> Private fertility clinics began offering what's known as crypto preservation to servicemen and women in 2022 at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.
I'm pretty certain it's "cryo" and not "crypto". Am I wrong, or has the BBC's standards slipped so badly?
"The study examined different scenarios, from a "best case", in which the war ended in 2023 without significant further escalation, to a "worst case", ending in 2025 after further escalation."
As they point out: "... the issue of Ukraine’s supposed manpower crisis. This idea has been a key part of the analysis for more than two years now, analysis saying Ukraine was on the verge of military failure."
The Ukrainians are adapting their battle tactics and use of drones to reduce their casualties. The Russians are not, and are suffering huge casualties as a result. Yet no-one is saying the Russian invasion is doomed because they're going to run out of young men.
To be clear: Ukrainian "new" tactic only really help them to reduce casualties on the offensive (estimated at 1 to 1, which is _crazy good_, since Starlink has been deactivated for Russians). Casualties on the defensive side being 2 or even 3 to 1 is expected. And Russia can afford that anyway.
Russia is doomed anyway, unless they manage to disarm their population at the end of the war (and Ukraine will have the same issue), and limit revanchism (Ukraine won't have this issue: if they win, revanchism won't be a societal issue, and if they loose, their revanchism will be an issue for Russia)
"The Russians are suffering huge casualties as a result". This, right here, is the best proof that social media usage is directly proportional with intellectual decline. God save us all!
It is because of the manpower shortage that, credit due, the Ukrainians have come with many innovative ways to use Drones in the ongoing war. But anyone who says Ukraine's military doesn't have a manpower shortage is either ignorant, misinformed or deluded - quite recently Ukraine announced that they would now be recruiting even 60 years old ( https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskyy-signs-law-for-over-6... ). You do not hire old people to fight in a war unless you are desperate. Relying on drone warfare for defence however is still a short-term measure because the Russians too are learning from the Ukrainian and adapting accordingly ( https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/22/europe/russia-rubicon-uni... ).
what is the point? genetic diversity? women and the length of pregnancy is the limiting bottleneck. Men can have kids very late, and from what I heard, only a certain top percentage of sperm donors' products get picked.
Partially, yes. I know a scientist in one of Denver's clinics specializing in reproductive health.
They do not allow more than 25 descendants per man per country, and do not allow more than 100 globally. Yes, they do export the material to many countries, including developed ones, such as the UK.
The law about inheriting frozen material from a deceased partner is also widely outdated in many jurisdictions around the globe. In many countries even the legal wife cannot inherit it without active consent, which cannot be given posthumously for obvious reasons.
It might even just be a cynical motivation to with zero actual intent on using it. Men under pressure to be thrown into the meat grinder will be more encouraged and motivated if they believe their legacy can continue even without what they know is a death sentence.
No, the bottleneck is the desire to have children. Unless you are planning to force the women, you need policies (such as these) that encourage them to want children.
Maybe Ukrainian women want to have kids with their partners who are soldiers? Morale boost, probably a higher willingness to fight to the possible death if you know there's a chance your genes will survive...
It's about more than simply having anyone's children...
Some ukarians would probably prefer to be on a couch too, even if it's West of the donbass, but not like they have a choice about martial law or conscription or the suspension of voting, but hey just some details right?
Finland inflicted a serious military victory over ussr, actually had a possibility of Allies joining in Winter War, and fought with ussr in 1941-1945. After all that it got its neutral position, not only by ceding some land, but actively resisting.
Meanwhile Baltic states lost their sovereignty for 50 years.
I've asked Gemini. Interestingly, they were offered over 2x as much territory in exchange for 1.5% of their land. Curiously, Wikipedia doesn't mention that in the Winter War article.
They lost 10-11% after WW2. Which deal was better?
"every male still needs to spend one year of their life"
Not 1 year. Gemini says it's 6-12 months, and several European countries not bordering the big bad fit that criteria.
Who exactly is after Austria, which has conscription, but has been neutral since basically the entire cold war?
Or the famously neutral Switzerland?
"No, it hasn’t."
Top Export Partners (2019)
The total value of Finnish goods exports in 2019 was approximately $72.84 billion.
They didn't cede anything there. They continued to claim that Crimea was theirs, with support from the US. Less than a year before Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine was openly speaking of all options to retake Crimea which would obviously entail war with Russia. [1] All the while they were actively seeking to join NATO, and Biden was certainly implying it would happen soon.
This certainly contributed to Russia's decision to invade, as they likely saw the future as being a war on their terms, or a war on NATO's terms. And the narrative about aggressor would have likely played out similarly even if Ukraine/Biden had moved to invade Crimea, precisely because nothing was ever conceded.
Col Jacques Baud has documented that those "Russian troops" or "little green men" were Russian speaking Ukrainian nationals who pulled off their insignia and switched sides.
Colour me as old fashion but in my book when a country invades another, it's an aggression.
Especially when the one that started it seems inclined to target civilians that they supposedly want to help. Unless you also consider this a "mass media cliché".
Never mind that they tried a month ago with the drone attacks.
How would this work exactly? The most protected person in the world, thousands of km from hostile borders, in the city with the world best AD surrounded, by bureaucrats who, if anything, think Putin is too soft on the West.
And what happened? They poked the bear and it turned their electricity grid off. Something NATO would have done in the first 4 hours, not take 4 years.
The problem is that Russia is the one surviving major imperialist state (as in annexing land) of the four that existed in the 1930s. We defeated the other three and rebuilt their constitutions, but we didn't have the manpower or the will to do this to Russia as well.
And so, Russia continued in its imperialist tradition: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and next Moldova and Lithuania if they're not stopped.
The West naively believed that commerce would tame Russia, but an imperialist is never satisfied with riches and friends - only land gives them a true sense of status.
And so we must learn this painful lesson yet again.
Killing Putin would only make a temporary dent. The only way to stop this kind of beast is to destroy and rebuild like we did with Italy, Germany, and Japan.
Putin is literally creation of west, they wanted USSR to fall so desperately but didn't think about its consequences, now all the former soviet countries are killing each other and doing ethnic cleansing of different groups inside their border.
> Zelenskyy could die tomorrow and Ukraine would keep fighting
That's your delusion and it has nothing to do with reality. Take out their army "recruiters" grabbing and beating people on streets, and there will be noone to fight anymore. No need even to take out zelenski.
> Your brain's been melted by Russian propaganda.
How predictable lol. So happy your "brain" is not melted by anything.
The Ukraine conscription age is 25. If they were desperate for soldiers it would be lowered. It was 18 for the United States in the Vietnam war. Definitely wouldn't be grabbing people off the streets.
The US was a large country with normal demographics in the era of Vietnam, fighting a war with low deaths - less than 60k over ~10 years of fighting. Ukraine is a fraction of the size of the US, was already in a major demographic crisis before the war started, and is fighting a war where they are suffering high death rates.
This [1] is a population of pyramid from Ukraine 2 years ago. It's going to look dramatically worse now. They simply don't have many people below the age of 25. And you shouldn't just view those people as fodder. That is essentially the future of Ukraine. Send them off to die and you literally and figuratively send the future of Ukraine off to die.
So the two wars aren't especially comparable at all.
The extreme brutality of Ukrainian press gangs is well documented, including repeated incidents of them beating people to death. Even Wiki lists a bunch of incidents [1] which should obviously be considered a very small sampling.
> Private fertility clinics began offering what's known as crypto preservation to servicemen and women in 2022 at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.
I'm pretty certain it's "cryo" and not "crypto". Am I wrong, or has the BBC's standards slipped so badly?
Genetics live in the block chain now
I assumed the servicemen's identities were obfuscated.
"The study examined different scenarios, from a "best case", in which the war ended in 2023 without significant further escalation, to a "worst case", ending in 2025 after further escalation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine
The United States military was apparently interested in the idea in a 2022 article, although I can't find any recent information on it.
https://qz.com/610131/the-us-military-will-pay-for-soldiers-...
https://www.progress.org.uk/us-military-to-offer-egg-and-spe...
And Israel has been freezing soldiers' sperm post-mortem: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5658287/families-of-isr...
I’ve never been bothered by the idea of my corpse being mistreated, but that feels like several bridges too far
People who actually know about the Ukrainian war are countering the idea that Ukraine is running out of men: https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-fewer-soldiers-on...
As they point out: "... the issue of Ukraine’s supposed manpower crisis. This idea has been a key part of the analysis for more than two years now, analysis saying Ukraine was on the verge of military failure."
The Ukrainians are adapting their battle tactics and use of drones to reduce their casualties. The Russians are not, and are suffering huge casualties as a result. Yet no-one is saying the Russian invasion is doomed because they're going to run out of young men.
To be clear: Ukrainian "new" tactic only really help them to reduce casualties on the offensive (estimated at 1 to 1, which is _crazy good_, since Starlink has been deactivated for Russians). Casualties on the defensive side being 2 or even 3 to 1 is expected. And Russia can afford that anyway.
Russia is doomed anyway, unless they manage to disarm their population at the end of the war (and Ukraine will have the same issue), and limit revanchism (Ukraine won't have this issue: if they win, revanchism won't be a societal issue, and if they loose, their revanchism will be an issue for Russia)
"The Russians are suffering huge casualties as a result". This, right here, is the best proof that social media usage is directly proportional with intellectual decline. God save us all!
It is because of the manpower shortage that, credit due, the Ukrainians have come with many innovative ways to use Drones in the ongoing war. But anyone who says Ukraine's military doesn't have a manpower shortage is either ignorant, misinformed or deluded - quite recently Ukraine announced that they would now be recruiting even 60 years old ( https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-zelenskyy-signs-law-for-over-6... ). You do not hire old people to fight in a war unless you are desperate. Relying on drone warfare for defence however is still a short-term measure because the Russians too are learning from the Ukrainian and adapting accordingly ( https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/22/europe/russia-rubicon-uni... ).
what is the point? genetic diversity? women and the length of pregnancy is the limiting bottleneck. Men can have kids very late, and from what I heard, only a certain top percentage of sperm donors' products get picked.
The headline is misleading.
It's simply so now-widows can have another child (or two) with their late husband.
It's motivation for the soldiers -- even if you don't make it, you can still have another child after your death, and in that way you'll live on.
> genetic diversity?
Partially, yes. I know a scientist in one of Denver's clinics specializing in reproductive health.
They do not allow more than 25 descendants per man per country, and do not allow more than 100 globally. Yes, they do export the material to many countries, including developed ones, such as the UK.
The law about inheriting frozen material from a deceased partner is also widely outdated in many jurisdictions around the globe. In many countries even the legal wife cannot inherit it without active consent, which cannot be given posthumously for obvious reasons.
It might even just be a cynical motivation to with zero actual intent on using it. Men under pressure to be thrown into the meat grinder will be more encouraged and motivated if they believe their legacy can continue even without what they know is a death sentence.
> The politicians' initial efforts caused a public outcry though, when they stipulated that all samples should be destroyed on a donor's death.
Looks like you're right.
A cheap morale booster.
Russians torture and mutilate their prisoners. If they get caught, they likely will not be returned with their gonads intact.
Is this a war crime? Yes. Is the rest of world letting it happen or actively abetting? It is!
No, the bottleneck is the desire to have children. Unless you are planning to force the women, you need policies (such as these) that encourage them to want children.
Maybe Ukrainian women want to have kids with their partners who are soldiers? Morale boost, probably a higher willingness to fight to the possible death if you know there's a chance your genes will survive...
It's about more than simply having anyone's children...
There will be a million women without mates by the end of this war.
Its a crude solution that is deemed more acceptable than polygamy or, shudder the thought, peace negotiations.
So easy to demand they cede territory for “peace” from your couch in Austin. But hey, I get it. Breitbart said they should.
Why not let Ukrainians decide if they want to take land? Have elections. A referendum.
Maybe people in Ukraine already decided?
There is no trust between Ukraine and Russia, there won’t be an agreement.
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Some ukarians would probably prefer to be on a couch too, even if it's West of the donbass, but not like they have a choice about martial law or conscription or the suspension of voting, but hey just some details right?
Ceding territory to end the war will surely fix the problem. That worked out well with Crimea, after all.
Worked out pretty well for Finland, has it not?
Finland inflicted a serious military victory over ussr, actually had a possibility of Allies joining in Winter War, and fought with ussr in 1941-1945. After all that it got its neutral position, not only by ceding some land, but actively resisting. Meanwhile Baltic states lost their sovereignty for 50 years.
No, it hasn’t.
They lost a large chunk of land and every male still needs to spend one year of their life defending their country.
Compulsory military service is not uncommon in Europe.
"They lost a large chunk of land"
I've asked Gemini. Interestingly, they were offered over 2x as much territory in exchange for 1.5% of their land. Curiously, Wikipedia doesn't mention that in the Winter War article.
They lost 10-11% after WW2. Which deal was better?
"every male still needs to spend one year of their life"
Not 1 year. Gemini says it's 6-12 months, and several European countries not bordering the big bad fit that criteria.
Who exactly is after Austria, which has conscription, but has been neutral since basically the entire cold war?
Or the famously neutral Switzerland?
"No, it hasn’t."
Top Export Partners (2019)
The total value of Finnish goods exports in 2019 was approximately $72.84 billion.
1. Germany: $10.44 billion (14.33% share)
2. Sweden: $7.47 billion (10.26% share)
3. United States: $5.20 billion (7.14% share)
4. Netherlands: $4.34 billion (5.95% share)
5. Russia: $4.02 billion (5.51% share)
6. China: $3.84 billion (5.28% share)
Top Import Partners (2019)
1. Germany: $11.42 billion (15.49% share)
2. Russia: $10.01 billion (13.57% share)
3. Sweden: $8.16 billion (11.06% share)
4. China: $5.49 billion (7.45% share)
5. Netherlands: $3.29 billion (4.46% share)
6. United States: $2.48 billion (3.37% share)
Nominal GDP per Capita in 2019 (2019 US dollars):
United States: $65,281
Finland: $48,629
Germany: $46,793
Yep, didn't work out well at all.
> I've asked Gemini
I don't think this has the intended effect you are hoping for.
They didn't cede anything there. They continued to claim that Crimea was theirs, with support from the US. Less than a year before Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine was openly speaking of all options to retake Crimea which would obviously entail war with Russia. [1] All the while they were actively seeking to join NATO, and Biden was certainly implying it would happen soon.
This certainly contributed to Russia's decision to invade, as they likely saw the future as being a war on their terms, or a war on NATO's terms. And the narrative about aggressor would have likely played out similarly even if Ukraine/Biden had moved to invade Crimea, precisely because nothing was ever conceded.
[1] - https://www.unian.info/politics/russian-aggression-ukraine-a...
"I stole your car, you need to cease all your attempts of taking it back, that is aggression/violence against me!".
Russia delenda est.
Translates to Russia must be destroyed.
Lovely.
Israel, Russia… anyone else you want to see burn because you don’t like their current political leaders?
So Biden was “implying” something, and that was the reason for the war.
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Interesting choice of word to describe a country trying to survive against an aggressor that started the war
The civil war began in 2014, after the Maidan coup. Donesk was shelled for 8 years by the Ukrainians.
It's not a civil war if it was started by Russian special forces and continued with Russian soldiers, "advisors" and weapons.
It was far closer to an actual invasion than it was to any form of uprising.
That sure is a peculiar way to talk about the large number of clandestine Russian troops that were sent into donesk to take it over in 2014.
Col Jacques Baud has documented that those "Russian troops" or "little green men" were Russian speaking Ukrainian nationals who pulled off their insignia and switched sides.
Yeah and the rebels just found those T-72B3 tanks in storage somewhere. lmfao
Interesting choice of words to reduce complicated conflict to a black and white situation.
You forgot to add "unprovoked aggression" to fully regurgitate mass media cliches.
Pray tell, why is it "complicated"? And what's the situation behind the cliche that you're "more educated" in?
Colour me as old fashion but in my book when a country invades another, it's an aggression.
Especially when the one that started it seems inclined to target civilians that they supposedly want to help. Unless you also consider this a "mass media cliché".
Kidnapping Maduro comes under what category?
What a waste of life. Why hasn’t someone taken out Putin, is it really that hard? It can’t possibly be that hard for a state.
A state can do it, but it might fail, and the result of a failure would be a catastrophe so everyone is very cautious.
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And then you get Medvedev. His finger is so itchy for the red button he has to rub it with vagisil.
At a certain point we have to understand that Putin is about the most pro-Western person left in Russia.
>Putin is about the most pro-Western person left in Russia.
Appearing more sane than Putin while simultaneously being in a position to plausibly serve as Putin's successor is likely to be fatal.
Yes, it is difficult to take out the leader of a world nuclear world power.
Especially one as shrewd as Putin. Especially when you're expecting the EU to do it. Not sure why this is a surprise.
The world is not an action film.
This.
Never mind that they tried a month ago with the drone attacks.
How would this work exactly? The most protected person in the world, thousands of km from hostile borders, in the city with the world best AD surrounded, by bureaucrats who, if anything, think Putin is too soft on the West.
That one attack where Russians released an ai generated video to prove its existence.
And what happened? They poked the bear and it turned their electricity grid off. Something NATO would have done in the first 4 hours, not take 4 years.
Putin is a symptom, not the problem.
The problem is that Russia is the one surviving major imperialist state (as in annexing land) of the four that existed in the 1930s. We defeated the other three and rebuilt their constitutions, but we didn't have the manpower or the will to do this to Russia as well.
And so, Russia continued in its imperialist tradition: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and next Moldova and Lithuania if they're not stopped.
The West naively believed that commerce would tame Russia, but an imperialist is never satisfied with riches and friends - only land gives them a true sense of status.
And so we must learn this painful lesson yet again.
Killing Putin would only make a temporary dent. The only way to stop this kind of beast is to destroy and rebuild like we did with Italy, Germany, and Japan.
the Russians say exactly the same things about the West. The difference is: they are right
Putin is literally creation of west, they wanted USSR to fall so desperately but didn't think about its consequences, now all the former soviet countries are killing each other and doing ethnic cleansing of different groups inside their border.
Ok sure, you go try it! Just remember that even if you succeed, the consequences may be everyone you know and love dying in nuclear fire.
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Zelenskyy could die tomorrow and Ukraine would keep fighting. Your brain's been melted by Russian propaganda.
This post’s comments has seen a special military operation or something, it’s straight up Soviet radio in here
big uptick in authoritarian bootlicking in this place unfortunately
> Zelenskyy could die tomorrow and Ukraine would keep fighting
That's your delusion and it has nothing to do with reality. Take out their army "recruiters" grabbing and beating people on streets, and there will be noone to fight anymore. No need even to take out zelenski.
> Your brain's been melted by Russian propaganda.
How predictable lol. So happy your "brain" is not melted by anything.
The Ukraine conscription age is 25. If they were desperate for soldiers it would be lowered. It was 18 for the United States in the Vietnam war. Definitely wouldn't be grabbing people off the streets.
The US was a large country with normal demographics in the era of Vietnam, fighting a war with low deaths - less than 60k over ~10 years of fighting. Ukraine is a fraction of the size of the US, was already in a major demographic crisis before the war started, and is fighting a war where they are suffering high death rates.
This [1] is a population of pyramid from Ukraine 2 years ago. It's going to look dramatically worse now. They simply don't have many people below the age of 25. And you shouldn't just view those people as fodder. That is essentially the future of Ukraine. Send them off to die and you literally and figuratively send the future of Ukraine off to die.
So the two wars aren't especially comparable at all.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ukraine2024.jpg
3.1 million Vietnamese died. But they don't count in USAian math.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War
> Take out their army "recruiters" grabbing and beating people on streets
He says, and then unironically whines about being called propaganda.
The extreme brutality of Ukrainian press gangs is well documented, including repeated incidents of them beating people to death. Even Wiki lists a bunch of incidents [1] which should obviously be considered a very small sampling.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_Center_of_Recruitm...
Who walked away from the Istanbul offer and killed their negotiating team? There's no better outcome for Ukraine than that offer, plus a million dead.
Thank you Boris Johnson.
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You think the war ends if they kill Putin? Medvedev would very likely nuke Kiev 30 minutes later.
I seriously doubt it. You have to be absolutely bonkers to start nuclear war over one person. Russia is insane but not suicidal.
Franz Ferdinand proves we are this bonkers.
Here's how Ukraine can still win