The Long War #29
Exhaustion and negotiations, the fate of Kherson's Ukrainian prisoners in Russia & improving mobilization
(This is a fairly long take on the mood in Ukraine after what has been a very busy couple of weeks. If you’re interested in the usual curation of interesting stories from Ukraine, you can skip this, it is down below !)
KYIV—It has been a whirlwind past couple of days here in Ukraine, with a cascade of news reports that brought a gradual mood shift, both inside Ukraine and abroad, out into the open. There was of course that Time article about Volodymyr Zelensky, which triggered a heated discussion in the country that I discussed in Ukrainian Pulse #7. But that controversy was quickly supplanted by another, even bigger debate, after the publication by the Economist of an interview in which Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi used the dreaded word “stalemate” to describe the current situation on the front. That interview led to a rare public disagreement between the military and the political leadership, as Volodymyr Zelensky openly rebuked his top general by declaring that “everyone is tired [...] But this is not a stalemate”.
Controversial blogger Oleksiy Arestovych then took advantage of the debate by announcing a presidential run, blasting the current authorities and touting a peace plan that would see Ukraine join NATO while promising not to take back territories still under Russian control by force (a version of this idea was also put forward by Francis Fukuyama, though he saw Ukraine liberating Southern Ukraine as a prerequisite).
Then reports emerged that 19 soldiers from the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade had been killed in a Russian strike, during an award ceremony organized just 20 kilometers from the Zaporizhzhia frontline—the apparent recklessness of the unit’s command triggered an uproar in society and criticism from Zelensky himself.
Finally, opposition MP Oleksiy Honcharenko declared he had received information that the presidential office was getting ready to hold presidential elections in March—something both civil society and political opposition remain vehemently against. That controversy was quickly extinguished however as Volodymyr Zelensky answered on the same day that now was “not the time” for elections.
Ukraine and Ukrainian society have entered a new phase of this war, one defined by uncertainty. This had been brewing for some time of course, as more and more Ukrainians started coming to terms with the idea that the war wouldn’t end soon. But the admittance, first tacit and then public through the voice of General Zaluzhny, that Ukrainian forces weren’t going to take Melitopol or even Tokmak this year, has made it obvious.
It’s easy to get lost in the tactical discussions about military operations—brigades, Leopards, FPV drones, cluster ammunitions, bloody assaults along treelines—and to forget how society can perceive these events. I recently talked to a Ukrainian language teacher who fled her home city of Luhansk back in 2016. As the summer counter offensive kicked off, she and her husband genuinely believed they’d be back in Luhansk by the end of the year. Others had similar hopes. Now, the prospect of another winter of power outages (something that, at least, everyone is now expecting and is more or less prepared for) comes on top of the realization that the uncertainty gripping them right now will last an indefinite amount of time. You often hear in Ukraine that the war is a marathon, not a sprint—but a marathon has a set distance, a visible finish line that you’re always working towards. War is more like a bizarre endurance race, one where you’d be running without ever knowing when the organizers will call it off.
Even in areas away from the frontline, Ukrainians live in what a mother of twin babies born in Kyiv weeks before the Russian invasion described to me as an “imitation of normalcy”. “There are plans and there are wishes, and you can have wishes but you can’t really make plans” she said.
Exhaustion is palpable, from ordinary Ukrainians to volunteers struggling more and more to raise funds for the military while dealing with their own weariness. “There is no way out” a man who has been supporting the Ukrainian military since 2014 told me in Kharkiv, “no way out other than victory”. That exhaustion brings frustration too, the common sentiment among volunteers and soldiers looking at the relatively normal lives in cities like Kyiv or Lviv that the country hasn’t yet fully mobilized as it should.
It’s easy to look at this situation and think, depending on your own biases, that this means that Ukrainians will soon be demanding negotiations and the end of the war; or that this fatigue does not relate in any way to a readiness for some kind of less-than-ideal settlement, as shown by the (very real) resilience of Ukraine’s society and economy.
It is, I think, more complicated. It is largely true that even among ordinary Ukrainians who are now trying to live their lives as normally as possible, there is little support for immediate negotiations and for concessions. However, this is in large part because people do not see any viable path to negotiations and do not believe that Russia is willing to discuss anything sincerely—so, even if one is exhausted, even if one believes deep down that giving up some territory in exchange for peace could be worth it, the discussion is moot because nobody can picture a situation where doing this would actually bring peace.
It is clearly that part of the population that Arestovych is trying to appeal to, by proposing a scenario where Ukraine enters NATO while promising to not attempt to seize back the rest of its territory occupied by Russia. He is basically selling a path to end the war that, on one hand, couldn’t be considered a Ukrainian victory, but that would guarantee some amount of security for Ukraine, and which Ukrainian people could therefore accept. The problem, of course, is that there is no indication that a Russia gearing up for a long war would have any interest in accepting this. Hence the deadlock.
Something to read (in English)
The Guardian | Life on the frontline in Kherson: dodging shells, facing death and refusing to leave | November 7
A powerful, predictably gut-wrenching report about life in Kherson, probably the scariest city in Ukraine. The city was liberated almost exactly a year ago and the situation in the city gradually became worse and worse the following months, with near-constant and seemingly random shelling by Russian forces located on the other side of the river. 397 people have been killed and 2,057 injured by the shelling since the liberation, according to local authorities.
This nearest of misses pushed Svitlana to evacuate the last of her children. She herself is going nowhere. For one thing, she’s now living in the house her godmother left behind; she feels she must protect it from the looters she says ransack abandoned dwellings. And there are still life’s comforts. She has conquered her nerves to the point that her hands are perfectly still when she gets her nails done.
openDemocracy | A long road to freedom: How Russia stole 2,000 Ukrainian prisoners | November 10
Another story about Kherson and the city’s occupation, and an impressive investigation into the fate of the Ukrainian prisoners taken by the Russian military when it retreated from the city.
Olexandr was released from a prison in Krasnodar in April 2023, after completing treatment for tuberculosis. A certificate of release was formally issued by the Hola Pristan prison on 23 March. With this in hand, Olexandr received the remains of his personal belongings, his old civilian clothes and 2,000 Russian rubles for the journey home. But Russian police officers were waiting for him at the prison gates. “I tried to get around them, but they shouted: ‘Sasha, we’re coming for you.’” he recalled. He was taken to a police station and fined 2,000 rubles for illegally crossing the Russian border.
Something to read (in Ukrainian)
Ukrainska Pravda (in Ukrainian) | Why the current mobilization isn’t enough, and how to improve recruiting | November 1
Even before General Valery Zaluzhny mentioned the need to “expand the category of citizens who can be called up for training or mobilization” in his essay published by the Economist, the question of mobilization and the various issues surrounding it had already been a hot topic of debate, centered around the broadly-acknowledged challenge of filling the ranks even as most Ukrainians motivated to fight have already joined the army.
Quoting a variety of sources, this Ukrainska Pravda story asks whether full mobilization is needed, lists a few core issues with the process as it is happening now and tries to lay out a plan to bolster recruiting. One very interesting, though anecdotal, view expressed by a soldier of the 3rd Assault brigade is that “mobilization takes place first in the villages, and then according to class disparities”. It’s certainly a common view, though we don’t have the data to back it up.
The story focuses heavily on 3rd Assault brigade, of Azov fame, as a successful example of a recruitment process using both heavy marketing (the brigade’s recruitment posters are plastered all over Kyiv and in several Ukrainian cities) and some reassuring methods—like giving the possibility to would-be recruits of giving up at any point during the first week of training. The state has also been mulling the possibility of giving mobilized people more of a say regarding which role they would like to fulfill when they join the army (the obvious counter-argument being that almost no one will willingly choose to become a rifleman on the frontline).
The article doesn’t really address the wider issues surrounding mobilization. But it is interesting as part of a broader discussion that acknowledges the inevitably of mobilization, but also the importance of maintaining social cohesion in that process (see my interview of Mykola Bielieskov in Ukrainian Pulse #6 who talked more about this).
Graty (in Ukrainian & Russian) | “Lucky to be alive.” A court in the Kyiv region began to try a Russian paratrooper accused of war crimes | November 6
The first trial of a Russian soldier attracted huge attention back in May 2022, but the understandable desire to bring to justice Russian troops accused of war crimes just as the news of the horrific Bucha massacre was still fresh also raised concerns—at the time, Ukrainian human rights NGO Zmina noted that “the issue of chain of command was largely overlooked during the hearings” while “the whole investigation process took about a month, an extremely high pace, which raises concerns over the quality level of evidence collected”.
Those concerns were seemingly heard, and Ukraine became more careful in its handling of what it rightly considers a crucial matter. But though it faded from the media attention, trials of Russian soldiers haven’t stopped, as shown by this story from Ukrainian media Graty. Facing the judge (through a video camera) is a 28 years-old prisoner of war from the 98th Airbone division. The soldier was captured in the Kherson region in August 2022, but was accused of killing a civilian in the Kyiv region in March 2022 when he and other Russian soldiers shot at a car.