An early burst of patriotic fervor saw draft centers swamped with volunteers, but that has waned with Vladimir Putin’s war in its third year.
The 28-year-old is one of thousands of young Ukrainian men keeping their heads down, dodging conscription and avoiding registering their details as required. Artem is cautious when he ventures out, and avoids places like metro stations where police mount document checks looking for draft-dodgers.
“Some of my friends are more paranoid — they never go out,” he says.
Artem has the air of a fugitive, with his baseball cap pulled down firmly and shielding his eyes even on an overcast day. Before entering the coffee house in downtown Kyiv to meet with POLITICO he gazes up and down the street, and once seated talks in a low voice so as not to be overheard.
When Russia invaded their country two years ago, young and old Ukrainians swamped recruitment centers to volunteer. Some were frustrated not to be drafted immediately, and complained loudly. The Ukrainian military couldn’t take everyone owing to a lack of resources and equipment, but managed to muster new units, expand established ones and improvise to halt Russian armor bearing down on Kyiv.
But that early burst of patriotic fervor has waned with the war now in its third year, the body bags filling, and men returning home injured and disfigured.
Pessimism about the future of the conflict is also taking hold, with ever more people questioning whether Ukraine is capable of defeating Moscow’s forces.
How would a Russian nuclear response be prevented if anything were to go wrong? You only need lose or miss one of their nuclear subs for this plan to go south. I’m not comfortable betting our existence on the presumption that they wouldn’t use nuclear arms if attacked by NATO
For people who work in defense, a Western first-strike scenario (conventional) is widely understood to be the option that results in the fewest casualties and the greatest possibility that no nukes detonate at all.
Your scenarios of doom presume that one sub could destroy the west. You assume that we would not be able to defend against their attempted launch when we’ve spent decades investing in top secret defense systems for this exact scenario. You assume Putin’s delivery systems will function after decades of maintenance by notorious black market scalpers. You assume Russian soldiers would be willing to erase their families for Putin’s attack order.
A conventional first strike means very few, if any, of Russia’s delivery systems would launch. It is extremely unlikely that any of them (if any were to actually launch, given all of the roadblocks I’ve mentioned) would make it to a target. Additionally, every soldier and leader in a warhead firing position knows an attempted launch of any nukes would result in nuclear annihilation of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. They also know that not launching means saving the lives of their families.
This game has been played out over and over again. If Putin launches before a western first-strike, we will suffer mass casualties. If we strike first (conventionally), it is extremely likely that we will suffer no casualties at all and it will also limit the casualties suffered by Russia.
Western economists thought that sanctioning Russia was the best option to instantly win the war. If you still think that, you’re on some heavy copium. Or you directly benefit from the money spent on directing the whatever-the-fuck-th sanctions package.
And what if you were wrong? You’re not playing around with fucking rocks, a few warheads of the thousands is enough to wipe the life from this rock.
Some won’t function, some will. It’s not like it’s 6000 something nukes that are gonna get stuck in silos lmao. Also, soldiers are nothing if not good at making idiotic decisions when asked to do so.
Instead of half the world being instantly turned to glass, it’s only gonna be some random unfortunate places. How sweet. Can’t wait till a nuke drops on Ohio and the serious generals residing in bunkers shrug and tell everyone that it could’ve been worse.
Back to the point above, soldiers are fucking dumb. You don’t join the military because you’re the brightest person around, you join the military because you’re not needed anywhere else.
“Extremely likely” means “we don’t really care if someone in the middle of nowhere gets glassed, we just need to prove our mighty military might.”
I think I now understand why you have taken the position you have taken. You profoundly over-estimate the ability of Russia’s arsenal in a second-strike scenario. Turning half the planet into glass is not possible in a second-strike for Russia.
If they are permitted to first-strike, however, they could seriously inhibit the planet’s sunshine for an extended period of time, which would cause a lot of starvation globally. This outcome would be avoided in a first-strike by the west.
The only scenario in which we all are jeopardized is a scenario in which Russia attacks first. There is no question that allowing them to attack first results in significant death globally. A western first-strike can avoid western deaths entirely and can minimize damage and death within Russia as well. We did not insist upon this position, but based on Medvedev and Lutin’s constantly escalating threats, it seems extremely likely that Putin will use nukes. Allowing him to launch any nuke will result in an extremely poor outcome for everyone, whereas stopping that threat now will avoid that possibility.
The western public would be listening to our military experts if not for the hyperbolic Russian propaganda that Putin will kill everyone on earth if he is angered.