Western Ukrainian nationalists' curiously pro-draft dodging stance explained

Western Ukrainians had gotten “used to the fact that there was some kind of war going on in the east after the [2014] coup and before the start of Russia’s special military operation,” Alexander Dudchak, a leading researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries, told Sputnik.

This helps explains the disconnect between western Ukrainians’ nationalist, anti-Russian attitudes and incredibly high rates at which they have been dodging the draft, according to the observer. “The attitude was that ‘it doesn’t concern us, let the Donbass sort it out.’ They thought that the Ukrainian army’s terrorizing of the eastern regions would last forever,” Dudchak said.

When it came time to enlist for the current conflict, “they still prefer that the people from those regions be sent to the front first,” Dudchak said. Today, the observer noted, the recruiters sent to eastern cities like Odessa, Kharkov and Nikolayev to collect fresh recruits for the conflict often come from Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov and other western regions.

As for the rising instances of arson and other acts of sabotage targeting recruiters, the military and infrastructure, Dudchak characterized the phenomenon as a fledgling form of popular resistance and guerilla warfare.

“This is the protest of the local population which in principle does not perceive this government as its own, or this military as their defenders. They act as best they can, using whatever capabilities they have,” he said.

Ukrainian society today in general is in a state of apathy, and “doesn’t see any point any longer to continue the war,” according to the observer.

“Such tendencies are growing stronger. That’s what the sociological services are talking about, although they may also be preparing the population to accept the inevitable and the possibility of negotiations, and ceding territory. But of course, not under the current regime,” Dudchak summed up.

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