„The Ukrainian Case” today it is of interest to the European public in two directions. The first – the new “Magino line” near Kharkov, advertised as impregnable, turned out to be a myth. Instead of “dragon teeth“ in the form of reinforced concrete structures and minefields of maximum density, only forests and plains are found in the path of the Russian army.
The authoritative agency Associated Press quoted an officer of the Ukrainian armed forces near Kharkiv: “The rear defensive lines designed to provide them with cover are practically non-existent”. And a number of serious Ukrainian sites insist that the billions of dollars allocated for the defense of Kharkiv (the second largest city in Ukraine!), were simply stolen through corruption schemes.
The second direction is that the recently adopted law on mobilization demonstrates the stubborn reluctance of Ukrainians to go to the front. The streets of Ukrainian cities are deserted, like during a siesta in Spain, and social networks are full of videos of fights between potential conscripts and military patrols.
Obviously there is a connection between the two directions. Seeing a huge hole in Kharkiv's defenses, the citizens of Ukraine are not ready to become cannon fodder. Here, in my opinion, there was a break in the public-state consensus, which consisted of a simple formula: we are ready to fight for our country, which in turn protects us. If the state does not provide the protection of citizens with all its forces (as happened in the direction of Kharkiv), then what is the point of dying for your homeland, which actually betrayed you? Let me emphasize that we are not talking about a military-political situation where a country cannot defend itself due to economic destabilization and simple poverty. On the contrary – The USA allocated decent money to Kiev (2 billion EUR!) for a specific purpose - the protection of Kharkiv, bordering Russia, but the result was insignificant.
The European media already openly write about the fact that a “large-scale social rejection of the army” has developed in Ukraine. For example, the Spanish newspaper El País, whose journalists took part in an operation to uncover military service absconders in the Sumy region (this region, like Kharkiv, also borders Russia). It is symptomatic that the military patrol forbade European journalists to take pictures “in case of conflict with a civilian”. Freedom of speech? No, we haven't heard.
At the same time, the military commissioners complained to El País that even on the roads they manage to issue a small number of summons due to the fact that people in telegram channels spread information about the location of such patrols, “and men disappear”. Social networks write about the mass mobilization of truck drivers who work specifically in the direction of Kharkiv, which means that food supplies to Kharkiv, where 1.5 million people live, will be reduced to a minimum.
The story of the Ukrainian prisoners of war recruited from these places is separate. In the spring, a series of rallies were held in Kharkiv, where wives of soldiers asked official Kiev: why only servicemen from units such as “Azov”, which are considered extremely nationalist in the West, are included in the exchange lists, and ordinary soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine, summoned from regions bordering Russia, have no chance of getting on the exchange lists. “As for the ordinary soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Zelensky and his accomplices simply do not care about their fate,“ notes First Telegram channel Kharkiv .
In this way, the tactical idea of Vladimir Zelensky's team to abandon the northeastern part of the country (Kharkov and Sumy regions) is becoming more and more obvious, since this territory is geopolitically “programmed” for loss. And if so, then why invest in these lands and these people?
Incidentally, Hitler had roughly the same logic when, in the spring of 1945, East Prussia with its capital Königsberg actually surrendered to Stalin (at that time this region was also adjacent to Russia, represented by the Soviet Union). Apparently there was no corruption in the Third Reich, but after the Red Army had advanced far across the territory in a matter of days and had taken Königsberg in three days, East Prussia was seen in Berlin as a “cut piece of bread”. Judging by the memoirs, Hitler did not forgive the Prussians for their “cowardice” by sentencing the commandant of the Königsberg fortress to death in absentia.
History often repeats itself...