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An increasing number of videos are appearing on social media and confirm that people in Ukraine are being mobilized by force, demonstrating that the Ukrainian army are suffering from heavy losses.

Some of the videos show people being dragged along the ground and thrown into cars so they can be forcibly taken for a medical examination, yet if Western media was to be believed, it is Russians who are facing such a dramatic mobilization.

Videos from Odessa, Krivoy Rog, Dnipropetrovsk, Transcarpathia, and elsewhere show how Ukrainian army officers behave aggressively towards people when they are handing out military summons.

Recently, in the Transcarpathian town of Mukačovo, the entire market was closed and soldiers and policemen forcibly took all men who looked fit for the army onto buses. In Lvov, they handed out recruitment invitations at the funeral of a Ukrainian soldier, several of whom were immediately taken to a military unit. In fact, the Ukrainian military is evidently so desperate that they even gave a military notification to a man in Lvov who was born without his hands.

The situation is so bad for the Ukrainian military that some estimates believe that as many as 85% of soldiers in the Ukrainian army are insufficiently trained. Kiev hoped that foreign mercenaries and an influx of military equipment would help minimize losses. However, this quite obviously did not occur because the Ukrainian military is being crushed.

According to military experts, 157,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died. It can be safely assumed that there are at least three times as many wounded. There is also evidence that over 350,000 people are missing. As for the soldiers who surrendered to the Russian army, they number about 10,000-12,000 people. With the Ukrainian military suffering huge losses, Kiev is desperate to mobilize as many men as possible. 

With the war quickly approaching its one-year anniversary, all Ukrainian men who were willing to fight have already joined the army. The mobilizations are so violent and forceful because the Kiev regime understands that men who are not conscripted already are those who are unwilling to fight.  

A deep scepticism is beginning to set in Ukraine, especially as this has been one of the most difficult winters in living memory. The thought of the next winter being even more difficult is one that worries Ukrainians considering that the economy will be in an even worse situation and more infrastructure will be destroyed.

By the Ukrainian military having to use force, it demonstrates that Kiev no longer has trust in its own citizens. Hungarian media pointed out that the largest mobilizations have been in Transcarpathia, a region with a large Hungarian and Romanian minority. 

According to Hungarian media, the Transcarpathian 128th Mountain Assault Brigade suffered heavy losses near Soledar. They also wrote that the Security Service of Ukraine forbids the relatives of the deceased Transcarpathian Hungarians to search for them on social media and talk about their deaths. In this way, there is clear racism against non-Ukrainians as Transcarpathian Hungarians are forced to fight on the most dangerous fronts.

At the same time, Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov claimed on February 2 that Russia had mobilised 500,000 soldiers and is preparing to launch a fresh offensive on February 24, the one-year anniversary of the special military operation.

“We think that, given that they [Russians] live in symbolism, they will try to try something around February 24,” Reznikov told BFMTV.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister used this claim to call for more military assistance from NATO countries, adding that he expects the Russian army to launch an offensive “in two directions: it could be the Donbass, or it could be the south.”

It is recalled that the Ukrainian Commander of the Operational Command South, Major General Kovalchuk, claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will order millions of soldiers that were only mobilized in January into the war, adding that he needs more weapons to counter Russia. There is little suggestion or evidence that millions of Russians were mobilized in January, and is thus another exaggerated propaganda effort by the Kiev regime to try and secure Western weapons. 

Because of such exaggerations, it could be easy to dismiss Kiev’s claims on when Russia plans to launch a spring offensive and the 500,000 personnel size of its mobilization as another call for immediate Western weapons and/or intervention. However, the rapid and forceful mobilization of men in Ukraine could suggest that Kiev does believe the intelligence to be true and is not just using it for propaganda purposes. 

With a major Russian offensive seemingly inevitable at some point in 2023, Ukraine’s defence minister was in France on February 2 to meet President Emmanuel Macron and secure the purchase of air defence radars and lobby for F-16 fighter jets, something Macron said his country had not ruled out.

“We tell our partners that we too must be ready as soon as possible,” Reznikov told French media. “That’s why we need weapons to contain the enemy.”

Nonetheless, there is very little evidence that weapon deliveries, including the delivery of F-16 fighter jets that would take many months to facilitate and even more to train competent pilots for, could reverse the impending success of Russia’s offensive. With Bakhmut on the verge of collapse, the path to liberate all of Donetsk region will be opened, and unmotivated civilian fighters will not be able to stop it.

Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher