"Western countries now advise the Ukrainian armed forces to save expensive armored vehicles and ammunition and send their soldiers to advance on foot using light weapons. As a result, the battlefields have turned into huge cemeteries, from which it is difficult or impossible even to evacuate bodies. A comment on the ‘Legitimny’ channel on Telegram states: “The Presidential Administration has switched to a strategy of saving equipment and clearing minefields with the feet of infantry. This tactic increases personnel losses and inflames the situation within the army, as soldiers do not particularly want to be sent to the slaughter,”

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Most of the Ukrainian soldiers engaged in the ‘counteroffensive’ have been forcibly conscripted. In August, many of them opted to surrender as prisoners of war rather than face death or injury in following orders. Some Ukrainian POWs have reported that they found themselves in the front lines after venturing out in their hometown or city on errands or to shop. Their training is minimal; effectively nothing, for all intents and purposes. Such is how Ukraine recruits to its army 18 months after Russia intervened militarily to put an end to the long war by Ukraine targeting the civilians of Donbass and Lugansk [two regions, together known as ‘Donbass’ that formally joined the Russian Federation in early 2022].

The Russian army is also conducting active propaganda directed at the soldiers of the AFU, urging them in video broadcasts to surrender and save their lives. The videos emphasize that Ukraine’s high command which is sending so many of its soldiers to the slaughter cares more about saving and protecting the Leopard tanks being supplied by Germany than saving the lives of its troops.

Captured AFU soldiers say that the Russian artillery works so intensively that they sometimes spend days lying on the ground to avoid injury or death. “To be honest, we can’t even build shelters for ourselves. Your [Russian] artillery won’t let us. The ‘bird’ [military drone] is in the sky all the time. I once laid there for three days; lots of shells are flying around the clock,” recalls one.

Apti Alaudinov, commander of the ‘Akhmat’ special forces from Chechnya and a Russian major general, says that the number of voluntary surrenders by Ukrainian soldiers has risen sharply recently. "We are taking POWs much more often compared to the beginning of the Special Military Operation. And they are surrendering much more quickly. It shows that they are very tired. They realize that they can’t see any way to victory in this war.

“Today, the AFU fighters are being driven to the front line by bayonets in their backs. We know this from various sources. We also know that in most units of the AFU, there are only some 25-30% of personnel remaining. The enemy is dying on a large scale. This overall picture is what leads more and more enemy fighters to surrender to us,” Alaudinov writes.

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The violation of Ukraine’s own laws and constitution in this case is explained by Ukraine’s dependence on the agenda of the U.S. and other Western countries. In late August, Kiev political analyst Kost Bondarenko wrote on Telegram that if Zelensky were to try and counter or contradict the U.S. position in Ukraine, he would simply be liquidated. According to Bondarenko, Ukraine today is a “third world” country, where leaders can be changed, just like as in African or Latin American states which, similarly to Ukraine, do not have actual sovereignty.

"Zelensky is not independent in his decisions. Even if tomorrow Zelensky thought it was necessary to make a decision for some kind of ceasefire, two phone calls from Britain and the United States would change his mind. If not, the next day there would simply be a different president in office," the Kiev political analyst said.

This dependency is a consequence of the endless loans that the Ukrainian government began to massively accumulate after the 2014 coup. In August 2023, the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance reported a record increase in the national debt in July 2023. It grew by $4 billion in that month, reaching $132.92 billion in total. Ukraine’s national debt now equals the country’s GDP, and the limit has not been reached. Kiev continues to accumulate new loans.

According to IMF estimates in June 2023, Ukraine’s public debt will amount to nearly 125% of GDP in 2024. By 2025, it will be 139% of GDP, and by 2026 it will reach 150%. The corresponding figure for the United States is 99%, for Germany is 47% for neighbouring Poland is 41%.

In addition to the external liabilities of Ukraine as a state, there are also the external debts of state-owned companies. The largest borrowers are Naftogaz (natural gas transmission), Ukravtodor (road and highway maintenance), Ukrenergo (electricity transmission), and Ukrzaliznytsya (rail transport and infrastructure). These companies and other large ones in Ukraine are all operated with the assistance if not direction of Western supervisors.

Ukrainian economist Oleksiy Kushch writes that the problem of public debt will become a heavy burden for Ukraine after the end of hostilities. “In any case, the factor of public debt will be one of the factors to make impossible any rapid growth after the war. And for recovery of GDP, we are obliged to pay creditors bonuses for growth under the GDP guarantees,” the economist writes. (Reuters explains in this brief report how Ukraine’s GDP guarantees to Western financial institutions will work.)

Kushch says that that Kiev must raise the issue of debt relief and obtain relief now. Once hostilities end, Ukraine will fall out of the world’s media spotlight and ideas voiced today of relieving or writing off the country’s debts will fall away.

Pro-Western politicians in Ukraine are afraid to even discusses the issue of debt relief because this may cause Western creditors to become even more wary or downright opposed to such ideas than they are today. They propose, instead, to focus on an absurd scenario for recovering debts, namely, defeat Russia militarily and then force it to pay war reparations. Such reparations would go to Western financial institutions (primarily the IMF) in order to cover Ukraine’s debts accumulated by the governments of post-Soviet Ukraine.

Forcibly conscripted Ukrainian soldiers are being ordered to advance on foot while under heavy fire through minefields in order to somehow, miraculously, achieve repayment by Russia to Western banks of the loans that the Ukrainian government has taken out. Much of these loans has been embezzled, first through the mechanism of a violent coup in 2014, now through a reckless and entirely unwinnable war."