Most Ukrainian men don’t want to participate in fratricidal war, says Putin

By Vladimir V. Sytin
The Ukrainian Times

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, there are 2.5 million migrants from Ukraine in Russia, including 1.3 million men of draft age. Previously, he promised to grant political asylum to all Ukrainians who do not want to be summoned to a civil war in the Donbas region.

Mr. Putin is sure that most Ukrainian servicemen do not want to take part in the fratricidal war, whereas Donbas militiamen are highly motivated to defend their families on their native land against a neo-Nazi junta in Kiev. The heroic defenders of Donbas say they are fighting for autonomy, for the right to live and work in their own Russian-speaking region.

The civil war in Donbas earns real profits for the war industry, but only an ersatz glory for Ukrainian neo-Nazi militants. Real soldiers take no pride in it. Instead, to a real hero, the U.S.-sponsored fratricidal war is a source of shame and embarrassment.

In fact, Anatoly Matios, chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, revealed that 10,000 Ukrainian servicemen were suspected of desertion. Besides, thousands of Ukrainian servicemen are prosecuted for evasion of military service.

In the Kherson region alone 2,813 reservists evade service. And the Kharkov region has the most abysmal turnout, with only 17% of those receiving draft orders responding. As the Ukrainian neo-Nazi authorities prosecute no-shows, human rights advocates are speaking in defense of draft dodgers.

According to many observers, draft commanders ask for bribes, and commanders including the so-called president, Peotr Poroshenko, or Petya Parasha (close-stool in a prison cell), as wags call him, maintain Russian business ties while asking soldiers to die for the pro-Western Ukraine.

More than 15,000 former Ukrainian servicemen have decided to go over to the Russian army after the reunification of Crimea with Russia.

Data from the sociological group Rating show that 77% of citizens of Ukraine fear greatly the fratricidal war. Importantly, only 7% of respondents are concerned about secession of Donbas with the large Russian population from this country.

As Vladimir Putin once put it, the civil war in Donbas serves the geopolitical purposes of deterring Russia, whereas that does not respond to the basic interests of citizens of Ukraine. However, few in the decadent West seem to recognize that it is the NATO rather than Russia, which has been spreading expansionary tentacles beyond traditional boundaries. Since the early 1990s, Western aims have been to draw countries out of the Soviet sphere of influence and into the aggressive NATO. Ukraine has always been seen as the ultimate test as to where the balance lies.