«Busificación» y evasión del reclutamiento / “Busification” and recruitment evasion
Read More »Tag: desertion
The Antiwar Movement We Are Supposed to Forget
Visualize the movement against the Vietnam War. What do you see? Hippies with daisies in their long, unwashed hair yelling “Baby killers!” as they spit on clean-cut, bemedaled veterans just back from Vietnam? College students in tattered jeans (their pockets bulging with credit cards) staging a sit-in to avoid the draft? A mob of chanting demonstrators burning an American flag (maybe with a bra or two thrown in)? That’s what we’re supposed to see, and that’s what Americans today probably do see — if they visualize the antiwar movement at all.
A friendly fire death, a platoon’s 20 years of trauma
Bryan O’Neal has spent two decades grinding his way up the U.S. Army ranks, from lowly private to command sergeant major — the highest rank for a non-commissioned officer. He could write a textbook on modern warfare history — and his own unique place in it — but much of what he’s seen and done could be hard for anyone to hear. Significant numbers of the men and women under his command weren’t even born until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that inspired him to enlist.
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In the spring of 2004, perhaps the last thing President George W. Bush’s administration needed was another war-related PR problem. No one could find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which the administration had used to build a case for war. Less than a month before Tillman’s death, four contractors for the Blackwater private security firm in Iraq were ambushed and dragged through the streets, and their corpses were hung from a bridge. In April came shocking images of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.
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Read More »Ukraine does not have enough soldiers to stop Russia (summary)
El País: Ukraine does not have enough soldiers to stop Russia (summary)
The situation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kurakhove [Pokrovsk Raion, Donetsk Oblast] is critical, as they face an alarming shortage of soldiers, which complicates their defensive efforts against Russian advances.
Read More »Recruitment and far right: “I Love the Third Brigade”
Recruitment and far right: “I Love the Third Brigade”
The United States is putting pressure on Zelensky to lower the age of conscription again, but for the moment the Ukrainian president is rejecting this possibility. This is what Ukrainian media such as Ukrainska Pravda reported this week, referring to the mobilization of men between 18 and 25 years old, a very small population group in which the country’s future cannot afford to lose. Even before the law on mobilization was approved, which is very unpopular despite not being as harsh as foreign allies demanded, prominent figures and self-proclaimed friends of Ukraine such as US Senator Lindsey Graham have publicly encouraged Ukraine to recruit those over 18 years old despite the demographic risk that this implies for the country they claim to defend. These suggestions seem to have become a demand that is confirmed even by people who belong to the state apparatus. “If this information has come to light, it may confirm that American politicians from both parties are putting pressure on President Zelensky on the question of why there is no mobilisation for those aged 18-25 in Ukraine,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, one of Andriy Yermak’s advisers and a figure who has gone from representing the third sector, civil society in Maidan Ukraine to all kinds of well-paid positions in government or in the few state-owned companies that Kiev has not yet privatised. The past ten years show a double standard between those who have been privileged and those who have been impoverished and marginalised thanks to the European and liberal reforms of the peacetime years. However, Ukraine’s refusal to recruit its most vulnerable population group strictly responds to the future needs of the state, which, if it hopes to rebuild itself, must maintain minimum levels of youth population.
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‘Ya Casi Venezuela’ Signifies a Crossroads for the Opposition
With a campaign of intrigue on social media launched on September 16, the US businessman and founder of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater, Erik Prince, promoted a plan to raise funds to prepare an eventual armed invasion of Venezuela and the overthrow of its authorities. Although Prince has not fully claimed responsibility for the campaign, he has been one of its most prominent spokespersons.
‘Ya Casi Venezuela’ Signifies a Crossroads for the Opposition
Related:
Attorney General’s Office Is Investigating ‘Ya Casi Venezuela’ Coup Plot
Venezuela’s Minister of Interior: María Corina Machado is Behind Latest Terrorist Plot (along w/ Erik Prince)
The Venezuelan minister for interior, justice and peace, Diosdado Cabello, emphasized that behind the entire mercenary operation reported on Saturday is the ultra-right-winger María Corina Machado*. Machado is also fighting with the fugitive from justice, Leopoldo López**, said Cabello, for control of the money of the new mercenary operation against Venezuela.
In a special interview with the Telesur channel, Cabello said on Saturday, September 14, “They call it the ‘liberation of Venezuela;’ they are fighting over who controls it.”
Far-right Venezuelans based in the United States have launched a campaign named “Ya Casi Venezuela” (“we are almost ready, Venezuela”) where they announced that the mercenary tycoon Erik Prince will begin a massive fundraising effort to collect US 600 million dollars to organize a mercenary operation to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other high-ranked Chavista leaders.
Prince’s operation, according to many analysts, is directly linked with the new mercenary plot unveiled in Venezuela where US and Spanish intelligence operatives have been captured.
Venezuela’s Minister of Interior: María Corina Machado is Behind Latest Terrorist Plot
Erik Prince’s full interview on Ya Casi Venezuela is here. He says that they’ve currently raised $100 million. More notes are at the bottom of the next page.
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Read More »Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion
Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion
Serhiy Tsehotskiy, an officer with the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, told CNN the unit tries to rotate soldiers in and out every three to four days. But drones, which have only increased in number over the course of the war, can make that too dangerous, forcing soldiers to stay put for longer. “The record is 20 days,” he said.
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Ukraine’s Kursk incursion has raised flagging morale among its troops and restored its initiative along a patch of the front.
59th Motorized Brigade (Ukraine):
“Chosen Company”, a group of volunteers from the United States, Australia, and several other countries, is attached to the 59th Brigade as an assault detachment within the brigade’s reconnaissance company. The unit, which was formerly a part of the International Legion, conducted reconnaissance and assault operations during the 2023 counteroffensive. In 2024, a New York Times article reported three incidents where members of Chosen Company killed Russian POWs, based on statements made by former members of the company.
‘Kill-Crazy’ Foreign Mercs in Ukraine Bragged About Murdering Russian PoWs – Report
Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front + The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Some new Ukrainian soldiers refuse to fire at the enemy. Others, according to commanders and fellow fighters, struggle to assemble weapons or to coordinate basic combat movements. A few have even walked away from their posts, abandoning the battlefield altogether.
While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front — a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power.
Poorly trained recruits contribute to loss of Ukrainian territory on eastern front, commanders say
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Reuters: Russia and Ukraine report gains as some Ukrainians flee strategic city
But although the incursion is an embarrassment for Russia, Moscow’s forces have continued their gradual advances of the past few months against tired Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine worn down by 2-1/2 years of heavy fighting.
Moscow said its troops had taken control of the village of Mezhove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and that they had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in a different region to Kyiv’s Aug. 6 incursion.
Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are now just 10 km (six miles) outside Pokrovsk, an important transport hub in eastern Ukraine, and this week started evacuating elderly residents and children.
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Moscow’s capture of Pokrovsk, which lies at an intersection of roads and a railway line, would give Russia options to advance in new directions and also cut supply routes used by the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.
WSJ: Ukraine Moves to Encircle Russian Troops in Kursk and Digs In for Long Fight
The incursion hasn’t, so far, shifted the dynamic on the war’s main battlefields in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is advancing in toward Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian logistical hub, and Toretsk, a city on strategically important high ground.
The US Is Sending $125 Million in New Military Aid to Ukraine, Officials Say
U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea charged with desertion
The Army has charged the U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea in July with desertion, among other alleged offenses, and placed him in pretrial confinement at Fort Bliss, Tex., according to new charging documents.
U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea charged with desertion
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