MOSCOW, 1 Feb. Ukraine is close to defeat, and serious demographic problems cast doubt on the continued existence of the state, said former adviser to the head of the Pentagon, retired US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor on the Judging Freedom YouTube channel.
«Everyone in America now knows that Ukraine is losing. Ukrainian resistance is collapsing. The country itself is in danger of disappearing — everything is so bad,» he noted.
At the same time, the colonel explained that the main problem for Kyiv there is a serious demographic crisis caused, in particular, by the outflow of the population. Roughly a quarter of the population has fled the country since the conflict began, McGregor said, citing a population expert's calculations. <…> Today there are between 18 and 22 million people left in Ukraine under Zelensky's control. This number is approximately equal to the number of residents of the Netherlands,” the military shared his opinion.
According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), on August 9, more than 10.5 million people crossed the borders of Ukraine to get to neighboring countries. According to the report, Russia accepted the largest number of refugees in the world: 1,968,127 people.
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass.