether or not you judge these people for not returning to Ukraine to fight just look from a sociological perspective there’s a lot of people making the argument that what is their incentive now to go back to Ukraine the government did this in order to get more recruits from abroad because there are millions of men eligible men living abroad so they want these men to fight on their front lines so they can defend Ukraine but what is their incentive to do that they their incentive is actually to stay in the other country because they know that they if they go back then they’re going to get stuck and what did the government what did the government have to say what is the government’s position on why they should come back and fight um the the foreign uh Minister Demitri kba actually was asked that by a journalist and we have a um a recording of that I think we have a sound B don’t we potentially it’s fair towards Ukrainian men who stayed in Ukraine and who work in the Ukrainian economy and who fight in the Ukrainian Army I think it’s fair towards it will be fair towards them if men from who men from abroad return to Ukraine and stand by them by each other in defending their country the country that gave them everything and just for the record that was Demitri koua speaking in keev on the 26th of April um earlier this year and this was just about the time that this new mobilization law that Arman was talking about came into effect that b basically suspended Consular services for men of fighting age basically between 18 to 60 years of age requiring them to register uh with the with the potential that they might get called to Ukraine based on that data correct that’s right yeah and I I put this question to Andy too because obviously the question that um people have brought up with him is the same one that Demitri kba was talking about is the sense of Duty so if you’re Ukrainian born in Ukraine you’re Ukrainian passport and the idea constitutional idea is that it’s your duty to protect your country when your country calls you up so I was curious what he thought about that and we can um I can show you what what he told me once again I live in us right I pay my US taxes which do huge amounts of money right per annual so and as you remember Ukraine got all the support from from from the yes financial support weapons ammo and so on so it’s it’s a simple question who pays for it answer is American taxpayers I one of them actually right so I believe that my support over this way is more efficient I would to be on front line I not well prepared uh private Soldier and and so yeah I would say and for sure I do remember I donated like uh to get a helmet of my friend for example because it was a lack of ammunition in the Ukraine so I send it from from the yes to Ukraine and this way yeah and moreover it’s it’s funny story regarding like people who are living abroad I I know Story one guy uh who’s who was like in still uh volunteer he was um he was getting trucks pickup trucks from Europe to Ukraine to to support Army he was like crossing a board all the time and last time he stuck in Ukraine because he wasn’t allowed to leave the country because he has citizen still so you know crazy it should be I I don’t understand that overall the situation is once again it’s hard uh but it’s something you have to decide what what what is your option right not some someone pushing you hey you should do that do that and so on and you have no choice at all I know it’s War but once again comparing let’s say with Russia I know it’s maybe strange comparation but they don’t have such restrictions to leave the country right so I know that people living in Russia they still allow it to travel abroad but sure they have like this hidden process of of of getting new recruits in in Army but anyway so and once again we building Ukraine is building like Democratic country or they want to have like the same like Russia or North Korea or I don’t know so I know it sounds like I’m against maybe Ukraine it’s not because definitely I support but uh government should not push so hard because if they have idea like okay we’re going to reach of our territory back like 9091 come on guys it’s it’s uh this is your goal you have it’s too much right so um and people I know people like uh they sometimes they going to disappoint with Ukraine because okay I was supporting you I was trying to my best I don’t want to fight but I’m still trying to help you and you like push me in such a way that story it’s sounds that like we are building not Democratic country about some some regime right even with with saying like Okay in the future it will be fine but no I’m I’m I’m I’m I’m against it he made some he made quite a few points over there talked about not being well prepared to fight and the fact that he’s doing his bit because he’s an American taxpayer and therefore some that money is going to Ukraine but it’s just I’d like to ask you because you you’ve known him for some time Aman he was talking about uh it is the government essentially he’s not prepared to listen to the government telling him to go fight it should be his own personal decision almost suggesting that it’s non-democratic for the government to suggest that but Ukraine is currently under martial law because of an extraordinary situation that the Ukrainian government didn’t choose to be in and if I’m not wrong the Ukrainian government itself didn’t really want to go down this conscription route for the longest time right well they it was put in place since the very beginning the um the closing the borders I think that’s the biggest issue to Andy is this um restriction on the borders because he’s been since 2012 he’s been going in and out of Ukraine so that’s his main issue and that’s um what he takes the government to task for um which was pretty unusual it does it was criticized even from the beginning of being a kind of Soviet ER um Relic so to speak he mentioned that Russia did not actually have that put in place at the beginning which is true I mean since then Russia has made it more difficult people who have already um been processed for the draft cannot leave the country but men um between the ages of 18 and 60 or whatever um they can leave the country as long as it haven’t been drafted yet things like that so it doesn’t it’s not necessarily uh it’s not all countries that have this law at least in that particular situation but that’s maybe an interesting question to put to the people watching on YouTube right now um do you how do you feel about that do you think a government um can recruit the necessary amount of soldiers to defend defend the country without uh forcing men to do it and I think that’s an interesting question I think there’s a lot of it’s not just a moral questions like I said earlier it’s like um the US has the biggest military in the world and we don’t have a draft so it is possible to get people to but you did have to register for a draft I didn’t know that about the United States didn’t know thaty old uh but uh well the chat does definitely okay so um definitely we’re hearing from people who agree with Andy um frola saying if men don’t want to return that is their right of the freedom of movement they should have the right to choose um however um looking at what he said he says what he has decided to contribute is more efficient being a US taxpayer is more efficient for him to support the war effort but with the way the war is going right now that’s a question uh we also had from let’s see u romiro c with Russia does Russia have the upper hand in the war and what kind of support does Ukraine need from the men of Ukraine to actually stay in the fight right now do they need people giving money from abroad or do they need men at the front line well one thing that we were reading earlier um was this study that said for every Soldier you need four or five people um basically working to prop up that Soldier so you that’s the conundrum here of course you need men who are willing to die for their country without that you don’t have a military but without um many more people behind that person and it’s also women um fighting on the front lines you need an economy to prop that up um there’s a lot of people making the point now that um if Ukraine wins just through sheer um endurance and Manpower um what’s the economy going to look like after is going to be a country willing to fight for if you throw your entire working population into the trenches to fight then what is a country look like after and don’t forget that Ukraine is struggling from a serious demographic problem that’s um unheard of in the rest of Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union a lot of people stopped making babies they left the country so you have this huge drop in population right in that sweet spot of military recruitment so men in their 20s are the low or men and women in their 20s are the lowest demographic in the country you have much higher population when you start getting into the 40s and 50s so that’s why the Ukrainian military is a very old military because not just because young guys don’t want to fight but because there just aren’t that many young guys in the country think the average age was somewhere in the 40s right like 40 43 or something like that just wanted to ask you uh if so you’ve registered at one of these enlistment centers and then you get called up you get drafted is it is it a given that you will go on the front line to fight or would you could you be in like a support role on the front line for example I don’t know as a drone operator not necessarily somebody who has to be in the trenches all the time doing trench warfare I mean is it a given that if you get drafted you’re going to the front line to sit in the trenches and fight or you could be doing something else well just a quick very interesting aside is that what we’ve seen in you war in Ukraine is that drone operators have become the Frontline Fighters so when we talk about the trenches in Ukraine some people would rather be in the trenches than be in a drone pilot because the Drone Pilots um go out into the field exposing themselves and they have to sit there to get a connection and that this these fpv drones these small little drones that you would get to like film a little soccer match or whatever they’re attaching bombs to them and this is the Manpower this is what they’re using to fight Russians and Russians are fighting back so drone Pilots are dying at a high the highest rate one of the highest rates among soldiers so a lot of young people have thought okay I can become a drone pilot and not have to like shoot in the trenches they turn out to be sadly wrong that that’s actually extremely dangerous it’s not like in the US where you’re a continent away and operating in ger like you’re out the front line you could if you have the massive sophisticated drones that the Americans have which they’ve sent to Ukraine but you need thousands of drones um to have actually have an effect or you being used like little bombs basically so the question is um can you get a job where you’re not necessarily going to die within the first week there are a lot of these jobs um but this is a a much broader question and I can’t speak to scientific spefically but what you hear people talking about in Ukraine is that to get a job where you are not facing danger in the military you have to be well connected well educated and and some ways wealthy okay I just like to expand this discussion a bit by bringing in a guest but before I I do that I’ll not give the name of the guest as yet but before we do that let’s just take a quick check on where we are with the chat with cherry who’s been monitoring this I believe from the little that I’ve been watching and you’ve been seeing a lot more of this than I have but there’s a lot of comments people are reacting quite a bit so what generally have the reactions been along the lines of um this discussion in the chat has been quite polarized but first of all I want to point out that someone gave you praise I mean and specifically um he said that the person said that you have answered many questions that um the person has always wondered about and you’re very knowledgeable and specific I’m seeing this this is David cerulo right David cero if that’s that’s that’s that’s the one I saw and uh all right so about the opinions um there are some people who Express a very strong sense of Duty as a citizen when it comes to conscription for example uh j s uh says that anyone fit for service who renounces duty to their country renounces their citizenship in turn um but there are also people who are not questioning conscription specifically but questioning um if conscription is worth it at this point um for example there’s a comment saying that the reason why they don’t fight is because Ukraine is losing the war if they were winning they would have no problem getting recruits also their friends are all dead so the the the opinion about conscription has been quite polarized in the chat okay can I just want to add to that Nas 139 says who is dying uh just poor people who didn’t have much money to flee the country so there is that sense of what you were just saying there’s a sense or feeling definitely that the privileged are able to avoid this fight you see that in every country it’s not just Ukraine for sure but there um there is a big gap between the rich and the poor and what you see it’s it’s in black and white you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that um the defer the deferments that you can get besides medical or being too old or too young to fight is um you’re a student uh of higher education um you are civil servant or you are a CEO of a company and so look at these jobs like uh a PhD student or a master student civil servant and CEO you have to be part of a certain class to get those deferment so there are certain if you’re a a farmer or a construction worker you don’t really have that many options open to you and you see that in every country so it’s not a criticism against the Ukrainian government necessarily but it is true that if you’re poor you have a higher chance of um fighting but on frontes but just on that deferment I mean I know that we have some visuals of of of a forger who was caught in the city of adessa and maybe we can just bring that up and the reason I’m talking about forgeries is so that’s the there the Ukrainian services from this is from the state Border guard this is uh they arresting a woman I think who was allegedly involved uh in a plan to counterfeit disability certificates and she was apparently charging clients get this $111,000 for her services for a disability certificate so it is only if you are rich will you be able to afford a certificate for one person that costs $111,000 which is way more than the national average salary I’d imagine right oh yeah well the uh annual annual salary is probably higher than that I think it’s around 20,000 Euros but that’s a life savings for some hand to mouth especially uh but it is true that these documents um for medical deferrals were huge economy especially at the beginning when people were didn’t know how the war was going to end up they didn’t know if Kev or Lviv were going to be safe and so they left the country um and you saw a lot of people doing that what you saw with this latest um uh conscription law that zilinsky just passed is that anybody who had a medical deferral that wasn’t in a certain class so if you um were in a wheelchair or something like that they have to undergo another medical exam to have that rechecked and they have to do that immediately so by mid July or something so they’re trying to crack down on people who’s who maybe had like a an injury like they sprained they broke their ankle or something at the beginning of the war and they had a temporary medical deferral but 2 years later their ankles healed and they could serve in the military let’s talk about the government’s options and and for this part of this conversation I’d like to finally introduce uh Our Guest who’s been waiting patiently Frank Leb uh a former UK Military Intelligence officer and a senior lecturer in strategic studies at Portsmouth University Frank of course is not new to DW news or to news desk if you all are subscribers of the DW news YouTube channel you’ve probably seen him talking to a whole host uh of news anchors here at DW Frank thanks so much for making the time and thank you for waiting patiently and joining in the discussion it’s great that you can join us I just wanted to ask you there there’s a number of things if you were discussing here but first up this new mobilization law that Ukraine has passed uh was this totally unavoidable did Ukraine absolutely have to do this is that where Ukraine is at this stage in the war it needs more bodies great to be with you bares uh it’s an honor as usual so the answer to the to the last question is absolutely and it follows the pattern historically of similar similar conflicts and the one that that I have in mind not just because I’m British but because the population’s similar and the urgency was similar it’s the first world war in the UK and for for Britain you had a population of 35 million or so were taking huge casualties they came a point about 18 months into the war where they’d run out of volunteers and that’s the same in Ukraine similarly too and this is something something I don’t think’s been touched on yet but I’d like to touch on it is casualties but uh yeah there came a point where they simply ran out of volunteers recently um I mean I think the latest poll would be in May I think indicated uh which plays into this strongly anti- previous interviewee that only 35% of those who haven’t volunteered so far would be willing to serve if they were uh let’s say either pressed or conscripted or forced to volunteer whatever you want to put it I go to Kev quite often and I was really struck by conversation of course it’s always good to talk to taxi drivers but I asked him why he hadn’t joined the army of course not the first person I asked but he said well first of all I’ve got the requisite amount of kids which is three so I don’t need to go but secondly he said you know the pay is quite good on the Zero line as they call it which is the front line right right you know up against the Russians doing whatever task you have it’s about $2,000 a month actually but he said don’t last very long I would expect to be out of there in three three days or so either well hopefully in a injured he said and uh and then I’ll be on $12 a month and it was said before about the US military I think this is really important yes the US military can recruit has 3 million uh service members 700,000 or so civilians but let’s say 2.1 2.2 million it’s worth remembering the conditions of service they have and that’s also the way the Russians have been recruiting they’ve been giving their troops I think the your average salary now is between ,700 $2200 a month for the Russian army uh for the for the volunteers now that that pour in 20 to 30,000 a month and then of course if you’re killed it’s a pretty pretty dismal uh conversation to have but but your family gets a significant Bounty same for Vagner and that’s how we calculate Vagner casualties so the inducements are there there are perverse inducements let’s say uh involved but if you’re a Ukrainian and you have a choice and you haven’t gone it’s uh it’s it’s a pretty dismal Prospect that’s before we get into the reason they have to do this which is casualties and I would estimate based on us uh the latest us figures uh which which were six months or so ago now which indicated about 7,000 killed so we’re looking probably into six figures for the ukrainians killed and another 200,000 are so injured so you see that of of an army of 8 800,000 to a million you’ve taking huge casualties those need to be replaced and of course then there’s a training burden so all of this plays into a situation that’s I wouldn’t say it’s desperate but it’s really difficult uh for the ukrainians and just as one final token before I finish this peration the original uh number and this I think has been mentioned already was 500,000 Z General Z new was chief of staff at the time right mention that number but then the next uh Command Staff analysis indicated that they they simply could won’t be getting that this year so they Revis it down I think that number is confidential but they won’t be getting half a million this year uh and even if they did they couldn’t train them lots more to be said but that that’s I hope that goes some way to answering the question Frank um we’ve got a question here from William Gary you were just talking about training so people who are conscripts um what kind of training will they receive Gary says you will last longer if you are trained better so what kind of training our people getting how much to some extent it depends on whether you volunteer for whom you volunteer which service the National Guard the uh the regular army or territorial defense brigades so as one indicator I saw an advert in KV last time was there about four weeks ago which I think was advertising for the 13th National uh guard Brigade uh which offered you a guaranteed 12 weeks or 60 days training so that was their inducement I suspect well I don’t suspect I think a lot of people don’t get that if you’re lucky you may get a three-month package in Poland UK France or one of the other NATO countries uh which essentially comprises I think I think about five or six weeks um of combat training it’s worth saying that NATO troops as William is probably aware get a minimum of 12 weeks basic plus you get on top of that your your uh your what we call in the UK phase two which is your specialist training so everyone gets basic infantry training and then you get your specialist training so they’re nowhere near as well trained as the most basically trained NATO troops wow just speaking of inducements you were talking about the financial inducements and comparing it to uh what say the Russians are are providing right now Ukraine has been getting a lot of money uh financial assistance particularly from the European Union from the Americans is that not sufficient to provide those required inducements on par with what the Russians are providing or even better yeah that bar thanks for that yeah that that that’s correct and as soon as they got the uh the package from from the US the an announcement was made I think it was late very late April that pay would be going up for everybody I think the basic pay now is about and somebody will correct me here about 700 and it goes up to 2,000 $2,200 this is so that’s about 100,000 Ria uh when you put all the allowances together but only if you’re on the front line if you’re not on the front line it’s considerably less than that and the problem arises really from my perspective as someone who’s deal dealt a lot with veterans and and and uh those who who who who are disabled is uh if you’re if you’re hospitalized that goes way down and you’re into to deriz repay then and not sure that’s changed but yeah they they they the the offer as we call it in the UK went significantly up I think for everybody in in early may but but again you know it doesn’t it’s not for everybody if you’re on the front lines it’s significantly greater if you’re not it’s uh it’s about the average slightly more than the average national salary but at least you’re going to get it now I I just want to bring up a point that um Aman was able to raise because Aman just he just returned from Ukraine and I mean you you spoke to Andy who’s in the United States who’s been able to avoid conscription because he’s a long-term resident of the United States I think one of the points that that Andy was making from Florida was it where was he from Florida uh the point he was making is about why the borders need to be closed because Andy in essence if he comes back to Ukraine he’ll not be able to leave because he’s a fighting age and he might be called up for a draft so the point that he was Raising in the interview that amyan did was why does Ukraine need to in essence close its borders imprisoning in effect its fighting age population when other countries are not doing that why does Ukraine need to do this I think it thinks that there will be Mass uh mass or rather large numbers of of of men young and old who will leave the country and they may be right I mean tens of thousands have been stopped on the border so far and I think there’s a growing and I mean we’ll get onto the military situation but think there’s a growing awareness that uh if you’re conscripted you’re unlikely to end up in one big piece you may not be killed and that the number of volunteers is willing volunteers I should say as opposed to pressed pressed men is uh is reducing I suspect that’s the policy that’s the policy behind it and they may have some that may have some validity is is there is there a good way to implement conscription that works in democratic nations the well there are several models uh there’s the there’s the draft where everybody gets um uh wa I mean it was mentioned before the US still technically has a draft and that’s in case of war and they’ve had that I think I I’ll be corrected here I think since since 40 no anyway we we don’t have a draft people are talking now about conscription the way to have done it whether it’s a it’s a conscription model or a draft draft ballot like in the US where you you draw a number and uh you’re called up if you get the right or the wrong number depending on your perspective is initially to have a national uh a n National register of those um liable for conscription and the ukrainians did not have that until earlier this year as far as I understand now they do have that which is why you see the the Press gangs as I recall them being of a naval background with their um with their um uh tablets uh going around cities inquiring as to to people’s status uh now that’s only been put into operation I think this this year surprising really because they’ve been at War since 2014 but look this has been a political uh bomb if you like for for the last uh nine or 10 years and they really only resolved it recently with the the most recent conscription regulations and the several laws that 4,000 or so new regulations that were brought into service only this year so they have got moving quickly but rather late so the model to have to to come back to the point the model to have followed would be to have a full list agree your exemptions make them politically acceptable and ensure that everybody knew their position within that so for example for the British conscription model during the first world war and and the second you knew when your your date was coming up or at least you’d have some idea right whereas that’s not the case now if I may jump on something is Frank brought up earlier too is the um context of what of the prospects that men face when they are drafted or conscripted into the military so one part of the new mobilization law the new um conscription law is uh was hotly debated are we going to have a demobilization because a lot of people wanted that to happen before the new conscription law took um effect because men want to know if I’m going to sign up for the military is this a one-way ticket or am I going to have a prospect of surviving and coming back to my family uh because I think you’d have to be pretty crazy to um go to the front lines if you thought it was certain death and I think no country could have a military if everybody thought they were all going to die at the end of the war so that was hotly debated um it actually didn’t make it into the conscription law which angered a lot of military people who were pushing for conscription uh because they want to know that the men who volunteered at the beginning of the war to fight um have some ECT that at a certain point they’re legally required to be given uh time back home and there’s also the question of rotation it’s not just demobilization but maybe the people at the front line could be pulled into the um the back end of things and then other soldiers who have the proper training could be moved up to the front line but right now Ukraine actually doesn’t have a plan for that it’s supposed to be coming uh in the next weeks or months but um so far it hasn’t made it through Parliament I just go ahead we’ve been having a lot of that today to say um no but what I what I do want to say is that has come through in the chat people questioning the Ukrainian government’s roll out of conscription from the start should they have actually started from a younger age not 27 but actually started at 18 so they would have those replacement soldiers that they do need now that’s a criticism that’s come through in the chat um but we had a more recent question I’m going to pose this to Frank from Andrew Uchi talking about the number of soldiers in the Ukrainian Army um he says and you you have to fact this for me too uh fact checked it for me Frank seninsky boasted earlier in the war that he had 800,000 men or was it 1 million what happened to them or are they losing more men than Russia can you comment on the need for soldiers on the ground yeah if I can just deal quickly with the age thing and it did come up before so I’m just glossing on it really uh is that they have a particular problem between seven well 17 going and 18 now and 23 24 so you see that the the the population um uh deficit if you like is goes like this for that for that age so that’s why they don’t have um the younger age and they probably won’t go on to that but eventually if the war goes on of course that population dip will move into the conscription zone of 20 2425 and that’ll be a real problem but back to the qu specific question yes no look the the numbers in Ukrainian service remain as I understand correctly I think a national a national Secret proba rightly so um the usual the usual figure is as as as was said about 800,000 of which I think around 300,000 on or near the zero line but any military needs huge uh logistical support and backup and organization and and that that that accounts for the numbers but of course if you take out of that the considerable casualties you are going to you’re going to face a continuing reduction of that number if you can’t recruit what you’re losing through through through being killed seriously injured captured there are many thousand of Ukrainian soldiers been captured and of course missing which amounts to probably well I regret to say it it’s most likely in an artillery war that if you’re missing you’re likely to be dead um and uh so so it’s those numbers they’re trying to to make up there’s one other factor I I Absolut I mean it was really remiss of me to miss that point uh quite rightly mentioned about um demobilization there’s also and that what was mentioned is rotations and a well organized Army in this kind of War um will have uh rule mons in and out of the front line and some well organized units in Ukraine have that so you’re in rest you’re in reserve or you’re on the front line and you rotate three on a three three to one basis now a lot of units don’t do that because they’re not particularly well LED and another issue is that there’s a feeling I think amongst a lot of people you hear this not only in the media but talking to people including Military Officers and other ranks that that in some units there’s a real deficit of leadership which plays into this question of whether or not units are well-managed well-led or indeed counter leaders accountable for the mistakes they make that’s rather controversial as you probably know in Ukraine too just just on a side point on that uh thing of mobilization and demobilization I I’m I mean there are people who’ve been serving on the Zero line the front line some since 2014 with few breaks in between and some since the war broke out and they haven’t been able to return home to see their families and then there are those who do not want to go to the front line and they do not want to get conscripted they do not want to answer the mobilization call is that is that causing problems in society because there are there are people back home in the cities in ke and K or wherever whose whose loved ones are serving on the front line and then they might know other people who have who know people of fighting age but they’re refusing to go is that is that disrupting friendships for example yeah as I said earlier this I would not describe Ukraine as a divided Society um they’ve held together um in terms like in a way that you might not have expected given the circumstances that they’re living through but of course there’s a tension in society um that it it’s it’s very perceptible it hasn’t turned into a full-on conflict and I don’t think it will but it’s very perceptible it’s like in in any War you have the home front and you have the uh front line so there’s always that tension there in the beginning of the war there was a sense that the men and women who signed up to go sacrifice their lives they were the national heroes and they enjoyed that role and they didn’t criticize anybody who stayed at home because everybody knows a country can’t send every single citizen to go fight so there was an understanding I think now that understanding has broken down a little bit given the um lack of Manpower at the front the lack of soldiers and one thing that I heard in December when I sat a bunch of soldiers down I made a little studio in my hotel and I had soldiers come to me in Kiev and just talk to me for an hour two hours sometimes about their thoughts about the war and one guy I he actually said it off camera otherwise I would play it for you guys but it’s really stuck with me he is in the third assault Brigade and he’s seeing some of the worst fighting he was in bmud and he moved up to harke he’s really always there where it’s the worst and he said he came back for a little bit of rest in Kev um two things happened to him the first was uh he got his car towed and that just it angered him so bad that he had to like take a half a day off and not talk to anybody second thing is he went to the gym just to get a little exercise and he saw these guys there that were absolutely ripped they were just looking like they’re having the they’re in the best shape of their life they’re like six feet tall super tan like ripped just working on their abs and their shoulders and he’s like don’t tell me this guy has a medical medical fingernail wow I mean who these are all just I’m not saying this to say that there’s a bunch of people in K who are avoiding the draft and could fight but I’m saying that it is hard for a soldier who’s been fighting for two years to go to a gym in ke and see somebody who’s in better shape than him is not fighting and I I think that’s understandable for anybody who’s seen fighting Frank can I just ask you just based on what uh what I’m was saying there was tremendous enthusiasm at the start of the war people people were volunteering by the thousands to join up and now that is not happening in that much of a of a quantity was there a particular point in the war that that that that turned the tide when it came to people volunteering I would suggest that that would be Autumn last year with the failure of the counter offensive and I think one of the issues there was and remains still beish uh messaging you know this idea that going to win the war in the end somehow we’ll develop some magic weapon or the f-16s will do it for sort of or whatever and in uh a sort of lower level the counter offense have represented the same Dynamic that you know this is going to be a great success we’re going to penetrate Russian lines and everything be great and the center of gravity was Crimea and of course none of it happened and now I think the realization is sinking in has sunk in since I mean Arman will know this better than me but I would suspect it’ be later part of last year I want to gloss on something if I might and couldn’t agree more with the the what Arman said just there uh um andan I remember talking to a friend of mine whose boyfriend was in an artillery unit in donet just a while ago near the start of the war and I I saw the same thing as as Arman spoke about lots of fit young men in in KV and asked my friend what what’s what’s all this she said well some wounds you cannot see Meed of course quite ironically but I I I decided to to to sit in in a cafe in the center of Kia and uh over five minutes count the number of evident people who are evidently not serving in the military men uh between the ages of you know mid 20s to late 30s and it took me five minutes to count to 100 on a not a particularly busy day in uh busy afternoon in Kiev and so if you are coming back on leave or for that matter a foreigner in the city it’s very evident that uh for many people this is not a country at War and I won’t even discuss the number of SUVs that would be better served uh on the line than in uh than on the streets cruising around center of the big cities so there’s a lot of CEOs working out at the gyms in keev seems potentially and most of them happen to be younger CEOs but just on the point of conscription I mean is conscription the end all be all is that the answer and the reason I’m asking you this is because uh former commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valeri zi whom who as I understand now is the ambassador to the UK correct me if I’m wrong uh Frank I think he had written something about using technology to try and bridge the gap when it comes to resources between Ukraine and Russia and technology in the form of for example more sophisticated drones unmanned systems for better targeting so you can be more efficient in your campaign against the Russians is that something that Ukraine can potentially focus more on if this conscription and mobilization isn’t working out the way they would like it to I don’t think they could make any more efforts than than they’re making now in in R&D and U technology acceleration they’ve a superb initiative called Brave one which uh brings ideas to the battlefield or intends to and does actually within six six weeks um that was our aspiration and they do seem to be doing that but look the the brutal fact is that Russia’s economy is 10 times that of of Ukraine and its manpow Reserve is three to four times that and I would suggest that this is something of a council not of desperation but of Hope um I I think with concerning technology for what it’s worth Ukraine is is in the medium term much better served by looking at the way it uh trains it deploys and organizes its armed forces and learns lessons from the battlefield and there are mechanisms you can put up staff this is military staff work training and Doctrine and these things don’t produce results in in a few weeks but they do or they will do in the medium term because right now it’s a hand to mouth for Ukraine I don’t think they’re looking sufficiently assiduously into that longer term the f-16s is one token of that but there needs to be a lot more work on the way the force is structured into the future I don’t think that work is being done in the W and that’s where West could get involved without being kinetic you know without sending combat troops or even trainers combat trainers into Ukraine this is something about organizing the force and ensuring that lessons are captured and applied and that means you you don’t keep people in the line as we discussed before you know you you you filter them in and out of the line into training uh training units um to to capture that experience but also at the higher level to make sure that mean Ukraine is in just finish with this a really superb position and of course it is already to lead European military development I think a lot of that experience is not being captured at partly because they haven’t um developed or or employed uh the techniques to do so I think it’s quite urgent that they do that over the next year or so I hope they will and as I say that’s where that’s where Western military assistance without killing anybody or putting anybody in particular risk can be really effective I don’t think it’s been done let’s talk about the near term and this this year that you’re talking about in terms of battle plans in terms of what we see on the battlefield uh what should Ukraine be doing given that it is on the back foot now and Russia is repeatedly attacking the Eastern Front trying to seize some important towns there what do you see Ukraine doing how does Ukraine need to respond in the next few months if we are talking about a longer term after that well right now as we speak the the ukrainians are in the middle of a really promising effort to retake the town of V Chans that much of which has been captured in the mo in the recent sort of so-call cariv offensive and the reason they’re recapturing that that area though and and I suspect they they may well do so in the next few weeks if Russia doesn’t deploy any more troops there is because they have an overmatch in numbers they’ve deployed probably two to three times the amount of uh the number of Russian troops in the area and deployed that much of their ordinance too as I understand but in the rest of the uh on the rest of the line they’re losing ground pretty much every day incrementally 50 m here 100 meters there and uh over a period of time that tells I think what they’re doing though from what looking at at the distance is is the right thing they’re not holding on to untenable uh defenses they’re uh conducting what you I might call tactical withdrawals or or expedient Retreats where they need to and they’re not um they’re training trading land for time and they’re focusing on keeping casualties as low as they possibly can at least one expect so the problem is though I think that’s the perception we get uh I don’t know whether uh that’s the reality across the line if it is then General cersi who’s the commander-in-chief has very much changed his approach because he had a reputation for being somewhat I won’t say Cavalier but uh very much in the Soviet mold which is to say uh if I order you to take that position or hold it you take it at whatever cost or you hold it at whatever cost and that of course is an attitude that leads to defeat and in some places I think the ukrainians are have abandoned that attitude and in others they’re holding on to it which is where they do take heavy casualties I think they should be care careful well I’m not who am I to give advice but the question was what are they what’s going to be happening and what should the ukrainians do over the next few months uh uh tra trade trade land for time hold on build effective defenses um and uh yeah that that’s there’s no there are no nostrums for this they’re in they’re in trouble um I think they’ll hold I think that uh we haven’t discussed the Russians yet what the Russians have not demonstrated is any capability to exploit breakthroughs that they make in so far as they do they are taking huge losses too they are not learning as quickly I suspect as the ukrainians are but what they do have is that prance of numbers uh they don’t cons these raw meat attacks that we heard about they usually don’t happen they’re not stupid the Russians but they are uh Cavalier with human life when they need to be and uh however I don’t think that balances out the attritional issue here the center of gravity in this war it’s currently nutritional War it’s not technology it’s not artillery shells it’s not f-16s and uh it’s not it’s not air power it’s Manpower which brings us right back to the topic Central topic of this discussion I can’t really say too much more than that can we talk for a minute about the burden that Ukraine is carrying in this war and on an individual level ukrainians we have uh people in the comments talking about that talking about how Ukrainian really is Ukraine is really fighting a war uh that many in Europe or the US would not participate in themselves but are depending on Ukraine to win uh two people here we’ve got Mark Faraday saying it is a European war on European soil and Ukraine should not be carrying this burden alone but every nation in Europe should be sending troops to Ukraine and then we have Jamie s saying if everything had been delivered when Ukraine had asked for instead of saying no the war would be in Crimea and outside dones and Luhan cities right now so um what more should what mistakes I mean this leads to a lot of questions but um what what burden is Ukraine carrying um for Europe at this time I put that to you let’s deal first with Western so thank you uh what what um let’s break let’s deal with the first question or first issue that was raised and that’s Western troops there’s a there are a huge misconceptions amongst um I think many people in most Western countries as to particularly European countries as to the uh efficiency and capability of their Armed Forces let me talk about the UK uh I won’t touch any of the other major players the UK can deploy even if it wanted to probably one Brigade with it with all its gear that’s um bearing in mind I think the ukrainians now have um about a 100 brigades some of them quite small some of them bigger Brigade is a unit of about five six 5 to 8 thousand people with all their Gear with all their tanks artillery and all the rest of it UK can deploy one Brigade maybe two to push uh with a Year’s noticed it might notied it might be able to lay down another by which time of course the first waves would be gone uh so we don’t that’s the UK it’s probably the second or third military P the biggest military power from a ground perspective is turkey it’s not getting involved forget that and that’s probably the most powerful force in Europe in the air and on the ground um but we forget them and we can do so for the purposes of this Poland is growing but not yet equipped or ready conceptually I think to to intervene it could probably deploy a similar Force perhaps slightly larger than that of the British uh Germany uh is having problems organizing 5,000 people to go to Lithuania by 2027 and the other countries can be disregarded so uh that’s the position airow is something different NATO airow is extremely formidable and would defeat the Russian Air Force it would take huge losses in doing so which brings me to the final point on this which is uh how much do you do you do you feel lucky okay I don’t mean that factiously because there will will come a point where um Russia may decide to escalate this I’m not going to mention the NW uh nuclear word Beyond uh just passing but um there are all kinds of things that Russia can escalate to that and escalator make life very unpleasant for Europe so before those decisions are made those considerations have to be taken into account lack of capability and consequences where West troops to become into direct contact with Russians bearing in mind throughout this cold war which we won um the rule was we don’t put Western troops right next to uh Soviet ones we don’t we don’t have them formally in comat and that was a successful strategy uh Ukraine is bearing the burden of this war but one word that came out of that is win and I’ve written down here what does winning mean and there you have to draw the balance between what is possible and what and what you want because War does not necessar well does not favor the good guy all the bad guys War has a dynamic all its own and it has to be F having in mind what your objectives are and what and what reality dictates to you um and that’s another huge discussion can I talk a bit about the Russians because you were you were talking about that earlier before you started answering this uh question and thanks for that reality check on European countries and their military capability the one on Germany came as no surprise to us but it was interesting to hear uh what what the UK UK can do just when it comes to the the Russians they have an a numerical Advantage when it comes to Manpower they also have an advantage when it comes to resources when it comes to military equipment for example uh you are saying that Russia is not capitalizing on the gains that they are making on the front line is that a deliberate strategy or is that just incompetence and do you see Russia drawing on perhaps more reserves to maybe push for an offensive in the next few months uh I I’ll deal bares with the last question first it’s it’s possible that they will I suspect their summer offensive has started and what they’re doing is not focusing on ground but on imposing costs on on Ukraine U so they’re playing to their strengths which are in artillery and drones electronic warfare to defend against Ukrainian drones and to L extent artillery so what they will be their objective is to is to uh um accelerate that process of imposing casualties on the ukrainians app put pressures on their Manpower situation and and uh with the expectation at some point they will crack that’s where the human component comes in the moral component as we call it in war which is the Ukrainian resilience and will to defend their land which is likely to to to Prevail uh it’s not Russian incompetence they have you ukrainians have the same problem and that is that it’s uh uh they haven’t time to train evidently haven’t time to train uh their troops in the difficult and not only time consuming but resource consuming task of uh combined arms Warfare we saw what happened when the ukrainians tried that during the counter offensive the Russians can’t do it either for for much the same reasons you can’t do it with a few weeks training uh it’s a it’s an integrating systems of systems and applying them against formidable enemy which which is ready for you now the ukrainians have proved they can’t do that they’re unlikely to be able to near future and certainly the Russians can’t but from the Russian perspective that’s not a problem they want to hammer away and a trit as we say the the Russians sorry the ukrainians to a point where resistance becomes if not no longer not necessarily no longer possible but um uh breaking the will of the Ukrainian Army which of course they won’t do but that’s why the Russians are fighting as they are and that’s why I would suggest what we’re not going to see is is a some huge offensive somewhere say in the North or sui or um kopans or where we’re going to see this grinding on uh to apply and impose costs on the ukrainians just like the Germans and the British and the French did in the first world war for the same reason well talking about morale in Ukraine also among the civilian population I think you would see a huge effect on willingness to fight if you saw the circumstances that we saw at the beginning of the war so what uh Frank was just talking about is this kind of no matter what happens in the next six months nobody’s really expecting like uh a huge surprising Advance on either side now and that has an effect on conscription that has an effect on how many men uh young men are willing to sign up to go die on a frozen Frontline uh talking to one soldier actually this trip who was telling me that you would probably see a lot more people rushing to the conscription offices like you did at the beginning of the war it wouldn’t be the same long lines because a lot of those people are already serving but you would see a lot more people willing to fight if they thought their way of life was put back into danger because Kiev is very far away from the front lines at this moment and that doesn’t mean that they’ve forgotten about the war it just means that um the possibility does not seem that likely that Kev will fall to the Russians anytime soon but a lot of people would be willing to defend Kiev put their life on the line maybe that guy at the gym with the big shoulders in the six pack if he saw that his gym was under attack all of a sudden maybe he would pick up a gun Target the gy that’s that’s where it hurts you got to hurt the muscles uh Frank there is something I’d like to I’d like to bring up it is it is the variable that has come up in conversations often enough and maybe you know what I’m getting at I’d like to talk about a very important election that we’re expecting in the next few months the US election does the the result of the US election is that going to be pivotal to how 2025 shapes up in Ukraine I don’t think anybody would be surprised but with the answer absolutely Central and I think that the um the uh latest uh transfer of funds or announcement of such a much longer um series of uh funding not only for military but civilian um assistance that from the US Congress of course it’s strategic intention was to push the war into uh the last part of the year to push it past the election to avoid any crises that certainly would have happened I think this summer had that had that transfer not being made had the the congress not agreed the um um the injection of of cash and uh and frankly I think that there is an awful lot of Hope being placed on this election not frankly I think everybody knows it and nobody knows um well let’s put another way uh were Trump to be elected the war would I I suspect end rather quickly with an extremely unsatisfactory from Ukraine’s perspective deal as the US would threaten to or actually withdraw withdraw assistance that would seem to be the uh most likely outcome of a trump uh Victory but even a Biden Victory you know that that one of the problems with this whole thing and I I’ll just say this for 30 seconds because but I think it’s absolutely vital is what exactly is the West strategy here we had three objectives mentioned by various senior American leaders over the last week one was to that we’re aiming for the ukrainians to hold the line effectively that’s from General Austin the defense secretary another came from Biden spokesman who s suggested or stated that uh President Biden’s with the Ukrainian program retaking Crimea and everything else and another yet another objective was to to equip the ukrainians for the long run so that they can put be put into or or that they could be put into a position where negotiations could take place now which is it now we have a long history over the last 25 years all of us I think of one form or another have been on the receiving end of which is a lack of Western Grand strategy same in Afghanistan same in Iraq don’t need to get into all that and it’s the same here what is our objectives we know the Ukrainian objectives but we don’t necessarily dance to that what are ours and that’s not clear Ian how do ukrainians view the upcoming US election when you talk to them I still still have yet in two years of being in Ukraine to meet a Ukrainian who likes Donald Trump so um I don’t think they they see Biden as uh great hero of our times necessarily and I think maybe some people secretly like Trump and just the way a lot of Americans think he’s like just a fantastic character um but at the same time they it’s very much obvious to a lot of ukrainians that the reason why they’ve been able to hold out against Russia for 2 years is because of American weapons and Trump has said repeatedly that he would not support Ukraine um in this war against Russia that he would end the war within 24 hours I do I have actually a poll um that was done recently um that shows uh ukrainians attitudes toward the war let me just find the part that I’m looking for um here we go if you can pull that up so this is uh a poll that was done in March 2024 that shows what ukrainians think the objective of the war should be so putting aside what Americans think it should be this is what ukrainians think and it’s changed a lot since the beginning of the war um 51% the believe that the country should fight until it liberates all territory to the 1991 borders so that is um code for Crimea are the ukrainians fighting to take back Crimea um not many people thought that was possible at the beginning of the war but it’s been part of zelinsky’s rhetoric but it seems that just barely a majority of ukrainians believe that that’s what they should be sh fighting for an additional 12% on top of that believes that it should be fought back to the February 2022 line so taking back parts of the donbass and um the regions of the South marup Pole that were um conquered by Russia since the beginning of the fullscale invasion another 8% uh defend its positions and focus on exhausting Russia but not go on the offensive so basically hold the line as Lloyd Austin said and uh 26% actually believe that it’s time to seek a compromise through negotiations um at the beginning of the war was looking more a little bit over 60% thought that they should take back Crimea um and it was a vast majority who believed that they should that no negotiations should be put on the table but now with the Frozen front line it looks like people are changing their opinions let’s talk about that negotiation uh and we’d also we also I think coming to the end of this conversation Frank if I can just get your final word on this when it comes to negotiations bearing in mind that we just had a Ukraine peace Summit in Switzerland they were talking about a pathway to peace um are we anywhere near any sort of negotiations to end this war or is that still dependent on the outcome over the next few months on the battlefield what’s surprising well first thing what’s surprising is arman’s arman’s pole there it’s very interesting uh how things are shifting I suspect that blue uh segment of people uh thinking that this might be time for negotiations going to increase over the next few months as some degree of War fatigue Settles in and certainly some of my friends Ukrainian friends on the quiet very quietly beginning to say that I I’ve been talking to a couple of senior ukrainians over the last week or so and one detects that the beginnings of the um the beginnings of thinking about planning for realistic negotiations are in the air but that’s that you know we’re looking way into the me medium term I just want to say one thing by way of final comment that uh there’s what uh should be done which is your objectives what can be done which is what you can actually achieve it’s finding that that the place on that Delta uh that’s the the sweet Point as it were and I don’t think we’re any anywhere near identifying where that place is on either side uh so um yeah different difference between the way things should be and the way things are and unfortunately as I said war does not uh it has no bias towards the good guys we’ll leave it there on that thought Frank Leb thanks so much for joining us today really appreciate you spared about more than 45 minutes of your time I think I’d asked for something like 35 so thanks for staying extra and sharing that valuable Insight with us Frank take care and speak soon my pleasure fores thank you very much thank bye bye thank you Arman any final word on uh where you what you see happening in Ukraine your next trip coming up in Ukraine what do you think is going to be happening on that one that’s a good question I don’t know when I’m going back at this point but um it does seem like there’s a new phase of the war now um just with people talking about conscription laws openly um whether or not they’re for it or against it talking about the idea that the objective of taking Crimea um back is actually not uh it’s not feasible things like this at the beginning of the war they were taboo to talk about and I think people genuinely believe that after uh ukrainians successfully defended Kiev and that region from a huge Russian assault that um they would have the upper hand in this war because of morale but it seems like morale is waning for a lot of people I mean this is not an issue of um cowardice versus heroism the third assault Brigade uh guy that I was talking to who has seen the worst of the action he said that um he would be in favor of some kind of ceasefire even if it wasn’t permanent even if that meant uh that in the future Ukraine would fight violently to take back Crimea at some point he just believes that it’s not possible with the the way things are to um to really keep fighting um indefinitely to take back dbass and what I said earlier looking at the future of conscription I do believe that the conditions in Ukraine uh the um one the idea that joining the military is a one-way ticket uh the Frozen front line these things have a huge effect on how young people in Ukraine see the possibility of joining the military and it’s it’s not necessarily a um it’s not unchangeable right so if uh they did feel that uh the entire identity if Ukraine was under threat again as it was on February 2022 um that you would see a lot more people volunteering to um make bigger sacrifices for their country and my final thought to and all of this and I think going back to what people are saying in the chat this big debate I think judge not lest you be judged to quote a famous book because it is true that journalists the duty is to report the situation on the ground um but you really until you until you’re really faced with do I fight uh do I give my life for my country or do I protect my family and do the other things that society says are moral and good stay alive and keep your children alive and uh have a beautiful family and everything like this um do I sacrifice that for uh for my country or not and I think that nobody can really know what their decision would be unless they’re faced with that question and that is part of that uh question that we asked in the poll didn’t we Char I think the the original question being is conscription Justified when a country is at Po and I wonder if you have any results for us Jerry yeah I accidentally closed the post like earlier but nonetheless we have 490 FS which is quite good um most of the people uh voted for the first option no one should no it’s not the first option but most of the people chose no one should be forced to fight which is 47% 27% thinks that only if everyone is treated fairly and 24 % thinks that there’s no other way I mean it’s very interesting because these results sort of vindicate why we were we wanted this topic right in the first place because uh 47% of the people thinking no one should be forced to fight that was one of the things that we discussed as to why conscription is should not be a given and there is a matter of choice especially when it comes to democratic nations and that choice needs to be there right yeah I would say so and I think again what you were saying judge not lest you be judged um it is um very easy to kind of sit and move around the chest pieces on the board to say you know this is what people should do to have the outcome you want but unless you have skin in the game unless you’re asked to give up your life uh and go to the front line and perhaps lose it within days that’s it’s a really intense decision um and also the people back at home I think about um the women I’ve met here in Berlin who have um left Ukraine and have have men um their loved ones fighting in the war that’s really scary uh so my heart goes out um to everyone who is making this decision um and I just want to go back to my final word here uh something from kolina Vena all of us want peace and uh I definitely definitely want that peace will be get there that’s a question that is a question uh but thanks so much for joining in uh on this uh chat and this conversation uh it is truly Illuminating to hear your response to the poll question and seeing all the all all the all the comments and the observations that you all have made thanks also to Aman thanks so much for sharing your experience in Ukraine bringing us that interview with Andy Cherry thanks so much for monitoring this uh chat uh I’ve thoroughly enjoyed uh the questions that have come and the observations that have been that have been made I’m still surprised by the poll question but it’s very it’s very it’s very interesting to hear that response it’s very interesting because that’s what we were discussing I just keep going back to that well come back everybody next week because we’ll have another question we’re discussing we’re here every Wednesday and we put up our question of the week about 24 hours ahead of time so come back we’ll see you again we’ll see you next week bye-bye bye-bye [Music]

To win its war, Ukraine needs to draft more young soldiers, but some of them are trying to escape the call to arms. We will be talking to someone avoiding the draft and putting your questions to military expert Frank Ledwidge. What do you think? Should Ukraine be allowed to force conscripts to fight?

00:00 Opinions from the frontline
09:31 How does conscription work in Ukraine?
17:24 Is Ukraine divided over the conscription issue?
20:10 Interview with someone who avoided conscription
24:20 The Draft for Ukrainians outside Ukraine
39:30 Can rich people avoid conscription?
51:20 Conscription in democracies
58:40 How frontline soldiers feel about avoiding conscription
1:10:31 Western armies compared with Ukraine’s army
1:19:10 The US election and the war in Ukraine
1:22:13 How is the war going to end

#Ukraine #conscription #russiaukrainewar

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