Since listening to Tucker claim that all the young men of Ukraine are going to die in the war, I have kept my eyes open. There are a lot of young men quite visible around here. It is anecdotal, but let me tell you what I've seen.
First would be the barbecue that we had on Saturday. If you look at the photograph I posted, there are a lot of young men. Comparing with photographs from years gone by, I see more men than in the past. At various times the club was two thirds women. Now it is more than half men. They are not worried about the draft.
We know one Toastmaster, Dima Filonyenko, who volunteered and is serving in the Army. Dima is a generous and very gregarious soul. He has asked us to donate to Army causes and we have responded. The other guys don't seem terribly worried. Most of the people who have gone overseas are women. They go in part because they can, and also because asylum seekers get good benefits from the EU governments. Doesn't make sense to me, but it is so.
Monday was Oksana's birthday. We biked to a small lake nearby in Voskresenka Garden for the first time. Three young guys heard us speaking English. Timofei was anxious to practice what he had learned in school and did pretty well. His friends Kyril and Dima didn't try. As Oksana noticed Kyril was a little bit drunk besides. Oksana says they cursed a lot. They are not high-class, just average kids.
They live on the other side of the city, in the Solomyanska district, and came over here to swim. Talking about the war, their major concern was not getting drafted, just that rockets occasionally hit their part of town.
Yesterday I had shopping and errands to do. In the post office I was waited on by a guy of about 18 or 19 years. He must've been a new hire – he needed help from a couple of the older women to handle my fairly straightforward transaction. In the butcher shop, where I bought lean meat for Eddie's post-appendectomy diet, I was waited on by a strapping youth in his early 20s.
All these are ordinary guys – not university students. I cannot imagine that they would have the connections or the money it takes to buy their way out of military service. My conclusion, observing all this, is that Ukraine is far from the bottom of the barrel.
As another indication, Pavel, the game software developer down the street, is living in Poland with his wife Oksana and daughters Visenya and Amalie. Pavel's business requires that he travel, and the travel restrictions imposed on young men would make it difficult if he stayed in Ukraine.
Oksana doesn't like Poland all that much. She comes back every couple of months to maintain contact. She had lunch with my Oksana yesterday. They are talking about having a third child, which would make them a multi-child family and exempt Pavel from those restrictions.
The father of one of Eddie's friends, Artem, has been unemployed since the war began. In his 40s, he is a captain in the merchant Marine. The ships simply aren't sailing. He and his wife have discussed the advantages of having another child so he can travel freely. However, without the assurance that he would find work outside the country they are not doing anything about it for the time being.
Our three qualifying us as a multi-child family, we know the benefits. Eddie gets to ride free on the bus and metro. We pay lower admission to the zoo and to other attractions. It is certainly not enough to offset the cost of having a child, but it is a pleasant thank-you from the government for keeping the population up. While they can afford to do so, it makes sense that they would exempt fathers of three from the Army because they are doing their service for the country and raising children.
The bottom line is that Kiev is not like the Donbas or Crimea, where one reads that the Russians are vacuuming every available body off the streets. From what I see Ukraine still has the luxuries of selecting who they want for the military, assigning them appropriate specialties, and training and equipping them properly. The people I know and have written about who are in the military, like Vasiliy Stavsky and Dima Filonyenko, volunteered. The situation may be different for the husbands of some of Oksana's friends, who are in are close to the front with the Army. We include them in our prayers at every meal. Whether or not they volunteered, they clearly accept the necessity of serving their country.
The ruble has fallen down from about 60 to 100 to the dollar. Russia would certainly like to have a stronger currency. We have read a lot about the imminent collapse of the Russian economy from far back before the war and throughout the war and it hasn't happened. However, that signs are that it could be getting closer.
Russia is not enjoying as much foreign exchange earnings as they did. They are no longer exporting as much fuel and minerals to the West. Their major remaining trade partners are China and India. Foreign exchange earnings are going down. And since Russia decided to destroy Ukraine's grain exports by blowing up our ports, we have been doing the same to Russia. Not with our non-existent navy, but with drones.
We may be able to interfere with their exports of petroleum and other such goods. Russia geography is unfortunate. They have to ship through the Azov Sea, which leads first to the very narrow Kerch Strait (3.1 km wide, 18m deep channel) and then to the narrow Bosporus through Turkey. Some tankers have a draft that exceeds 18 meters. If anything were to happen to block the Kerch Strait channel, Russian exports would be in serious trouble. Putin, as it appears he often does, did not think it through when he stopped the grain export deal with Ukraine and started blowing up Ukraine's grain export facilities.
Kyiv suffered another extensive missile attack last night from a combination of the missiles that Russia has been using since the beginning, including sea launched Kaliber missiles, air launched Kinzhal missiles, ground-launched Iskanders, and the Iranian Shahid drones. Nothing new, and for which Kyiv has good defenses. All were shot down, though two people died from falling debris. Air defense in other cities is not up to Kyiv's level. As Bob Homans reports, there are civilian deaths almost every day.
Ukraine has been making rapid strides in drone technology. Yesterday we took out four transport airplanes in Pskov airfield up by the border of Lithuania, 700 km from Ukraine. We didn't have that capability up until now. Russia is vulnerable to drone attacks. Almost all of its airplanes remain out in the open, on the aprons of their airports. I am sure their planners assumed that distance from the front lines would protect them in the case of hostilities. Drones are a game changer.
Not only do we have our own drone technology, but it appears that we are getting help. The latest news is that cardboard drones from Australia, invisible to radar, surprised the Russians in one recent attack.
Fundamentally, Russia lacks the ability to continue major innovations. They don't have the engineering resources or the access to imported technology. Ukraine, on the other hand, is getting the benefit of the best minds not only here but throughout the entire NATO and Anglosphere worlds. Never underestimate the political clout of the military-industrial complex. This is their chance to test all of their gadgets, and to make hay while the sun shines. After Russia there are few credible enemies to justify their huge budgets.
Zoriana wanted to go with me to the store after dinner to buy ice cream. The deal was that if she finished her nice, balanced dinner of boiled wheat, tomato salad, and goulash she could have some ice cream.
It was quite a parade – Eddie, me, and two girls with dolls and baby strollers. It put a smile on my face. Baby dolls may portend grandchildren someday. Again this morning, awkward as it was, I strapped Zoriana's baby buggy and doll on the back of my bicycle this morning as we went to kindergarten.
The regime imposed on Eddie after his operation doesn't make sense. He is not supposed to bicycle, lift more than 5 pounds or swim. Though even the scabs are gone from his incision – it has not bled for the week he has been home – it still gets swabbed with antiseptic. Nonetheless, there is some good in it. He is not eating sweet stuff, and the boy does have a sweet tooth. He has lost about 4 pounds. So as silly as I think all of these dietary restrictions are, I'm going along with it. First, not to make waves. But second, because there is benefit in adversity.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man will spend the rest of the day rehearsing a somewhat gloomy speech for Saturday, entitled "The Rise and Fall of Human Intelligence." My theme is that the fall of civilization can be attributed to increasing stupidity, a product of evolution. No political solution can fix it. Meanwhile, Zoriana is enjoying her last day of kindergarten, and Eddie is gathering all the materials he needs for 7th grade.
These personal essays and the glimpses they allow are so helpful. Not just because what we tend to hear about Ukraine - from whatever side the person speaking is on - is typically informed by political filters and so, biased. Not to say, personal accounts aren't also biased, but it's a very different kind of view, grounded by daily experience, and helps me to remember how little I actually know about any of it. Thanks, Graham.
Tucket + are useful fools. If the war can't be resolved by an adequate supply of Ukrainian young men, I suspect old men volunteers will arrive, then more women and after that older boys. Meanwhile Russia has been buying troops at 4X nominal salaries but mostly from the outside non-slav population, if I understand reporting. If they start using central slavs, the national mood may change and I suspect Putin is aware. Russia is not fighting for home and mothers while Ukraine is. Hard to say when Russian finances fail.