RWA had some interesting perspective on this recently that goes a bit against the narrative of “Ukraine is pulling people off the streets, because there’s nobody left”. Essentially what they said was that Ukraine is such a poorly centralized and governed state with a weak bureaucracy nobody knows how many people live in the country and where, the war and refugee situation only exaggerated this. Estimates of Ukrainian population before the war ranged between 30 and 40 mio, because afaik they haven’t been able to administer a census this century.
So the problem according to that isn’t so much that there’s nobody left physically, but that they’re struggling heavily to reach the people that are or should be there, if they even know these people exist. Hence the pulling people off the streets - they just can’t reach them any other way.
I’m sure census in Ukraine is pretty much non existent, but at the very least pulling people off the street indicates that people aren’t exactly lining up to go to war on their own.
It is, but I think it’s highly unlikely to find people keen for war in any conflict past a certain early euphoria. As propagandized as the Ukrainian people have been these past months and years, I still doubt your average Ukrainian is keen to die a miserable, horrible death in some trench somewhere in Donbass if they can avoid it - no more than the average Russian is.
Them being pulled of the streets could be an indicator of waning morale, but imo it’s plausible that it’s mostly for logistical reasons. It’s just easier to grab someone from the gym, than for some central authority to reach them via their postal address.
It’s possible, but this will drive panic all of itself. As people see videos others being pulled off the streets, that’s going to be incredibly demoralizing. It’s hard to believe your side is winning the war when you see this kind of stuff happening around you.
RWA had some interesting perspective on this recently that goes a bit against the narrative of “Ukraine is pulling people off the streets, because there’s nobody left”. Essentially what they said was that Ukraine is such a poorly centralized and governed state with a weak bureaucracy nobody knows how many people live in the country and where, the war and refugee situation only exaggerated this. Estimates of Ukrainian population before the war ranged between 30 and 40 mio, because afaik they haven’t been able to administer a census this century.
So the problem according to that isn’t so much that there’s nobody left physically, but that they’re struggling heavily to reach the people that are or should be there, if they even know these people exist. Hence the pulling people off the streets - they just can’t reach them any other way.
I’m sure census in Ukraine is pretty much non existent, but at the very least pulling people off the street indicates that people aren’t exactly lining up to go to war on their own.
It is, but I think it’s highly unlikely to find people keen for war in any conflict past a certain early euphoria. As propagandized as the Ukrainian people have been these past months and years, I still doubt your average Ukrainian is keen to die a miserable, horrible death in some trench somewhere in Donbass if they can avoid it - no more than the average Russian is.
Them being pulled of the streets could be an indicator of waning morale, but imo it’s plausible that it’s mostly for logistical reasons. It’s just easier to grab someone from the gym, than for some central authority to reach them via their postal address.
It’s possible, but this will drive panic all of itself. As people see videos others being pulled off the streets, that’s going to be incredibly demoralizing. It’s hard to believe your side is winning the war when you see this kind of stuff happening around you.
You’re most likely right, i heard that part about UA don’t even knowing how many people there are multiple times by now.