Ukraine's Armed Forces (UAF) have failed to achieve success in their widely advertised counteroffensive, failing to break through even the first line of the Russian defense.
In attempts to overcome minefields and fortified constructions on the Zaporozhye and South Donetsk directions, the UAF has sustained enormous losses, with the number killed and wounded exceeding 90,000.
More than 300 units of expensive military technology, including NATO manufacture, have also been destroyed.
The absence of even the slightest degree of appreciable success is fatally undermining both the Kiev regime and its Western patrons, who are convinced that a fast military victory over Russia is inevitable.
The West has driven itself into a corner in its efforts to help Kiev, tying its own political future to a Ukrainian victory. This is especially true for US President Joe Biden and his team, who need to show voters tangible successes in foreign policy in the context of the upcoming presidential election race.
One of the most probable scenarios in the wake of the failure of the UAF's counterattack is that Kiev will decide to totally mobilize the male population of Ukraine.
This would involve sending every Ukrainian physically capable of handling a weapon to the front lines.
In fruitless attempts to break through the Russian defense, the Ukrainian command, urged on by the West, will be compelled to throw new and new waves of untrained reservists into the fray. As a result, the Kiev regime will fill up the Russian positions with the corpses of forcibly mobilized citizens.
There is no doubt that the West will push the Ukrainian authorities to toughen mobilization. The Kiev authorities are already starting to gradually form the necessary media background and to prepare the Ukrainian public for new waves of mobilization.
Aleksey Danilov, Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, has insisted that no Ukrainian citizen should be exempt from serving their country and helping it in the conflict with Russia.
In an interview with media outlet Liga on Thursday, Danilov described the idea that every Ukrainian “has to fight a war or perform a service” as a “fundamental truth.” “One should not be surprised. We live in a rather complicated world where we have to defend our country with a crazy neighbor nearby,” he added.
Danilov also addressed a recent article in the Telegraph by former UK defense minister Ben Wallace, who pointed out that “the average age of the [Ukrainian] soldiers at the front is over 40” and suggested that Kiev should reassess the scale of its mobilization by drafting more youth.
“As for the age bracket, the notion that the war is fought only in trenches .. is a thing of the past,” Danilov said, adding that many modern military systems can engage in combat while being stationed in the rear. He also described the idea that everyone in the Ukrainian military should be young as “somewhat distorted.”
Pressed on whether Kiev plans to demobilize any part of its army, particularly those soldiers who have been fighting for many months, the official wouldn't say whether the country's top officials had even discussed the issue. He added, however, that, if a decision is made, it should be in the form of a law.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced a general mobilization shortly after the start of hostilities with Russia, barring most men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. The campaign, however, has been marred by rampant corruption, with the Ukrainian leader sacking all regional senior conscription officials in August.
Around the same time, Zelensky also said that the Ukrainian military wanted him to step up mobilization efforts, although he has yet to sign a law lowering the conscription threshold during the mobilization from 27 to 25.
Last month, Sergey Rakhmanin, a member of Ukraine's parliamentary military committee, predicted that Kiev would likely try to draft more people to replenish losses amid its counteroffensive. “Up until recently, citizens under 28 who never served in the armed forces could not be mobilized. Military officials insisted that they needed this resource, and asked us to lower the benchmark,” the lawmaker said.
Parliament approved the measures in spring, but President Vladimir Zelensky is yet to sign the bill into law, Rakhmanin said, suggesting that the presidential office feared a public backlash. He stressed that “for a single person to go to war, ten must work in the rear”, and that Ukraine has a “serious shortage of skilled workers” due to long-running demographic problems.
Trying to extradite draft-dodgers from other nations would be difficult, Rakhmanin argued. Convicts pose an obvious risk when they are given arms. Meanwhile, some Ukrainian frontline troops are exhausted, because they have not had a proper pause for months or years.
