{"id":282579,"date":"2024-12-16T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=282579"},"modified":"2024-12-14T05:59:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T05:59:35","slug":"popular-revolt-looming-in-ukraine-zelenskys-battle-over-death-numbers-speaks-for-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/12\/popular-revolt-looming-in-ukraine-zelenskys-battle-over-death-numbers-speaks-for-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Popular Revolt Looming in Ukraine? Zelensky\u2019s Battle Over Death Numbers Speaks for Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Ukraine’s casualties\u00a0 –\u00a0 BRICS Portal<\/p><\/div>\n

12 Dec 2024 <\/em>– President-elect Donald Trump has made the news stating that Ukraine lost around 400,000 soldiers<\/a> and \u201cmany more civilians\u201d in its ongoing conflict with Russia since 2022. Posting on the Truth Social platform, he stated, on December 9, that\u00a0 this is \u201ca war that should never have started, and could go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky however gives only a fraction of that figure, insisting that 43,000 Ukrainians have died thus far plus there being 370,000 \u201ccases of providing assistance to the wounded\u201d. Zelensky added that, in the case of Ukraine, \u201capproximately 50 percent of the wounded return to the ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Trump\u2019s number could be too high, the Ukrainian leader\u2019s counting on the other hand is, simply put, hard to believe. The figure of 43,000 deaths is higher than the 31,000 he gave in February, but still is quite lower than estimates by Western intelligence agencies, according to<\/a> the Washington Post. The point is that the issue of the number of people killed is critically important for Zelensky for his survival. Last week, he disputed a Wall Street Journal news report of about 80,000 deaths<\/a> (twice as much as he currently claims).<\/p>\n

Beyond deaths and numbers, the situation in Ukraine is no good, regardless of how one quantifies it. For example, I wrote<\/a> earlier this month about how the corruption scandals in Ukraine are ruining its energy infrastructure amid Russian attacks, with disastrous outcomes for its defense efforts. It has in fact left the country vulnerable before the winter<\/a>. There have been blackouts and people expect massive power cuts. Meanwhile, Mustafa Nayyem, former head of the government agency tasked with preserving strategic infrastructure, says he had requested \u20ac1.4 billion for \u201cthird-level protection\u201d bunkers used in substations. The funds were blocked, due to (he claims<\/a>) \u201cvested interests\u201d having to do with bribes no longer being paid to Kyiv\u2019s officers. Nayem resigned<\/a> from his post, and the political crisis goes on.<\/p>\n

Back to numbers, the idea of \u201cfighting to the last Ukrainian\u201d has become a trope in political discourse – be it as it may, the figures are troublesome. Consider this:<\/p>\n

Europe now faces the largest population displacement crisis since World War II. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported, in September, that over\u00a0 6 million people<\/a> have left Ukraine to become refugees. There are also 3.7 million<\/a> people displaced within the country. This means almost a third of the population has fled their homes. Ukraine\u2019s population in February 2022 was 43.5 million<\/a> and is now only 37.9 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With the impacts the conflict has brought upon the economy, almost 25% of the Ukrainian population<\/a> now live in poverty<\/p>\n

There are no policy in the country to address the issue of war veterans, who are exposed to organized crime recruitment<\/a> risks. According to the\u00a0 Numbeo Crime Index 2024, four Ukrainian cities made it to the top 10 most criminal in Eastern Europe (Kyiv, Dnipro, Odessa, and Kharkiv). The organized crime issue is related to the corruption problem (the country\u2019s level of corruption is comparable to that of Uganda<\/a>), and there has been a jump in illegal weapons sales.<\/p>\n

On top of all of that, Ukraine is debating drafting 18 years old<\/a>. I wrote<\/a> before about Ukraine\u2019s extreme large-scale conscription efforts, which include mobilizing men over 50 years old and even those who would normally be deemed as physically unfit for service.<\/p>\n

The irony of it is that during the presidential campaign, Zelensky promised to put an end to the War in Donbass<\/a> (which started in 2014<\/a>). In fact, \u201ca native Russian speaker himself\u201d, he enjoyed \u201cstrong support from the country’s Russian-speaking regions<\/a>.\u201d Making a peace deal is of course something the radical nationalists and their armed militias would never allow and things escalated instead.<\/p>\n

It would not be an exaggeration at all to describe today\u2019s Ukraine as a kind of corrupt oligarchic dictatorship – with an acute far-right problem, on top of that. In fact, even pro-Maidan philosopher Serhiy Datsiuk (writing for Euromaidan Press, of all places) described his country in 2017 as \u201ccivil resistance forced the Ukrainian government to move towards an oligarchic dictatorship.\u201d He wrote: \u201cThe nationalists are responding to the threat of oligarchic dictatorship by stirring up feelings of nationalist revanchism and mobilizing civil groups under the banner of nationalism. In this case, a nationalist dictatorship is just as likely as an oligarchic one because the first is seen as an alternative and a lesser evil… So, we are now faced with a dramatic choice: oligarchic dictatorship or nationalist authoritarianism.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also admitted that the \u201cdirective objectives outlined by (Ukrainian) nationalists\u201d amount to \u201crevenge on, and suspicion and hatred of Russians and Russian speakers\u201d, adding that \u201cfor many Ukrainians, the easiest way out of this turmoil and the best way to solve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is to persecute Russian speakers in Ukraine.\u201d Regardless of one\u2019s own political sympathies, any honest discussion on the roots of the current confrontation should include such ethnopolitical issues as well as the geopolitics of NATO enlargement – or else one fails to grasp some of the key points.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned Euromaidan Press shares its names and values with the ultra-nationalist Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. By \u201cnationalists\u201d, Dyatsiuk refers to the Ukrainian radicals who celebrate<\/a> controversial figures such as Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army combatants as national heroes (so does the Ukrainian state today<\/a>, in official functions). Those were Nazi collaborators who also committed war crimes against Poles \u2013 there are often considered genocide even by prominent Ukrainian historians such as Yaroslav Hrytsak.<\/p>\n

The nationalist-oligarchic dilemma in itself already is a recipe for turmoil. Now add to it corruption scandals, blackouts during winter time and a draconian draft, with a President who tries to downplay more realistic figures pertaining to the number of people killed and maimed.<\/p>\n

To sum it up, the risk of domestic unrest and anti-draft uprisings in Ukraine is very real.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Uriel Araujo, Ph.D. is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – infobrics.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Dec 2024 – Donald Trump stated on 9 Dec that Ukraine lost around 400,000 soldiers in its armed conflict with Russia: “This is a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":282580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[2914,239,1268,253,278,249,961,70,2810,481],"class_list":["post-282579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe","tag-anti-nato","tag-brics","tag-european-union","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282581,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282579\/revisions\/282581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}