From The Telegraph via MSN, January 12:
Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded Ukrainians living abroad return to fight against Russia or pay taxes to assist the war effort.
The Ukrainian president told a press conference in Tallinn, Estonia, that between six to eight taxpayers are needed to fund every Ukrainian soldier.
“If you are working and paying taxes then you are also defending the state and we really need this,” he said.
“But if you are of military age, and you are abroad, and you’re not on the front line and you don’t pay taxes and you’ve left the country against the law, then there are questions. That’s it.”
Mr Zelensky’s government has attempted in recent weeks to up the pressure on Ukrainians who fled abroad after Russia’s invasion to return home.
It emerged in November that the armed forces had asked for an additional 500,000 men to be called up to fight.
“If we want to preserve Ukraine, if we want to preserve Europe then we must all understand: we either help Ukraine or not; we are either the citizens who are in the front, or the citizens who work and pay taxes,” Mr Zelensky added....
....MORE
But the question remains:
"How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Wroclaw?"
That's me, quoting myself from the introduction to November 2022's: "Are Ukrainian Farmers an Endangered Species?":
Probably.
There are a few things going on that point in that direction. First you have the country's total fertility rate at 1.4, only two-thirds of the 2.1 replacement rate, tied with poster child Japan in the who's-going-extinct competition. And lower even than famously-low-birthrate-Russia, which at 1.8 has a comparative population boom. So there will literally not be enough people to take up the job.
July 2023:
It may be as serious a demographic situation as that which faced Britain after World War I.
By 1917 - 1918 it was becoming apparent that the death toll of the war was skewing the female/male ratio of young adults. In 2007 the Daily Mail did a book review headlined "Condemned to be virgins: The two million women robbed by the war" which was of course hyperbole, those girls and young women were having sex but the point of the book being reviewed was that, for good or bad, for bettor or worse, those girls became women who had a very different set of life options open to them than the generation that preceded theirs.
And of course the same hard reality was being experienced in Germany and Russia and France and the rest of the countries that lost their young men in their hundreds of thousands and millions.
Demography is very, very hard reality....
And September 2023's Ukraine Running Out Of Cannon Fodder
Anyone who has looked at the demographics knows this.
Putting it bluntly in a July 1 post:
The war seems to come down to the question of who runs out first. Does Russia run out of money or does Ukraine run out of soldiers?
The ruble was approaching 90 to the dollar last I saw, an indication that there are deep changes going on in the Russian economy.
Ukraine is on its third army, the first two having been destroyed, and they are press-ganging 50-year-old insurance salesmen to fill the gaps left by the dead and wounded.
And the U.S. powers-that-be, through their media mouthpieces have dramatically shifted the story arc they wish to convey.
Two things about the headline:
1) There are Western commentators, including general officers (ret.), who are either flat out lying about the situation on the ground or are so incompetent that they don't understand what they are seeing. Either way, they should be stripped of their pensions and have their security clearances, if any, revoked.
2) We tried to raise the alarm within a day of the "counteroffensive" beginning:
Oh My God, What Are The Ukrainian Generals Doing?
They are ordering their men to attack defense-in-depth without air cover and 1/10th the artillery the troops need....
Finally, Wroclaw is a lovely old city. President Zelensky has a tough sell trying to get military-age young men to come back:
