https://voxday.net/2026/05/21/running-out-of-steam/
Is Ukraine reaching its recruitment limit? This is the key factor in both our models. There are some indications that this is the case. A week ago, Branko Marcetic (using Ukrainian sources) provided some relevant numbers in a Responsible Statecraft article, Ukraine’s conscription crisis is getting increasingly bloody; While outside voices insist the war can still be won on the battlefield, young men in the country are violently resisting recruiters to stay out of it. Here are some numbers supporting this conclusion.
The number of complaints over possible violations committed by enlistment officers, received by Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets:
2022 — 18
2023 — 514
2024 — 3312
2025 — 6127The number of violent attacks against enlistment officers shows the same trend: from 5 in 2022 to 117 in just the first four months of this year.
One can hardly blame the young Ukrainians for attacking the “enlistment officers” who are really straight-up kidnappers. At the end of the day, the odds of surviving a violent encounter with these rear-echelon thugs is a lot higher than surviving one with frontline Russian troops.
Young European men have probably already figured that out, which is why I expect any attempt by any European country to enact a draft besides Russophobic Poland and Finland to meet with literally violent resistance. Why would any European man fight to defend against civilized Russia instead of rapey third-world invaders?
