Everyone is obsessed with a ceasefire, but no one is paying attention to Ukrainian internal politics
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an expert analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com
Cross-posted from Russian & Eurasian Politics
As I have noted many times in noting the growing weakness of the Maidan regime and Ukrainian state, the Ukrainian army can become a major force of destruction of both regime and state. Defeat after defeat, rout after rout, military catastrophe after military catastrophe is suffered by Ukraine’s often courageous soldiers purely for the sake of the domestic and foreign political advantage of Ukraine’s leaders. Thus, from Mariupol’ to Bakhmut to Avdeevka to Krinky and now to Sudzha, Kursk, Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskiy and his team from his television production company and ‘Slugi naroda’ (Servants of the People) television series-turned political party have refused to allow often surrounded and beaten Ukrainian forces to withdraw in order to save lies. At some point, Ukrainian officers and soldiers will rise up to put an end to their own slaughter.
The ‘Servants of the People’ and the rest of Ukraine’s elite, by consistently privileging their personal political and domestic political propaganda needs over the lives of Ukraine’s soldiers and simple military logic, are fomenting anger and thirst for revenge among the rank-and-file troops. Numerous videos posted by them in recent months express in the most harsh terms the frustration, anger, pain, and hatred towards Zelenskiy and his ‘Servants’ that many among the officer corps and troops feel. See, for example, this video of an incensed Ukrainian soldier threatening Zelenskiy and the entire eilte: “You will pay for everything” (https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1898804283140673685).
As I noted previously the models one should keep in the back of one’s mind are the previous uprisings and revolutions prompted by war, particularly defeats in wars. In 1917 Russia 1917 and Weimar Germany demoralized, disgruntled, and degraded soldiers turned their bayonets against the powers-that-be. In 1917 Russia this occurred in the literal sense, as soldiers became the third part of the Bolshevik ‘holy trinity’ of ‘workers’, peasants, and soldiers,’ who populated the Party, overthrew the Romanov dynasty and then the Provisional Government the Red Army, and populated the apparat of the new Soviet state. In Weimar Germany defeated soldiers, disgusted by the ‘stab in the back’ of the Versailles Treaty, became the backbone of the National Socialist or Nazi Party. Adolph Hitler himself was one of those distraught and revenge-seeking soldiers. Even in victory, soldiers can be transformed by the war experience in wholly unpredictable ways. Russia’s victory over Napoleon and rise to leadership in Europe intensified the Imperial Army officers’ sense of playing a historical role which transitioned into a sense that Russia needed to abandon autocracy and institute constitutional rule if it hoped to maintain its position in the international vanguard.
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy recently (January 2025) stated that Ukraine’s armed forces amount to some 800,000 troops (https://t.me/stranaua/183652). This sounds impressive, though is likely overstated – as is Zelenskiy’s wont – by several hundred thousand at this point. Nevertheless, this still represents a formidable force not only for Russian forces to attrit but for Ukrainian politicians to manage. They are not managing it well. As I have demonstrated numerous times previously; the Ukrainian armed forces, like the entire state, is rife with the most cynical and massive corruption–a corruption that is intensifying as the war is being lost and personal futures need to be bought (https://gordonhahn.com/2025/03/01/ukraines-four-coming-collapses-parts-1-2/).
Putting aside the unending series of battlefield defeats, the army is being staffed now by unwilling civilians, many dragged off the street, from their homes, from their wives and children and forced to fight in what many Ukrainians now understand is a losing cause. Much of the population is hiding or hiding their husbands, sons, brothers, cousins, and friends from roaming bands of state army ‘mobilizers’. Moreover, there are fewer and fewer Ukrainian volunteers. In January there were less than 1,000; this, at a time when the country is in dire need of fighters to hold off the mounting Russian offensives on almost every front (https://ctrana.one/news/479428-skolko-chelovek-prishli-v-vsu-v-janvare-cherez-sistemu-rekrutinha.html). There are reportedly 63,000 Ukrainians missing in action (https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/upovnovazheniy-rozpoviv-skilkoh-lyudey-vvazhayut-zniklimi-za-osoblivih-obstavin-306234/). Many who are on the rolls and supposedly fighting at the front are actually hiding in rear areas, refusing to fight (https://gordonhahn.com/2025/03/01/ukraines-four-coming-collapses-parts-1-2/). On top of more than million Ukrainian casualties (including hundreds of thousands of deaths), energy blackouts, and other hardships, much of this suffered by families with members still fighting at the front, can this end well?
Russia is reportedly demanding an 80 percent reduction of the Ukrainian army (https://t.me/stranaua/183653). Such a cut in Kiev’s armed forces — depending on when it occurs and after what level of attrition is reached – would leave hundreds of thousands of mean, angry, violence-desensitized, and perhaps armed men on the streets – an army now of likely unemployed, purposeless, malleable, and revenge-seeking men.
If or when Zelenskiy or some other Ukrainian leader signs a peace deal agreeing to forego Crimea and the four oblasts Russia has so far claimed, even if only ‘temporarily’ rather than legally, the number of enraged military men and their families will only grow, particularly among the numerous and influential ultra-nationalist and neofascist groups. Neo-fascist groups, such as Azov and, through the Volunteer Ukrainia Corps, Right Sector, are deeply embedded in the army and will be outraged about any compromises made by a Ukrainian regime with the ‘subhuman Russians’ and will seek the ‘completion of the nationalist revolution.’ Disgruntled, enraghed soldiers will be excellent recruits and fodder for the making of said revolution.
All of the above forms a matrix of potentially explosive instability and chaos that could see the substantial parts of the Ukrainian army turn it weapons against Kiev, and it informs Zelenskiy’s reluctance to participate in compromises with Russia in order to attain peace. He cannot speak about it without further demoralizing the army, outraging the neofascists, and tacitly acknowledging the power of the neofascist element in Ukrainian politics—something that Kiev has worked hard to cover up, explain away, or deny. In fact, Zelenskiy is trapped between two flames internally related to this question and in general as he is abroad caught between US pressure for peace and Russia’s advancing army. Like Ukrainian society, the Ukrainian military (and perhaps intelligence and security organs as well) are divided between those who no longer support the war or are not willing to fight, such as the coercively mobilised, and those who are virulently against peace with the Russians, such as the neofascists. This polarization of views forms the foundation of a potential civil war or at least intense internecine conflict inside Ukraine once any peace deal nears.
It is not just Zelenskiy who should consider this dangerous matrix outlined above. If a peace deal is followed by a neofascist coup in Ukraine and/or whatever remains of the country descends into chaos, what will Russia, Europe, and the U.S. do? Russia likely will be inclined to use military force, ‘breaking’ any treaty. Moscow can argue justifiably any treaty it signed was signed with a different leadership and with the coup or lack of any central regime and state order, all bets are off, and Russia must guarantee its own security by uninstalling the new Ukrainian regime. Will the U.S., no less Europe, be willing to cooperate with Russia in putting down such a coup or replacing a new, neofascist regime? If not, will there be a NATO-Russia Ukrainian War 2.0 following on 1.0 almost immediately? Will a European ‘coalition of the willing’ take on Russia? The Maidan revolt nurtured by Washington and Brussels opened up Pandora’s Box. The West continued opening up new such boxes for nearly a decade – arming Ukraine, refusing to demand Kiev fulfill its Minsk commitements, and so on — until Moscow opened up the biggest of all previous boxes. Closing these boxes and preventing the opening of the biggest Pandora’s Box may be beyond the reach of both Russia and the ‘collective West.’
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