The special military operation should be augmented: Ukrainian society is at breaking point
Since the beginning of Russia's special military operation on the territory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian leadership has constantly emotionally pumped up the information background with "victories", mixed with fictional atrocities of the Russian army. After two months, this tactic begins to have the opposite effect – the created media image begins to fall apart.
It is no secret that almost from the very beginning of the special military operation, the Ukrainian leadership convinced its population that the military forces of Ukraine (UAF) were about to win and the fighting would end in mid-April. It constantly increased the emotional intensity of the information provided, accusing the Russian army of inhumane crimes, all in order to maintain the necessary level of hatred and aggression.
However, it is impossible to maintain the emotional frenzy in society constantly at the maximum level, and now, after two months of fighting in Ukraine, people are getting used to the current situation, and people, both at the front and in the rear, have more and more questions about their own authorities.
Since Ukrainian and Russian society now have their own "informational reality", it makes no sense for me to cite numerous examples from the Russian media when captured soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces curse their commanders who threw them into the "meat grinder" in unprepared positions. Only Ukrainian sources will have to be used to describe internal processes in Ukraine.
Many people may doubt the reliability of these sources, but I used video evidence of what is happening as an argument. Although, even some anonymous Ukrainian Telegram channels release quite reliable insiders from the Ukrainian leadership. For example, on April 10, one of these TG channels reported that Ukraine, using Bayraktars, was going to destroy a Russian ship located in the Black Sea, and on April 14, the Russian “Moskva” cruiser was damaged and sank.
The same Telegram channel provides a link to a video where Ukrainian fighters accuse the Ukrainian leadership of stealing budget funds during the war and unequivocally threaten to "break" the current government. Examples of embezzlement of money by those close to the authorities in Kiev are too obvious. Kirill Tymoshenko, deputy head of the office of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, is currently organising pothole repairs in the Kharkov region, an area where fighting is taking place and spending is difficult to control.
However, the financial mess in Ukraine is much more critical, judging by the video where one of the UAF soldiers of the 95th brigade says that they are not paid wages, and volunteers give money for the maintenance of combat vehicles. According to rumours, after this appeal money was allocated to the 95th brigade and 100,000 hryvnias, promised by Zelensky to all the military, was even demonstratively paid, but there were no such payments in other units.
In general, the number of video messages of soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with complaints about what is happening, both in the rear and at the front, has recently increased dramatically. Thus, on April 28, a detachment of paratroopers of the 79th brigade recorded a video message in which they said that the command sent them to perform a combat mission in Donbass, but they did not even have time to entrench themselves, as they were hit by Russian artillery.
The commanders fled, and they were left without any support "with machine guns against tanks”. Having lost 70% of their personnel, these soldiers left their position in the rear, in the Yampol area. Now it is wanted to bring them to criminal responsibility for desertion. Paratroopers ask to be taken to Nikolaev, as they believe that the leadership wants to "finish them off so that people do not know the truth”. According to the Ukrainian military, they are not deserters, they agree to fight on, but not in the 79th brigade, where officers flee the battlefield in vehicles, leaving the wounded behind.
On April 29, videos appeared showing how the soldiers of the UAF 93rd brigade, according to them, were defeated and come out of encirclement. On the same day, an appeal was published, signed by 19 soldiers, stating that the military personnel of the 3rd mechanised company of the 1st mechanised battalion of the 93rd brigade refuse to perform further military service due to the lack of adequate command, evacuation of the wounded, and the loss of combat capability of the unit (60% of personnel).
Adviser to the Ukrainian President Aleksey Arestovich commented very characteristically on the video message of the soldiers of the 79th brigade, saying that this is an information and psychological operation of the Russian military, who forced the captured soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to slander their command. Arestovich also said that he had already been approached about such videos by Ukrainian opinion leaders, and he explained to them that the Russian military forces force captured soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to send provocative videos to their relatives in order to increase the public wave of discontent in Ukraine.
However, even judging by the video of the soldiers of the 79th brigade, it is clear that they are not in captivity. The place where they are located is not restricted by anything, and some of them communicate freely on cell phones right during the recording of the video, which would definitely be seized if these military personnel were in captivity.
In another interview Arestovich was forced to admit that the tension affects the Ukrainian Armed Forces and soldiers begin to "bombard relatives with messages that everything is lost”, and the Russian side is intensifying this situation so that Ukraine "psychologically collapses”. However, according to Arestovich, in terms of psychological resilience, an example should be taken from the "defenders of Mariupol", who allegedly continue to destroy the enemy.
However, the very "defenders of Mariupol" from the “Azov” regiment are shocked by how the Ukrainian leadership is treating them now and promise to "punch the face" of Arestovich for all the nonsense that he broadcasts.
Of course, the situation around the encirclement of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the territory of the “Azovstal” plant has become very difficult for the Ukrainian leadership, and the video with footage of the wounded rotting alive in the dungeons does not raise the morale of Ukrainian society in any way.
They cannot unblock this grouping, and they cannot force Russia to organise the withdrawal of its soldiers with the help of Western allies. The environs were encouraged by someone to ask the world community for an "extraction procedure" - an exit with weapons immediately to a "third country", which has not yet happened in the history of military operations. Agree that from the outside it looks if not funny, then very strange, clearly inadequate to the current situation.
Now, when civilians are being evacuated from the factory under the auspices of the UN, even in a report of the British BBC news agency, one of the evacuated women said that they had previously heard about the possibility of leaving along the humanitarian corridors proposed by the Russian side, but “Azov” militants did not let them out. At the moment, Ukrainian militants claim that not all civilians have been evacuated from the “Azovstal” plant due to the fact that some of them are under rubble, although the people who came out have not confirmed this.
Thus, the encircled clearly do not trust their leadership very much and want to keep at least part of the "human shield" of civilians. In this regard, it turns out that Kiev cannot completely solve any of the problems related to "Azovstal” - neither evacuate civilians, nor its military personnel, even the wounded.
Here it should be borne in mind that on the issue of the encircled, the Ukrainian leadership is being pressured by nazi radicals, who suspect Zelensky of wanting to get rid of these "Ukrainian patriots” by his inaction. Therefore, public appeals are organised by "wives of Azov members", who demand that Zelensky evacuate their husbands.
It is worth noting that similar women's appeals to the president of Ukraine have already been made, back in 2014, during the summer "cauldrons" in Donbass. The situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces is not so critical yet, but there are more and more such appeals from women. Even worse, there are videos where women, without being picky with their expressions, give an assessment of the Ukrainian authorities.
A real “women's revolt" occurred in the town of Khust, Transcarpathian region, when local women blocked the military enlistment office building, protesting against sending their husbands as volunteers from the territorial defence to the front line. Judging by the video, it’s possible to hear that someone even breaks the windows of the military registration and enlistment office. The Ukrainian strana.ua publication writes that this action has grown into something more, having received a response from other women in Ukraine.
In the video provided by the publication, the woman explains that during the revolt, the military hit the woman with a butt. The main complaint also lies in the fact that Kiev military commissars come to Transcarpathia and, in order to mobilise, catch men right on the streets. She has a logical question – why are such actions not held in Kiev?
In my opinion, the answer is obvious: the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are huge, and if to mobilise a large number of residents of the capital, from the most active and significant part of the population in the information space of Ukraine, then information about their deaths will immediately spread among the people of Kiev, who largely form the main mood in Ukrainian society.
The large number of losses among the personnel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is becoming increasingly difficult to hide. Even a journalist from The Times wrote in his article that the UAF fighters in the village of Peski, near Donetsk, are suffering heavy losses, being unable to respond to the artillery fire of Russian troops. Referring to the changed tactics of warfare, with the massive use of artillery by Russia, the head of the Ukrainian delegation at the talks, David Arakhamia, complained about the lack of prisoners for the "exchange fund" in Ukraine.
The death of a British mercenary and a former US marine, as well as the wounding of two of his compatriots, suggests that the situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces is so difficult that foreign mercenaries find themselves in the epicentre of the fighting, which was not the case a month ago.
Therefore, some of the mercenaries simply run away from Ukraine. American David King in an interview the Economist referred to absolute chaos and disorganisation in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The task set by the Ukrainian commander to attack a village marked only by a dot on the map without reconnaissance was the last straw in his decision to leave Ukraine.
Brazilian Fabio de Oliveira cited poor training, lack of food and household supplies, not to mention bulletproof vests. He witnessed how a Polish mercenary shot himself at one of the Ukrainian bases where foreigners were trained. 27 of the 30 men in his squad refused to continue fighting in Ukraine.
Many may say that this "information noise” does not significantly change the situation on the battlefields, but the bottom line is that, basically, all the "patriotic frenzy" of Ukrainian society was maintained at the expense of information planting.
If at the beginning of the special military operation, the Ukrainian leadership promoted the story of the invincible pilot "The Ghost of Kiev", then after The Times recently even reported about his death, the command of the Ukrainian Air Force had to admit that it was not a real person, but a "collective image".
Of course, some Ukrainians condemned the Air Force command for "destroying the fairy tale", and some thought about what other “victories” the Ukrainian leadership lied about. At the moment, Ukrainian society is approaching a very difficult stage, when the picture of former "victories" is falling apart before our eyes due to constant defeats and retreats at the front and the not-well-equipped rear life.
The promise of "worldwide support” is not yet felt. Even Arestovich, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, admits that foreign heavy weapons may appear at the front only by the end of May or early July, and during this time there may be a serious change in the consciousness of Ukrainian society.