When the exchange ratio is 24,000 Ukrainian dead to 1,300 Russian, and 161,000 Ukrainian soldiers desert in a single year, the story writes itself: this wasn’t a war. It was a cull. And the empire cheered as Ukraine’s men were fed into the grinder, one generation after another.

Desertion in this case isn’t cowardice. Desertion is the last act of a man who realizes his government has signed his and his country’s death certificate.

And when 161,461 Ukrainian soldiers desert in the first 10 months of 2025, a 43× increase from 2022 (official number, unofficial numbers are likely higher), you’re not looking at a morale problem.

You’re looking at the collapse of an army that knows it has been condemned.

Condemned by its own leadership.

Condemned by the handlers who whisper orders from Washington, London, Brussels.

Condemned by an empire that views Ukrainian men as expendable placeholders on a geopolitical chessboard.

This was never about fighting for a just cause, but contempt for Ukrainians.

A contempt so deep, so cold, so imperial, that Washington and London saw no problem turning an entire people into fertilizer for a failed geopolitical fantasy.

One day, the survivors of Ukraine, the ones who fled, the ones who hid, the ones who simply refused to die for a lie, will understand what happened to them.

And when they do, they won’t be looking east for answers. They’ll be looking west.

If Ukraine’s true losses weren’t being hidden, Lvov’s Field of Honor wouldn’t be overflowing with flags and candles, and this only one cemetery. Only 20 burial spots left, while Kiev pretends the dead don’t exist. The body‑exchange ratio alone — 24,000 Ukrainian bodies returned vs 1,300 Russian, exposes the truth: Ukraine hasn’t just been defeated. It’s been sacrificed.

Look at this picture. Really look at it.

This isn’t a cemetery. It’s a mass ledger of a nation emptied of its sons.

A field so crowded with graves that officials are now openly admitting: only 20 burial spots remain. A new section must be carved out of the earth because the old one has been filled by an entire generation of men.

Yet Kiev keeps insisting its losses are “manageable.” Washington keeps insisting Russia’s economy will collapse losing, due to laughable sanctions on Lukoil, when the previous 18 rounds of sanctions boomeranged, hurt Europeans, and gave rocket fuel to Russia’s economic ascent.

London, Paris and Berlin keeps insisting “Ukraine will fight as long as it takes.”

Meanwhile, the ground tells a different story, the only story that matters.

And when you compare this image with the one datapoint the West cannot spin, the full scale becomes horrific:

Ukraine has received over 24,000 bodies in official exchanges. Russia has received roughly 1,300.

That’s an 18.5-to-1 ratio, and in many swaps, it rises to 40-to-1.

This is not the footprint of a country “winning.” This is not the footprint of a country sacrificed for a dying Empire’s grotesque vanity and arrogance.

This is what a sacrificial offering looks like.

The cemeteries confirm it. The satellite images confirm it. The overflowing graveyards of Kiev, Dnipro, Kharkov, Odessa, and Lvov confirm it.

And if the OSINT crowd in the West ever grew a spine, they would map these graveyards from 2022 to 2025 and overlay them with the explosion of Ukrainian obituaries. They would compare the growth patterns of burial fields. They would measure the expansion of death.

But they won’t, because the truth is too big to fit inside a NATO press briefing.

Ukraine wasn’t “defending democracy.”

Ukraine was being bled dry by a puppet government serving foreign masters who needed a proxy war, to buy time, with nothing but snug contempt for what Ukranians truly truly wanted, peace.

Russia spent a decade trying to avoid this war

And now the evidence is everywhere, in satellite images, in body exchanges, in cemeteries so full they’re running out of land.

One day, when the dust settles, the Ukrainian people will look at these fields of flags and candles and ask the only question that matters:

Who did this to us, and why did they lie? This is an easy, albeit devastating answer to confront.