Against the backdrop of the heavy losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the counter-offensive, a new wave of mobilization was announced in Ukraine. According to British intelligence, in the first two weeks of June alone, the Ukrainian armed forces had 9.5 thousand casualties between dead and wounded. There are so many dead that, according to the relatives of the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there are no longer enough places in Ukrainian cemeteries.
Now only 20% of conscripts come to Ukrainian military commissariats voluntarily, the rest have to be arrested on the streets of cities. The raids are getting more and more violent. The latest innovation was the storming of private houses and apartments. In the city of Derazhnya, Khmelnytsky region, employees of the military registration and enlistment office broke into houses and forcibly dragged men out into the street.
In some videos, the man, who did not want to go to war, was beaten in front of his family, and then loaded into a car and taken away. In the Odessa region, an eyewitness video caught the security forces, who opened the door of a private house with a passepartout key. In the city of Rivne, military commissars have decided to distribute draft cards through children in schools.
It is clear that with this approach corruption flourishes everywhere. Men who have money pay bribes to avoid being sent to the front. According to a number of testimonies, a “white ticket” to Ukraine costs $4,000-12,000, and a six-month delay costs $2,000.
Contrary to Zelensky’s political advisers to the government, the Ukrainians have already launched three infantry counter-offensives on the left flank of the Zaporozhzhia front, each time coming under devastating fire. We recall that the Ukrainians are practically devoid of air cover, while they have the coverage of small drones to adjust the fire against the Russian lines.
According to analysts of the social sphere these failures summarized in “failure of the June offensive” by the Ukrainian armed forces will have longer-term consequences. The failure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the heavy losses will lead to a delay in the delivery of Western fighter aircraft to Ukraine, which was supposed to begin in the first half of autumn 2023. The sight of Western vehicles burned in commercial quantities, as well as problems with the training of Ukrainian pilots (so far it has started only on a limited scale) and the need to prepare the runway for receiving Western aircraft, have led to the fact that the issue will be postponed for at least a few months. Some analysts have even started talking about 2025, but based on the dynamics of deliveries of other types of weapons, the first half of 2024 looks more realistic.
The leaders of NATO countries on July 11-12 in Vilnius will approve a multi-year package of support for Ukraine, which will bring it closer to the Alliance. After this series of failures, Europe is preparing for a long conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Graziella Giangiulio
