It looks like Ukraine's democracy is toast, and Zelensky is a de facto dictator at this point. The first round of legally-mandated presidential elections were supposed to start last month but they've been put off.
For all the bullshit we were fed about defending democracy in Ukraine, none of Ukraine's international backers made a public push to have Zelensky hold elections. No public concern was raised by Trudeau and Freeland.
With no election, the ongoing erosion of Zelensky's popular support will now become an erosion of legitimacy. The erosion of Zelensky's support is real and it is only getting worse.
Along with cancelling elections, Zelensky's government has just pushed through its draconian conscription law. Its passage was the precondition upon which Biden's $95 billion war package was approved (it is also financing Israel's genocide and preparing Taiwan for a war with China).
Manpower crisis
The conscription law has lowered the age from 27 to 25, and has cancelled all consular services for Ukrainians abroad who are eligible but do not sign up for military service. In other words, the Ukrainian government has abandoned hundreds of thousands of its own citizens and turned them into a stateless people.
The law is also accelerating a phenomenon that has become common on social media in the past year: videos of Ukrainian men snatched by authorities and pressed into military service. These men are being taken at their workplaces, in front of their families, and on the street.
Ukraine's manpower problem on the front is reflective of the socio-economic catastrophe of post-Soviet Ukraine. The population at the outset of independence was 52 million, and had fallen to 42 million by 2021. Since the Russian invasion, the population has plummeted to 35 million. Birth rates have fallen from a normal "maintenance" birthrate of 2.1 that held steady from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, but fell rapidly in the 1990s, recovered a bit in the 2000s and has fallen since the 2014-15 Ukrainian Civil War, and is now at only 1.0.
The mass exodus of Ukrainians in peacetime and now war is a scathing judgement by Ukrainians themselves about the collapse in living standards and prospects for a decent future in post-Soviet Ukraine. The manpower crisis is another judgement on how many Ukrainians are really behind this war. Zelensky's support was sky high at the start of the war but has fallen steadily, and had begun to fall in relation to other possible presidential candidates, such as General Zaluzhny (who Zelensky fired in February), and his former special advisor, Arestovych, was charged by Zelensky with corruption and was driven into exile in January.
The battle front
Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers at the front have not been afforded any leave since the war started. The result is that veteran units from the 2014-15 have been largely annihilated. The most recent example of this comes from infamous "Azov" brigade that was sent into Avdiivka to bolster the lines. Regarded as a battle-hardened unit, it was in fact populated with new recruits, including those press-ganged into service. Reports are the unit broke the moment it went into battle, confirming numerous reports in the Western press of a chaotic, deadly retreat from Avdiivka resulting in major casualties.
It is now self-evident that the brutal months-long battles at Bakhmut and Avdiivka were traps set by the Russians to decimate Ukraine's best soldiers in battling against expendable Russian forces. This was obvious in the lead up to the failed Wagner mutiny. Prighozin's Wagner forces were expanded significantly with new recruits from Russian prisons, and then used as cannon fodder in Bakhmut in a strategic bid to bleed the Ukrainians of their best forces. The plan worked.
The Russians have a natural manpower advantage of 4:1. Their soldiers are being rotated in and out of the front for rest and reorganization. Furthermore, the Russians have a 6:1 artillery advantage. This means the Ukrainians have little hope in effective counter-battery fire, let alone the kind of concentrated artillery support needed to conduct major operations.
The war is lost...or might get bigger
There are now new reports of Ukrainian forces giving up more ground at a rapid rate, and the Russians are advancing towards Putin's goals of capturing the rest of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories.
The Ukrainians have a whole lot of new high-tech NATO weaponry arriving soon, but this does not solve the manpower crisis. The new NATO weapons were also effectively neutralized in the colossal failure of the 2023 "Counter-Offensive".
For the past few months, a new and insane proposition to solve the manpower crisis has been discussed publicly: the deployment of other European troops to fight in Ukraine. This won't be done under NATO auspices, even though it clearly is being done under NATO auspices. Is anyone still foolish enough to be denying this whole thing is a NATO proxy war that is bleeding Ukraine dry in service of the American Empire's stated goals of aggressive advancement of its power across Asia and Europe against all real and potential rivals?
The war is lost for Ukraine - unless the American Empire continues to push the war to expand into a much wider war involving new countries, such as Poland which has indicated a willingness to capture and extradite Ukrainian men for military service. Recall, that NATO has a nuclear first strike policy and that any NATO country that would come under attack from Russia would invoke Article 5 for NATO going to war against Russia. In other words, the Americans, by prolonging this war instead of seeking its resolution, is preparing the ground for a direct conflict between NATO and Russia.
Meanwhile, the Zelensky regime is now moving into dangerous new territory without even a Putin-level pretense of democracy. With morale falling amidst retreats, ammo shortages, relentless Russian shelling, and an army being filled with press-ganged men, the future of the Zelensky regime is in serious doubt. These are the conditions for coups, mutinies and civil war.
It is time to end this bloody war! It is time to press our pigheaded politicians to demand a ceasefire and a negotiated peace to this conflict.