Ukraine’s New Mobilization: Men in Hiding and Empty Streets

by Simplicius

The biggest news is that yesterday, May 18th, the Ukrainian new mobilization strictures officially and finally went into effect. This has resulted in a flood of videos showing deserted streets, with claims that men are now in hiding like never before.

The below compilation starts with Poltava, then progresses to other cities:

 
Additionally, Ukrainian truckers even staged a mass protest, blocking roads. It will be not only ‘interesting’ to see where this goes and how successful it is, but in fact this will be one of the critical bellwethers for Ukraine as a whole. We know that the manpower issue is paramount and the entire future of this war rests on how successful—or not—this mobilization will be.

In the coming months, after lowering the draft bar to 25 years, an additional 100 thousand men born in 1998-1999 will be called up to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During these years, 416,349 boys were born. About half of them are already abroad. Summon the remaining half.

Further, it obviously converges with the end of Zelensky’s legitimacy in only two days hence, which even big Western media co’s like Economist are now beginning to seed into the public consciousness for a reason. This is significant because if the ‘enhanced mobilization’ takes a wrong turn, Zelensky’s lack of legitimacy will present an easy, ready scapegoat, and things can escalate against him very quickly.

In fact, there is some further evidence that such a potentiality is being prepared. As I said, last time was the Economist piece ‘reminding us’ that Zelensky’s term is almost over.

 
But we now have something even more insidious:

 
That’s right: Washington Post is now openly revealing Yermak as the shadow hand who secretly runs Ukraine. But more than that, by doing so they are calling into question Zelensky’s true power and legitimacy, in effect undermining him. Why would WaPo at this exact time, merely days before Zelensky’s presidency is supposed to run out, write things like this:

Yermak’s closeness to the president — and evident influence over him — has drawn a barrage of accusations: that he has undemocratically consolidated power in the president’s office; overseen an unneeded purge of top officials, including commander in chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny; restricted access to Zelensky; and sought personal control over nearly every big wartime decision.

And on the topic of legitimacy, they warn flat out:

Now, however, the legitimacy of the president and his top adviser are about to face even bigger challenges as Zelensky’s five-year term officially expires on May 20. Ukraine’s constitution prohibits elections under martial law. But as Zelensky stays in office, he will be vulnerable to charges that he has used the war to erode democracy — seizing control over media, sidelining critics and rivals, and elevating Yermak, his unelected friend, above career civil servants and diplomats.

 
It appears the Western CIA-run press is trying to curtail Zelensky’s power so they can bring him to the negotiating table in the near future, as signals for that are already increasing elsewhere in the Western press. Zelensky, however, knows that his power is entirely contingent on the continuation of war: as soon as anything is frozen, he immediately loses credibility and even relevance. Rezident_UA channel has reported Zelensky is now showing in third place behind Zaluzhny and even Budanov in national polls.

Zelensky’s plan to expand the war for now consists of things like the following:

 
I agree with this X thread on Anatoli Shari’s recent statements on the matter:

Ukrainian journalist and blogger in exile Anatolii Sharii about the recent trend with the calls to allow Ukraine to strike internationally recognized borders of Russia with foreign weapons and the scary prospects:

”What if Kiev deliberately provokes a strike, atleast tactical (nuclear) one, at least a small nuclear bomb, even a tiny nuclear bomb and the loss that is now happening in the battlefield and which is clearly connected with the corruption, with theft, with the stupidity of Zelensky, with the abomination of his entourage and so on. They will reformat it (the war) into something new. So when the strike happens, if God forbid there will be a strike with tactical nuclear weapons, everyone will again forget that Zelensky is a madman, that those around him are thieves, that they stole everything and so on and on. All of it will be forgotten. All the talk will be about the nuclear weapons, about opening Pandora’s box and so on. Maybe they’re doing this on purpose… … Understand, the provoking of a Russian Federation strike in such way is beneficial for the government. They will increase the mobilization. So there will be precisely an excuse, ”look, what now? There is nothing we can do anymore. Now we need to throw everything at them. Lets recruit the 20-year-olds.” Which they’re already talking about and so on. Think about it.”

He makes interesting point. I would also put the strikes on Crimea and especially the recent attack on Novorossiysk port, the most critical in Russia into the same category with Zelensky looking for a major response from Russia. As long as Russia doesn’t outright kill Zelensky himself any other retaliation is fine with Zelensky. He would use this opportunity to ask for more weapons, money and bigger support.

In short: Zelensky is desperate to use any excuse in escalating the war and inviting NATO into it. He knows the only way he can stop Russia is by embroiling the U.S. into the conflict, and he can do that by repeatedly pushing red lines against Russia in order to force Russia to react against NATO. But there is little chance it will work, as NATO has thus far demonstrated surprising risk aversion to the prospect of facing off with Russia.

On the other hand, it must be said that there remains a cadre of hardline hawks within NATO countries which is clearly pushing for more escalation as well:

From the above new NYT piece:

Ukraine’s manpower shortage has reached a critical point, and its position on the battlefield in recent weeks has seriously worsened as Russia has accelerated its advances to take advantage of delays in shipments of American weapons. As a result, Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment.

 

 
This was followed by a lot of noise like the following, with claimed German MPs wanting to position missiles on the Polish border to create a ‘no fly zone’ over west Ukraine:

 
The problem is, all these things are cyclical and have been ‘trotted out’ a dozen times before whenever NATO starts getting worried and desperate. For instance, look at the date of this identical report:

 
And of course, that went no where as well, as most likely the new ‘threats’ will do. We can see that the warhawks most closely aligned with or directly controlled by the Davos/Bilderberg cabal are barking loudest with threats of existential collapse:

 
For example, there are continued reports like the following:

France is preparing “super-secretive” intelligence officers to be sent to Ukraine

❗️ The French Armed Forces are testing a reconnaissance group created to support offensive operations. Such “super-stealthy soldiers” could be useful in Ukraine, German radio station RTL reported.

We are talking about the FRAN group. The level of skill of its fighters was demonstrated as part of NATO exercises in Estonia.

“France is testing the competencies of a new unit that would be useful in Ukraine,” the material says.

As RTL notes, thanks to camouflage, the unit’s scouts can sit in the bushes for hours and use drones to monitor the enemy. Their responsibilities include identifying enemy strongholds, searching for trench entrances, and coordinating assault groups.

Not to mention this quite interesting video of a captured French Foreign Legion soldier who says he was active duty, having simply gotten the green light from superiors to “volunteer” in Ukraine. He makes some very eye-opening revelations and is proof positive of previous reports that ‘French troops’ were already fighting in Ukraine, to one extent or another:

 
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