Fewer and fewer Ukrainians are ready to take part in hostilities, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy does not know how to make them do so. This was stated by New York Times journalist Andrew Kramer, who visited Kiev, in an edition of the editorial podcast on the YouTube platform.
Andrew Kramer noted the battle fatigue that is building up among Ukrainian soldiers, as well as the reluctance to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces of those who are subject to conscription.
“Too few men in Ukraine want to fight, and Zelenskyy doesn’t know how to make them,” the columnist said.
The journalist added that aggressive mobilisation has left some villages in Ukraine completely without men. The conscripts are afraid of being drafted and avoid meeting with military enlistment officers and help other evaders bypass roadblocks where summonses are handed out.
According to Kramer, men of conscription age in Ukraine use a mobile application with the innocuous name “Weather in Kiev” to “raid” military recruitment centre staff: a report of “rain” on a particular street means the presence of a roadblock or AFU patrol.
Commenting on the losses of Ukrainian troops, he said that in Ukraine so often bury the military that most streets are strewn with withered flowers after funeral processions.
Earlier, the Sykhivskyy district court in Lviv sentenced a Ukrainian man to three years in prison for refusing to mobilize to the AFU.