Downward spiral of Ukraine will continueThroughout 2024, Ukraine and its armed forces have been shaken by corruption scandals, primarily related to orders of military supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) but also related to the embezzlement of funds which Western countries provided for the functioning of the Ukrainian state2024 was a year that shook the ultra-nationalist government and armed forces of Ukraine to their foundations. The year's end is a timely moment to look back at what has taken place and look forward to what 2025 may bring.
Ukraine lost hundreds more square kilometers of territory in 2024, primarily in Donetsk in the Donbass region. The rate of advancement of Russian troops in 2024 has noticeably increased compared to 2023. On average, the Russian Federation Armed Forces is assuming control of some 22 square kilometers of territory across Donbass each day, gradually stretching into more territory in the Donbass.
Most tragically, 2024 has seen the loss of countless Ukrainian lives--many tens of thousands if not more, and even higher numbers of wounded. They died or have been wounded in a pointless military conflict with Russia that has nothing to do with protecting Ukraine or its people. This has been a war fought in the interests of Western capital and it has utterly ruined the Ukraine republic that emerged from Soviet Ukraine in 1990-91.
Donbass became a center of resistance to the far-right coup that took place in Kiev, Ukraine in February 2014. The region was invaded two months later in a failed attempt to crush anti-coup resistance. The invasion was spearheaded by far-right Ukraine paramilitaries, while the Ukraine army was simultaneously undergoing a complete overhaul and transformation to bring it into line with the far-right politics of the coup
That invasion and the war it sparked was supposed to end according to the 'Minsk-2' peace agreement of February 2015. The agreement between the coup governing regime and the newly created, popular defense forces provided for political and cultural autonomy within Ukraine for what was becoming the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.
Minsk-2 was endorsed by Russia, Germany, and France, and then endorsed by no less than the UN Security Council on February 17, 2025. But Ukraine and its Western sponsors, notably the U.S., Britain, France and Germany betrayed Minsk 2. Instead, the coup regime embarked on building the heavy fortifications which Russia is today attacking and overrunning
2024 is the third year of formal, military/civilian dictatorship in Ukraine. Martial law was declared in February 2022, while presidential and legislative elections that should have taken place in April 2024 according to the Ukraine constitution were simply cancelled.
Corruption scandals overwhelm the Ukraine armed forcesThroughout the year, Ukraine and its armed forces have been shaken by corruption scandals, primarily related to orders of military supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) but also related to the embezzlement of funds which Western countries provided for the functioning of the Ukrainian state. These funds are consumed by the state and government apparatuses, often for personal enrichment. This has become standard in the Western countries' funding and overseeing of the Ukrainian state and government.
Since the beginning of 2024, the average salary of Ukrainian officials has increased by 20,000 hryvnia (US$500) to an annual average of 58,000 (US$14,000). The salary of even a small official exceeds the average salary in the country by more than three times. For those not so fortunate as to hold a government job or post, salaries and pensions have not only been frozen but have been outright reduced in Ukraine in 2024 due to tax increases and military levies.
Contested numbers of Ukraine's armed forcesAs of January 1, 2024, 169,000 people were working at 108 civil state authorities in Ukraine. Police agencies and the salaried officers and soldiers in the armed forces bring the number of paid state employees to more than one million. Zelensky states that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action is 41,000. Yet, in 2022, Ukrainian officials said the country's armed forces stood at more than one million personnel, and a far-reaching military conscription has taken place ever since then, with all military leaves routinely refused. So there should be something like two million personnel in the Ukraine armed forces if we believe Zelensky's data. This begs the question: where are the missing one million?
The tactics of the Ukrainian army have not changed despite its mounting military setbacks. This is still a war being waged by the Ukrainian command at the expense of its soldiers who continue to be forcibly conscripted to replace the dead and wounded. But even forced conscription, which sees hundreds of men, sometimes more, seized daily from the streets of their towns, villages, and cities, cannot adequately replace the grim, daily losses, say military commanders. This has led Ukraine's Western sponsors to make highly provocative and controversial calls for the age of conscription to be lowered from 25 to 18. The issue is so red-hot that Volodymyr Zelensky has to date declined to endorse the call, saying that more supplies of weaponry from the West should come first.
Here in the third year of war, Ukraine is still fighting with a larger army numerically compared to the Russian armed forces, yet it is the latter which is steadily advancing.
Ukrainian authorities are claiming that the personnel of its armed forces today amount to more than one million people. The Ukrainian online daily Strana reported on December 12 that according to various sources, the number of Russian troops directly engaged in the war ranges from 550,000 soldiers and support personnel (according to Ukrainian intelligence) to 800,000 (the figure recently cited by Volodomyr Zelensky). Vladimir Putin says 700,000.
Pervasive corruption of the Ukraine armed forcesOne of the reasons for the shortage of Ukrainian troops, in spite of conscription, is the pervasive corruption that everywhere affects its operations. For a certain amount of money, Ukrainian military personnel and even entire units can evade combat operations and instead be assigned to support duties in the rear.
Strana writes on December 14: "Corruption in the AFU is no longer just 'corruption', it is a disaster. If you have money and no desire to go to the front, you can buy your way out. Money can buy you the option at any level of serving in rear areas. It can cost up to US$5000 [equivalent] or sometimes less, depending on the deal you make. This is not systemic corruption, it is grassroots corruption. It is decided at the level of individual commanders and 'the phenomenon is everywhere', says a source in the Ministry of Defense."
Legislator Anna Skorokhod spoke out on Telegram in early December against the practices of military commanders of demanding bribes in exchange for avoiding front-line duty. "I get two or three complaints each day about commanders of platoons, companies and brigades demanding money from their subordinates for favored treatment. Earlier, the sums were up to 5,000 hryvnias (US$125); now they are five times that amount. If you don't pay, then it is off to the front for you, and in the most dangerous positions. Once there, you will stay there or never return."
Skorokhod cited the several investigative commissions that have been struck to protect individual soldiers from physical abuse or extortion, but this work remains unreported.
Abuse and even torture of Ukraine soldiersUkrainian military personnel are also being used by commanders as modern slaves for personal gain. On December 17, Strana reported the case of four soldiers supposedly assigned to the combat zone in the Nikolaev region and receiving salaries and special combat payments, who had instead been assigned to build a new house for their commander.
In December, the Ukrainian army was rocked by a new scandal, this one involving torture by an officer against a subordinate. Commanders of the 211th Pontoon and Bridge Brigade of AFU support forces were extracting money from soldiers who had been caught drinking alcohol and committing other violations. Those who refused to pay were beaten and placed in cages, reports Ukrainska Pravda on December 16.
One of the soldiers says he was beaten and then tied to a wooden cross. His commander committed a public relations disaster by posing in a photo of himself kneeling in front of the soldier tied to a cross. The soldier's head is slumped onto his chest.
Strana reports that this was not an isolated case. Military officers say that systems of extortion exist in all military units. "Unit commanders extort and steal money from their subordinates through the so-called 'common funds'. Ukrainian military officers have told Ukrainian journalists that in all units, money is collected monthly from all soldiers for what is termed a 'common fund'. Some officers have acknowledged that if a soldier does not wish to be assigned to the front lines on a combat assignment, he can pay to avoid it. Depending on the unit, this can cost from 10,000 to 20,000 hryvnias (US$250 to US$500).
NATO military standards in action, mass desertions Kiev authorities have been saying since 2014 that they are switching to 'NATO military standards'. The results have become disturbingly evident. The photo of the Ukrainian soldier tied to a cross by his commander has gone viral. For many citizens of Ukraine, the country has become a symbol of visibly depraved NATO standards. The Ukrainian military has become like the American military whose soldiers were caught on camera in 2004 torturing prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those images dealt a lasting blow to the image and reputation of the US military.
Toward the end of December, the Ukrainian media reported that the 'Anna of Kyiv' brigade which had been trained and armed for a long time in France and then thrown into a difficult section of the front is almost completely dispersed. According to journalist Yuriy Butusov, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian publication Censor, the brigade was initially formed of several thousand, forcibly recruited men. They were poorly trained, dressed in uniforms, and then declared to be a full-fledged brigade. Once arrived at the front and facing combat conditions, more than
1,000 of them immediately deserted and headed home.
A Ukrainian commander told the Polish publication Wiadomosci in December that there are sometimes more deserters than killed and wounded in the AFU following action. He says the mass desertions are caused by poor training as well as inexperience in combat situations. New recruits will often run away the first time they experience shelling.
The Ukrainian Telegram channel 'Rubicon' comments on the mass desertions and cases of abuse taking place in the Ukrainian army. It writes, "Something similar took place in the history of World War I when in 1917, after the February Revolution, soldiers of the former Russian Imperial Army began to quit the front 'in all directions' on a mass scale. One of the arguments at the time by deserters and the numerous political agitators for desertion among the soldier ranks were stories similar to today of systematic beatings of soldiers by officers.”
Violence and humiliation faced by the Ukrainians who are forced to fight for the interests of the West is also one of the reasons why many are actually defecting to the Russian army. Ukrainian security services almost daily initiate criminal cases on such grounds, such as the following, "A resident of the Kiev region killed two Ukrainian soldiers, burned a pickup truck, defected to the Russians, and now fights in Russia's 'Maksym Kryvonis' unit. This unit is formed of Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered. It is named after the famous peasant insurgent several centuries ago who fought against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth domination of the lands to later become Ukraine.
Growing numbers of Ukrainians are moving to RussiaIt is not only military recruits but also thousands of civilians who are switching sides. In late November, legislator Maxim Tkachenko of Zelensky's 'Servants of the People' party-machine wrote on Telegram that about 150,000 internally displaced persons in Ukraine have decided to return and live in the 'occupied territories' (as the majority-ethnic Russia territories that have come under the control of the Russian Federation are called by Ukraine leaders). He estimates that 70,000 of those have returned to the city of Mariupol on the Black Sea coast, which was heavily damaged by the resistance of heavily entrenched Ukrainian far-right paramilitaries in the beginning months of the war. Mariupol has been undergoing major reconstruction and renewal for more than two years now.
According to Tkachenko, those who left Ukraine did so because they were not receiving proper assistance from the Ukrainian state –"not with housing, social supports, employment or compensation for lost property and belongings".
The figure of 150,000 internally displaced is relatively small, considering the population of Ukraine which was 35 to 40 million at the outset of war; (there has been no census taken in Ukraine for some 25 years). But that can be explained by the fact that men between the ages of 18 and 60 and women with medical or military-related education are prohibited by law from leaving the country. Entering the Russian Federation is extremely difficult for Ukrainians because there is only one airport to serve them - Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport – and only passenger planes from Asia and Africa can fly into it due to Western sanctions against travel to Russia.
On the other, western side of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of citizens have left for countries of the European Union. Those prohibited from leaving legally do so illegally by crossing the border using secondary roads and mountain trails or by risking border-river crossings.
Once landed in Europe, Ukrainians can fly to Sheremetyevo airport via Istanbul, Turkiye. But once there, they can wait days before receiving permission to enter the Russian Federation, perhaps even to return to their home, former Ukraine, territories. That is very risky because fighting there may still be ongoing and the territory itself may be strewn with mines.
At, Sheremetyevo, the backgrounds of Ukrainians are closely checked for past involvement with Ukrainian police services or armed forces. The process can last several days. Strana writes on Telegram on November 25 that not all of those who arrive at Sheremetyevo are accepted. Those who are rejected face years of exclusion from the Russian Federation before they can apply again. Strana says accurate reporting of rates of acceptance and rejection are difficult if not impossible to accurately state, but if not for screening at the airport and its accompanying risk of rejection, the figure of 150,000 Ukrainians entering Russia would be much greater.
Ukrainian legislator Oleksandr Dubinsky, formerly of Zelensky's party-machine, predicted in late December that people will start fleeing Ukraine en masse once the country's borders are reopened. "Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, will leave Ukraine. The concentration camp into which Zelensky has turned Ukraine will have little or nothing to offer to its citizens to encourage them to stay. "He uses the analogy of a parasite growing on the tree called Ukraine to describe the Zelensky administration and adds that the rump state of Ukraine that will emerge from the war is doomed to underdevelopment and failure so long as it defines itself as an 'anti-Russia'.
Meltdown of Zelensky's public imageNeither presidential nor legislative elections took place in Ukraine in 2024, as required by the constitution. The pretext for this was the state of martial law declared in February 2022. The Zelensky administration intends to prolong the military conflict and accompanying martial law until such time as a mythical 'defeat' of the Russian armed forces takes place. But this is now impossible to achieve with a Ukrainian army consisting of forcibly conscripted soldiers, many reduced to something resembling modern slaves.
"Real peace talks will begin when the Russian Federation no longer has the resources to continue the war," opined Andriy Yermak on December 17, emphasizing that Ukraine must preserve its military force until then. He is the director of the Office of the President of Ukraine since 2020 and makes it obvious that Zelensky and his administration intend to stay in power come hell or high water.
The end of 2024 will be viewed by historians as the beginning of the final decomposition of the image of heroism being projected by the Zelensky administration and its Western media cheerleaders. This decomposition is sharply intensifying in the public consciousness of Ukrainians, notwithstanding local and Western media efforts to portray the opposite. The former comic actor Zelensky is returning to his earlier television role and image as a clown, but this time around it is a clown clinging to power and ready to sacrifice so many more Ukrainian lives to that end.
Ukrainians are already joking that Donald Trump will be handed the remote control of Zelensky on January 20, after which the Ukrainian president may begin to sing a different tune, depending on the course the new US administration chooses.
A certain role in the decomposition of Zelensky's image is his inability to stick to the same messaging for the Ukrainian and the Western public. In Ukraine, he poses as a heroic and victorious military leader. But in the West, he appears as a beggar, pleading for ever-more money while decrying crimes said to be perpetrated by Russia and its armed forces. Puffing up his cheeks, he assures Ukrainians that his administration and its military are 'invincible'. But in the West, he begs for money and arms, and in return, he offers up to Western investors the mineral deposits in the Ukrainian subsoil and the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. Such dual behavior could work if the Ukrainian audience was completely cut off from the Internet and from Western media sources. But that harkens back to a different, earlier world, not the world of the 21st century.
Zelensky is already being openly mocked by his former party colleagues, other Ukrainian nationalists, and members of the military. This is due to nervousness over the coming change of administration in the United States and possible change of administration in Ukraine itself.
In 1917, between the two Russian revolutions of February and October that year, the image of Alexander Kerensky, the head of the provisional government of the day, underwent a similar transformation. At the beginning of 1917, Kerensky was a popular orator and socialist with a high level of political support among the population. However, once in power, he refused to conclude an armistice with Germany, choosing instead to continue the war begun in August 1914 by the ousted monarchy in alliance with England and France. Kerensky continued to conscript soldiers, mostly from the countryside of the overwhelmingly rural country (former empire) and then send them off to grisly trench warfare. In the popular consciousness, he quickly turned into a pathetic clown and was soon forced to flee the country, disguised in a woman's dress no less.
Kerensky was driven from power and from the country by the rebellious workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors of Russia, yearning for better lives and a better world, free of exploitation of one man or woman by another. The days of the Empire were over. What was at stake in the Revolution of 1917 was nothing less than the destruction of the then-existing, 'rules-based' imperialist world order that had visited upon the entire world a catastrophic world war. Today's iteration of that empire and its alliances, in the form of the NATO military alliance, is threatening new wars or making them happen. So history, it seems, has come full circle, albeit through entirely unforeseen and unpredictable twists and turns.
The inheritors of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in today's Russian Federation, spearheaded by its armed forces, are joining with anti-imperialist forces around the world in fighting to end the 21st century, 'rules-based' imperialist world'.
Then as now, their goal is to create a world in which all peoples and countries enjoy equal rights and equal respect of their sovereignty and social development.
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles ... ontinue-in
Author: Anthea » Fri Nov 08, 2024 2:43 am 
