It was Vladimir Putin who initially noted that the West is willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Well, it looks like it’s finally happening—we’ve run out of Ukrainians, or at least we ran out of the ones willing to die for their country. Ukraine is running short of the young, fertile, and productive.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February, 2022, the media lit up with stories of bumbling, murdering Russkies and heroic Ukrainians. The legend of the Ghost of Kyiv, the mystery pilot destroying legions of Russian fighter planes—eventually debunked as propaganda—raised expectations of a quick triumph of the underdog.
Many Ukrainians volunteered in these early days of war. Out of 6.1 million living abroad, some returned to defend their country. Martial law was swiftly imposed, barring able-bodied military age men from crossing the border. In the the rapidly aging post-Soviet nation, military age was defined as 18 to 60.
In a piece I wrote last year for The American Conservative, I collected draft-dodging stories from the back pages of Ukrainian media. I took care to avoid Russian sources that could be dismissed as propaganda. I also found what was then a very unusual New York Times item that described popular Telegram channels that alert subscribers of real time locations of conscription officers issuing summons on the streets of Ukrainian cities.
An interesting twist on the real time draft-dodging tools was a March 2023 post on a censored and hyper patriotic Kharkiv Live channel recommending this type of group chat to over a half a million of its subscribers. Vocally expressed nationalistic sentiments, as it turned out, don’t necessarily translate into willingness to take up arms — or even support of mass mobilization.
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