@ramacca @Spadge Vernacular @Mutzo Nutzo good report here from Time magazine today...
“Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip to Washington, D.C.
time.com
Part of it...
Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”
The picture looked different at the outset of the invasion. One branch of the military, known as the Territorial Defense Forces, reported accepting 100,000 new recruits in the first 10 days of all-out war. The mass mobilization was fueled in part by the optimistic predictions of some senior officials that the war would be won in months if not weeks. “Many people thought they could sign up for a quick tour and take part in a heroic victory,” says the second member of the President’s team.
Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.
Its calamitous for Ukrainians on the battlefield. All along the frontline Russian forces are gaining ground, particularly around Avdiivka. The HQ has pulled out and as for the rest, is it Bahkmut or Mariupol levels of losses.
Zelensky is making excuses, they've had all the so called game changers and they haven't changed the game in their favour.
Zelensky has given up the ghost and is just making excuses before, hopefully, he is allowed to negotiate a settlement.
Ukraine is war weary and a majority are more concerned about corruption than, 'the Russian invasion'.
The 'peace plan' talks today were a prelude to the US Empire ditching Zelensky, now they've got a bigger concern. They may well trickle money to Ukraine to keep up appearances but they'll ditch them as quickly as they ditched Afghanistan. The US Empire may well need Russia, and China, to negotiate some sort of deal, that saves the colonists in occupied Palestine, if it goes really belly up for the US's proxies in the middle East.
