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WHY DIVIDED UKRAINIANS ARE REFUSING TO FIGHT FOR ZELENSKY
>Russian gains in the east are undermining morale while casting Kyiv’s manpower problems in stark relief
>Reluctance to serve – or to keep serving, in the case of the ever-swelling number of deserters – has long troubled Ukraine. Now, just as Donald Trump grants Vladimir Putin the one-on-one summit the Russian president has coveted for years, that reluctance is tipping into crisis. In the past 48 hours, Russian troops breached Ukrainian defences near the coal-mining town of Dobropillia, pushing nine miles into territory around the city of Pokrovsk, a long-time Russian target.
>The shock advance, the most significant Russian gain this year, cast Ukraine’s manpower problems in stark relief. Ukraine has since deployed some of its best reserves to slow the incursion, but DeepState, a monitoring group close to the defence ministry, called the situation “chaotic”. Russian troops had found gaps in the lines, advanced and were “consolidating positions and gathering forces for new advances”.
>“The entire defence line is like a sieve,” wrote Stansislav Bunyatov, a Ukrainian serviceman and blogger, a sentiment echoed by Borden Krotevhych, former chief of the Azov Brigade. Krotevhych wrote: “This chaos has been growing for a long time, worsening with each passing day. A stable line of combat, as such, effectively doesn’t exist.” Ukraine is “visibly losing the war”, says Konrad Muzkya, a Polish military analyst, largely because of the manpower crisis. So why won’t men like Pavlo, 35 and a new father, enlist? “Probably because I am afraid,” he says, with disarming honesty. “Afraid to die or, worse, lose my mind and become a burden to my family. Afraid to leave my family in poverty. Afraid that my daughter will grow up an orphan. Afraid of being captured and tortured for months.
It's finally beginning to hit home.
https://archive.md/nuwcK