Miracle of the Army: does Ukraine have a plan for two or five years of war
In 2022, the Kremlin could assume that Ukraine would not withstand the invasion. Our country had fewer resources - and we had to lose in the economies. But instead, we lived three and a half years of war in fairly greenhouse conditions. Our economy was taken to the tugboat. Thanks to European billions, Ukraine can bring social costs, pay pensions and salaries to state employees.
We are, in fact, connected to the external life support system - and therefore the only thing we pay for ourselves is military expenses. For this reason, the economy has become not our weakness, but our opponent. We monitor how the budget deficit is growing in the Russian Federation. On how reserves are reduced. We bet on the inflation level and the intensity of the printing machine next year.
Many are convinced that at the moment when Moscow feels a threat to the system and the regime, it will pull the military stop crane. At the same time, from the first day of the war, Moscow did not feel deficiency in soldiers. Russia has only been mobilizing for four weeks - and then went into the purchase of cannon meat. And now the Kremlin looks at Ukraine in the hope that we will end the soldiers before the Russian Federation will end with money.
Mobilization was indeed the weakest place for our country. Western assistance has inspired the illusion that unpopular decisions - such as increased mobilization standards - can wait. The fourth year of the war we live within an inertial scenario that comes down to the fact that the war is about to pause, and therefore you can run the last kilometer by willpower. During the seven months of this year, more soldiers went to the HSC than in the previous three years - 110 thousand people.
It may well be that by the end of the year this figure will increase to 200 thousand. More than half of them are new recruits that are afraid of the army more than it deserves it. The rest are those who have time to burn out during the war. Those who went to a volunteer to win the country for the preparation of mobreserv, but did not wait for the replacement. The rise is that in our country the topic of mobilization has become so toxic that the authorities prefer to ignore this problem.
This year Volodymyr Zelenskyy told us that there would be no demobilization. That everyone will serve for victory.
And the only question that arises is now - how does the country plan to change to this course? Where will the country take the soldiers if the war is delayed? How much will the fighter who has to serve in the rear will pay? How does she persuade the civilian not to throw the summons on the trash, if it costs only UAH 17,000? What will she tell veterans who see an incomparable contrast between the army life and the rear? How does they convince them that the HSC is not a way out if they decide that they had time to give all the debts to their homeland? What benefits will offer them to make the veteran status cease to be formality? What is our plan if the war lasts for two more years? Three years? Five years? How do the authorities plan to keep those who are fighting in the army from the first day and how do they plan to bring those who are not there? If the hot phase is paused for a year, then the inertial scenario may allow us to reach this pause.
But what if all our estimates of the state of the Russian economy are nothing more than Wishful Thinking? What if you face a shortage of funds, the Kremlin just decides on the script that seems impossible today? In the end, if Moscow measured its decisions by the categories of rational - then a full -scale invasion would simply not happen. We are leading a war in anticipation that the economy will fall in the Russian Federation.
Moscow is warning the war in anticipation that we will have soldiers. The only difference is that the Kremlin is much easier to go to unpopular decisions, because the Russian authorities can afford not to be distracted by the election. And Ukrainian - can not afford to be distracted from the election. Our enemy has a plan for tomorrow. It remains to understand whether he is. The author expresses a personal opinion that may not coincide with the editorial position.