One of my dear subscribers recently reached out with an urgent request - what to say to an idealistic leftwing friend who has become wracked by the idea of flying to Kyiv and fighting the good fight in Ukraine?
It’s quite an interesting question.
On the one hand, I am tempted to say there is little one can do. In just about any society, there are always some who yearn for heroism, battle, life through the risk of death. In wealthier countries, it is also quite possible for them to fly across the world to fulfill these questionable desires.
The same idealism motivated plenty of young people to chart course for Syria 10 years ago or so. Some for the black flag of ISIS, others for the flag of, say, the Syrian Democratic Forces.
That’s not to say that all sides in that or other conflicts were equally distasteful. Just that for plenty of foreign volunteers, facts or logical reasoning are unlikely to sway their decisions. Which is also admirable, in a certain sense. It takes all kinds.
Nevertheless, one does have certain responsibilities as a friend. The fact that the war isn’t quite as safe and simple as technologically-adept Ukrainian elves facing stone-age Russian orcs, to begin with.
There are also a number of broader reasons making leftwing martyrdom for Ukraine rather puzzling.
Or any martyrdom, unless you are simply interested in the idea of fighting in war for its own, romantic sake. In fact, this is is the main motivation driving real people to make the trip to today’s Eastern Front. But since there is no logical criticism one can make of the desire for a glorious death, we’ll focus on those who want to go and ‘help Ukraine in its fight for freedom’.
On reality
Before we get into some dialectical reasoning, some quick facts and events for our liberal, libertarian, or anarchist friends, the main contingent of non-nationalists heading to Ukraine.
Last month, October 2025, there were more cases of desertion from the Ukrainian army than ever before. 21,000 men tried escaped the army in one month. This figure comes from official Ukrainian statistics. September was also a record. Over the course of 2025, almost 200,000 cases of desertion were recorded. There were almost 100,000 cases of desertion from 2022 to 2024.
Last week, Ukraine’s largest media publication complained that 6 million out of Ukraine’s 10 to 11 million draft-age men have been avoiding military service:
The only official mention of the number of draft violators appears in the explanatory note to the law introducing a 50% discount on fines from the Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCCs), which came into effect in April 2025. The document states that during 2024, more than six million (!) men liable for military service failed to update their information at TCCs, administrative service centers , or in the “Reserv+” app.
“The TCCs often mobilize sick and frail people, because they have to meet their monthly ‘mobilization’ targets,” one brigade commander working with new recruits told Ukrainska Pravda indignantly. “Most of these people will never be able to perform combat tasks effectively. Meanwhile, armies of deserters and healthy draft dodgers are roaming free.”
Note, also, that many of the minority of men who did update their information only did so because they had disabilities or other conditions allowing them technical exemption from the army.
Corruption is systematic - those with a few thousand dollars lying around can avoid the draft. In a country where most people earn under a few hundred dollars a month, this option is only open to a minority. Today, Ukraine’s army officially confirmed it has been mobilizing the homeless.
Every day, videos flood Ukraine’s social media of press-gangs forcing draftable men into minibuses. This was from Friday, also Odessa:
At the end of October, residents of the freedom-loving city of Odessa overturned the vehicle of a mobilization press-gang:
Such incidents of mass resistance are quite common - in late September, locals broke into a mobilization center and freed three men, as reported by said mobilization center.
On November 8, people filmed mobilization press gangs running over a relative who tried to save his loved one from mobilization in the city of Vynnytsia:
On November 7, a man cut his veins in a Dnipro mobilization center to avoid getting sent to the front. The event was soon confirmed by the mobilization center in question.
This is also quite a common occurrence - a mobilized man tried to kill himself in August in Kiev, for instance.
Yesterday, a man jumped out of the building of a mobilization center in the western city of Ternopil, as reported by the local mobilization center.
In August, an old woman in the poor village of Novy Chervyshcha was shot by mobilization officers as she tried to stop them from abducting a disabled man.
Men often die at mobilization centers, covered in mysterious bruises and traumas. This is also quite a common occurrence. The last publicized time this happened was in late October, in Kiev. The army officially claimed that he fell and hit his head. In July, a mother posted photos of her son, Maksym Muzychko, who died after endless beatings in the mobilization center:
Men of draftable age - 23 to 60 - cannot leave the country. There have been a number of cases of men shot by Ukrainian border patrol as they try to flee to neighboring EU countries. The last time the government admitted this had happened was in early September.
At least dozens have drowned in the Tysa river as they try to flee to eastern EU states.
So that no one gets the wrong idea, Ukrainian border patrol releases videos like this:
At the border with Moldova, in the Odessa region, border guards detected the movement of wolves using technical means. Usually, predators do not move alone but in packs. We urge to avoid illegal travel and not to put yourself in danger
So, to get things straight — some libertarian leftists want to freely travel to a country where ordinary men are press-ganged into a war they don’t want to fight? Where men are beaten and killed if they resist the draft? Where most men are hiding?
It seems like the height of ‘privilege’ for a free person to go over to this large-scale prison camp and announce he or she is here to save the country.
On atrocities
Now, onto some arguments. Let’s start with what I think isn’t a great thing to argue about - atrocities and civilian deaths.
There’s nothing that gets the righteous more riled up than the suspicion that you are ‘denying an atrocity’. Such a suspicion will simply encourage them to find evidence that you are wrong, that the atrocity really did happen the way they want to say it did. And they can always find some.
This sort of argument is unwinnable.
It is undeniably terrible for a civilian to die from a bomb, gun, or however else. It is also quite terrible for a forcibly mobilized man to die from a drone, for that matter.
Arguing about whether people are killed, tortured, or otherwise abused by war is distasteful, and is also besides the point.
Soldiers kill civilians in any war - which is precisely why wars, generally speaking, should be avoided or ended. Unless there’s a very good reason for them.
On Causes
Now, another thing that is easy to get sucked into is the causes of war. This is actually worth arguing about, but in the right way. It can be easy to get bogged down in the details, but it’s important to keep things simple.
The debate about the causes of the war in Ukraine features two main narratives - that NATO expansion provoked a Russian military response, or that the pathologically imperialist Russian mentality is simply fixated on destroying the Ukrainian nation at any cost.
If you subscribe to the second narrative, the only way to fix the situation is by force. One option, popular in Ukraine and the Washington-based ‘Freedom For Russia’ group, is destroying the Russian state and replacing it with a multiplicity of smaller ethno-states. The other option is for Ukraine to inflict some kind of massive military defeat on Russia, such that its leadership is scared into accepting NATO’s demands.
Balkanizing Russia would require nuclear war. I also don’t see how appealing the idea of a never-ending racial civil war is.
And I don’t know why it is necessary to continue discussing Ukraine’s imminent victory the third year of the Russo-Ukrainian war, a conflict in which the Russian side does better every year. A conflict in which the Russian leadership feels ever more confident, as evidenced by the fact that its territorial pretensions keep on growing.
So, we will have to turn to the first narrative on the cause of war - NATO expansion.
Young, idealist left-wingers are unlikely to enjoy listening to long spiels on the history of backdoor diplomacy. And the question always re-emerges - sure, maybe NATO was threatening to Russia, but invading Ukraine was a stupid and morally wrong way to deal with that!
Whether ‘justified’, that isn’t the point. You aren’t the leader of Russia. People who think otherwise are.
The point is that Russia is a country whose leaders and population have always felt sensitive about hostile military alliances on their borders. They are often accused of having a siege mentality, but why wouldn’t they? Have many other countries suffered as many apocalyptic invasions and occupations? The Mongols in the 12th century, the Teutons in the 13th, the Poles in the 16th and 17th, the Swedes in the 18th, the French in the 19th, a whole swarm of western powers (and Japan) between 1917 and 1920, the Germans in 1941. Many in Russia view the 90s as a sort of violent western occupation as well.
It doesn’t really matter if you think that this is a justified fear or a paranoid delusion. That’s just how the Russians feel. And they have the military means to act on this fear - meaning that either you will have to entertain their demands, or militarily defeat them.
Anyway, there are historical reasons why Ukraine figures so prominently in the Russian security imaginary. Russia’s rather large, flat expanses have always been surrounded by unfriendly powers. Hence Stalin was so intent on acquiring his western buffer zone.
And more importantly, Ukraine has always been the key theatre on which Russia’s threats appear (with the exception of the Mongols).
Whether the never-ending battle with Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries, or the even longer struggle with the Crimean Khanate and other Turkic nomads from the 15th to 18th centuries, or the Swedish invasion of the 18th century, or Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, or the allied intervention into Bolshevik Russia after 1917, or Operation Barbarossa in 1941 - in all these cases, the territory of modern-day Ukraine was the key battlefield.
Battlefield Ukraine: 1420-1709
Nowadays, everyone’s favorite military-historical analogy is always world war two. Churchill this, appeasement that, Hitler this, Nazi that and so on and on. And given how many of the towns and cities being fought over in Ukraine today also had such storied histories in the 1940s, it’s hard to blame them. And when units named ‘Nachtigall’ are entering t…
There are various reasons why. Ukraine is not only quite flat (apart from its western border), but also features a rather porous society. Many foreign powers have felt that the territory had at least some elites and populations liable to turn against Moscow.
Anyway, all this is to say that sensitivity on behalf of the Russian elite regarding Ukraine is a well-known fact.
On December 17, 2021, after more than a decade saying much the same thing, the Russian government delivered a formal list of demands to Washington. It was described as Putin’s ultimatum in the western press, but the terminology used doesn’t change the essence. It showed what Russia wanted.
For whatever reason, Russia’s foreign ministry doesn’t seem to have published an English language version. Anyway, the western media described its content fairly accurately, though of course they believed it was an ‘ultimatum meant to be rejected’. Anyway, the original version can be accessed here.
This ‘Agreement on measures to ensure security of the Russian Federation and the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’ contained eight articles. It takes about a minute to read the automatically translated version, but these quotes give the gist:
Article 1
The participants are guided in their relations with each other by the principles of cooperation and equal and indivisible security. They do not strengthen their security individually, within an international organization, military alliance, or coalition, at the expense of the security of others.
…
Article 3
Participants confirm that they do not view each other as opponents.
The most important and specific part was this:
Article 4
The Russian Federation and all Participants that were member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997 shall not, accordingly, deploy their armed forces and weapons on the territory of all other states in Europe in addition to the forces deployed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. In exceptional cases, when situations arise that require the neutralization of a threat to the security of one or more Participants, such deployments may be carried out with the consent of all Participants.
Article 5
The Parties exclude the deployment of land-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in areas from which they are capable of striking targets on the territory of other Parties.
Article 6
Participants, being member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, undertake commitments that exclude further expansion of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine, as well as other states.
Article 7
The participants, being member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, refrain from conducting any military activity on the territory of Ukraine, as well as other states of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia and Central Asia.
Washington refused to reconsider NATO expansion. The response, published by El Pais on February 2, 2022, ‘continues to firmly support NATO’s Open Door Policy’. Ukraine was to continue military cooperation with NATO. It called for Russia to exit Crimea. Some minor offers were made about missiles, but that wasn’t the core issue. Ukraine was.
One might make the argument that demanding NATO abandon countries that had joined it after 1997, like, say, Latvia or Poland, is a non-starter. But that wasn’t being demanded - deploying NATO arms on these territories was being challenged.
Maybe that was also hard to demand. But NATO’s response, filled with accusations against Russia, was clearly not in the spirit of ‘not view[ing] each other as opponents’, as Russia had demanded.
And there was no budging on the most easily fulfillable demand - admit in writing that Ukraine will never join NATO. The demand easiest to fulfil, because NATO never wanted Ukraine to join it anyway. And also the most important matter for Russia, because of reasons already mentioned.
Within less than a month after NATO’s refusal, Russia began what it calls its Special Military Operation.
On the question of causes
Maybe our hypothetical anarchist (or liberal) friend doesn’t care about all that. What does it matter what Russia thinks - Ukraine should have the right to do whatever it wants!
That’s true. People have the right to commit suicide, as well. That doesn’t mean you are obliged to help them do so.
The fact is that Ukraine has a neighbor, Russia, which has particular feelings about Ukraine’s membership in or cooperation with NATO. Maybe Russia’s feelings are misplaced - it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Russia is a country able to inflict quite a high cost on Ukraine for violating its wishes.
Russia says the war is about NATO, and Ukraine’s leadership refuses to reconsider its stance on joining NATO. You might respond that were Ukraine to abandon its aim of joining NATO, it would make it weaker before Russia. But there are two responses to be made.
To begin with, NATO doesn’t want Ukraine in its ranks. The Ukrainian government has been asking to join since 2014, and NATO refuses - for quite obvious reasons. Ukraine has territorial conflicts with Russia, meaning that joining NATO would lead to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, one that would inevitably be nuclear.
Second, NATO is unwilling to give Ukraine enough weapons to win the war with Russia. That’s even assuming NATO has enough conventional weapons to allow that - or that Ukraine has enough enthusiastic manpower for that. The reason why NATO is unwilling to send enough weapons to win is the same as before - it doesn’t want a nuclear conflict with Russia.
At the start of the war, one might have claimed that Ukraine could win. The odds were stacked against it, but sure.
It has now been more than three years. Russia continues moving forward on the frontlines. Ukraine’s two main offensive operations both failed — in 2023 within its own borders, and in 2024 to early 2025 against southern Russia (Kursk). Meanwhile, Ukraine itself is economically and demographically devastated.
My close relative was very dismissive of Moscow’s ultimatum back in December 17, 2021. I was having dinner with that individual in Kiev at the time.
But while we are quite irreconcilable politically, I do treasure one piece of relationship advice this person gave me many years ago, when I was going through my first breakup:
Better a painful end, than endless pain.
For peace, Ukraine would have to abandon ambitions of joining NATO. It would also probably have to give up the remaining cities of the Donbass, and possibly two other major cities claimed by Russia - Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Agreement to this, so far, seems very unlikely. It would be too painful - too many would have died for nothing. And the Ukrainian leadership has already sunk its entire political - and not only - existence into it all.
But is it better for tens of thousands (the real number is unknown) to continue dying each year at the frontline? Is endless pain better than a painful end?
Given the reality, the pain will continue. More people will die, more homes will be destroyed.
But back to our starry eyed hypothetical foreign interlocutor. He or she has a choice - to participate in prolonging the pain or not. To join in the chorus of ‘wise westerners’ encouraging desperate Ukrainians to continue in this unwinnable conflict. Or not.
On hypotheticals
This is undeniably an awful situation. Perhaps something could have been done in the past to avoid it. Our interlocutor might claim that the Russian government should have acted differently. Who knows.
But that is quite irrelevant, because you can’t change the past, and more importantly, because this imaginary dialogue is addressed to the citizens of countries that aren’t Russia.
It is a rather futile exercise for the citizen of one country to change the behavior of a foreign country. After all, the citizens of one country usually can’t even influence the behavior of their own governments!
Coda
Obviously, there is plenty else to talk about. Ukraine's ultra-capitalist society. The fact that people with nicknames like ‘the White Fuhrer’ are the most influential figures in the army. That Ukraine’s trendiest figures in the army glorify the Christchurch Massacre.
But honestly, I don’t think this is what you need to be focusing on with your hypothetical anarchist or even liberal friend. They’ll come back at you with something about how it isn’t nice to live in Russia either. Or that there are unpleasant people in the Russian army as well.
It is undeniably possible to have an opinion on these two topics. But I think that when convincing someone, you need to focus on the strongest arguments. So with that, I’ll end by restating them:
Most of Ukraine’s draftable population does not want to fight this war.
The war in Ukraine is being fought because of the country’s military cooperation with NATO.
Changing Russia’s mind on this account would require direct NATO intervention into the war in Ukraine, ie, nuclear war.
Because of that:
— NATO will not allow Ukraine to join it.
— NATO will not allow Ukraine to win the war with Russia (if it even could)
The war will continue indefinitely until Ukraine either gives in to Russian demands or collapses.
Ukraine’s goals are unachievable. The alternative is less bad. Those joining in are encouraging continued sacrifice for nothing. That’s all there really is to it.
Faultless logic. I am 'hard left' and I cannot for the life of me understand how ANYBODY claiming to be on the left can support the USA and NATO.
Excellent essay.