PlaneCrashGuy said:
Does the futility of this war impact your opinion on those who draft dodge?
I dunno if the term 'draft' is even accurate for what is going on there. "They" are abducting people off the streets, the elites/wealthy are wholly exempt, yet also they are including the elderly, people without bladders, ******ed etc. They are trying to extradite those who have left.
The desperation is palpable and while I frankly still don't 'want to see Russia conquer all of Ukraine in some sort of partisan/brutal way' I also don't know that I am the right person to pass judgment on those remaining in Ukraine, unable to travel, engage in commerce (sell personal goods, or go to the bank), vote, read/speak/share information freely, who don't want to join the war effort as canon fodder. I'd yet again note as well that Ukraine, pre-war, faced a staggering demographic crisis.
The war has functionally ended its people's hope for a future.
Quote:
Even before the invasion Ukraine's population was ageing fast, and men and women of working and child-bearing age were the most likely to emigrate. Every year since 1991, more Ukrainians have died than were born. In 2021, partly because of covid-19, there were 442,280 more coffins filled than cradles in government-controlled territory. Ukrainians, especially men, drink and smoke too much. Even before the war, their life expectancy was one of the lowest in Europe. In 2020 the average Ukrainian man could expect to live to 66, eleven and a half years less than the average man in the eu.
A study in March by scholars at the University of St Andrews in Scotland asked how the war might affect Ukraine's population. It predicted that it would fall by between 17% and 33% in the parts of Ukraine controlled by the government before Vladimir Putin's invasion. In the worst-case scenario, it said, there would be only 28m people, with the numbers of working-age adults and children falling by 36% and 56% respectively. So, not many young people, and even fewer future parents.
Professor Kurylo notes that Ukraine has survived demographic calamities in the past, such as the famine caused by Stalin's policies in 1932-33, which killed almost 4m people, and the loss of 7m during the second world war. For that reason she expects a revival after the waras happened in western Europe after both world wars in the 20th century. But there are reasons to fear that Ukraine's population could keep shrinking. In 1950 the average Ukrainian woman could expect to have 2.8 children. That had fallen to 1.16 in 2021, one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet.
Frankly, during the war their birthrate is likely well under 1.0, and most of the migrants/refugees simply won't ever return. I think it has to be something like 2.2 to be sustainable, and the population of the remnant Kiev controls today is probably closer to 11 million vs. 40.
From a safe distance it's just a tragic waste of human lives, for nothing that I can see, other than the enrichment of oligarchs (and benefit of China), near and far.
