What struck me in Robert Kelly’s argument in 1945 that Ukraine will ultimately prevail militarily in its war against Russia was this passage:
Ukraine is slowly being well-equipped by the West, while Russia is scraping the bottom of the barrel by soliciting the North Koreans for help. Sanctions on Russia make it hard to reconstitute its forces with modern weapons. And Ukraine’s will to fight is high, where Russia has had to rely on conscription.
Leaving the “well-equipped by the West” portion for a later post, I was surprised by his using a reliance on conscription as a measure of will. Not only do both Russia and Ukraine employ conscription to staff their armies, I have seen it claimed that both Ukraine and Russia are exploiting conscription as a sort of backdoor ethnic cleansing, Ukraine of ethnic Russians, Russia of Crimean Tatars.
I don’t know how to verify or refute either of those claims confidently but they are certainly interesting.
