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Odessa Leads Resistance to Mobilization as Shock Poll Shows Ukrainians’ Sympathies for Draft Dodgers [1]

['Marko Florentino']

Date: 2024-07-22 14:24:56+00:00

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240718/odessa-leads-violent-resistance-to-mobilization-as-poll-shows-ukrainians-sympathy-for-draft-dodgers-1119417961.html

Odessa Leads Violent Resistance to Mobilization as Poll Shows Ukrainians’ Sympathy for Draft Dodgers

Odessa Leads Violent Resistance to Mobilization as Poll Shows Ukrainians’ Sympathy for Draft Dodgers

Sputnik International

The southwestern Black Sea port city of Odessa is rapidly becoming the center of resistance to Kiev’s increasingly chaotic efforts to scoop up more souls for the war effort. Meanwhile, new polling and statistics released this week reveal that support for draft dodgers is growing across Ukraine, particularly its western regions.

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analysis

volodymyr zelensky

ukraine

odessa

kiev

ukrainian armed forces

desertion

draft dodger

resistance

anti-war

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On the night of July 16 alone, a wave of arson attacks targeting the service and personal vehicles of Odessa’s territorial recruitment center employees left five cars burned to a crisp. Similar incidents were reported in Vinnitsa, Rovno, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kharkov the same night. Two more cars were burned in Odessa the next night, with the weekly total approaching a dozen.The situation has gotten so bad in some cities that servicemen have reportedly resorted to putting “Not Territorial Recruitment Center” signs on their vehicles to avoid being targeted.The ‘car-nage’ is no trifling matter for its perpetrators. On Tuesday, authorities in Rovno detained a 22-year-old suspect for the suspected arson of two military vehicles. He now faces up to 10 years in prison.Ukrainian authorities have attempted to blame the unrest, including arson attacks on recruiters’ cars, on Russia, claiming suspects are being promised money or other rewards by the FSB via instant messengers.But statistics and a fresh crop of sociological surveys suggest otherwise, indicating that Ukrainians are not only becoming increasingly tired of the conflict with Russia, but hostile to authorities, especially after the passage in May of a controversial law designed to strengthen mobilization, which obliges all men aged 18-60 to carry military ID with them at all times, allows summons to be served, and does not provide for demobilization. Combined with President Zelensky’s move this spring to lower the recruitment age from 27 to 25, the measures have proven a mental Molotov Cocktail encouraging resistance for Ukraine’s fighting age male population.Punishments for dodging the draft are stiff. Earlier this month, the Kiev District Court in Kharkov sentenced a man with developmental disabilities to three years in prison for refusing to accept a summons after being deemed fit for service by a medical commission. Other men are grabbed in the streets, stuffed into vans, beaten and detained extrajudicially until they submit to conscription, reports have documented.Ukrainians also has to worry about astronomical levels of corruption in recruitment offices, where bribe-taking has become the norm, rather than the exception. Shortfalls in recruitment rates resulting from wealthier Ukrainians being let off are inevitably made up by the poorer strata of society.Western Ukraine Leading the Way in Dodging Draft, Stats ShowUnwillingness to fight has paralyzed much of the country, including –perhaps curiously, its most westernmost, anti-Russian, and pro-European regions.Last week, Ukrainian media revealed, citing official government data, that enlistment offices had filed reports on over 417,000 draft dodgers since February 2022 (316,100 of them between 2023 and 2024), with western Ukraine lighting up bright red on the map among draft evader numbers despite being far more sparsely populated than the country’s center and east.In a recent report, Kiev-based journalist-turned Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Artyom Ilyin said that most of the recruits from western regions of Ukraine he’s serving with are highly demoralized, asking why they should fight for a country that “has given them nothing but a machine gun in their entire lives.”Dodging the Draft Isn’t Shameful, Polling SaysFinally, shock polling this week by the Razumkov Center, generally regarded as one of Ukraine’s most respected public policy think tanks, revealed that a whopping 46% of Ukrainians do not consider it “shameful” to dodge mobilization, with 29.1% saying it is shameful, and 24.8% finding it difficult to answer. Among respondents aged 18-29, 50% said it is not shameful.The same polling also found that 44% of respondents think the time has come peace talks with Russia, with 35% against the idea, and 21% undecided.Draft Dodging Among Western Ukrainians Shows Local Fence-Sitter MentalityWhen it came time to enlist for the current conflict, “they still prefer that the people from those [eastern] regions be sent to the front first,” Dudchak said. Today, the observer noted, the recruiters sent to major eastern and southeastern cities like Kharkov, Nikolayev and Odessa to collect fresh recruits often come from Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov and other western regions.As for the rising instances of arson and other acts of sabotage targeting recruiters, the military and infrastructure, Dudchak characterized the phenomenon as a fledgling form of popular resistance and guerilla warfare.Ukrainian society today in general is in a state of apathy, and “doesn’t see any point any longer to continue the war,” according to the observer.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240502/odessa-massacre-ten-years-on-how-radicals-drowned-city-in-blood-to-subdue-ukraine-1118193803.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240605/putin-us-to-force-kievs-draft-age-down-to-18-then-remove-zelensky-1118791746.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240718/more-foreign-mercenaries-fighting-for-ukraine-near-kharkov—russian-regional-administration-1119418560.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240718/orban-says-working-to-shift-eu-leaders-ukraine-crisis-policy-from-pro-war-to-pro-people-1119417540.html

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240714/ukraine-faces-epidemic-of-drowning-deaths-as-desperate-men-attempt-to-flee-conflict-1119367435.html

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how many ukrainians have dodged the draft, are some ukrainians pro-russia, do some ukrainians resist zelensky with force

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[1] Url: https://newsconexion.com/odessa-leads-resistance-to-mobilization-as-shock-poll-shows-ukrainians-sympathies-for-draft-dodgers/

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