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Radio War Nerd EP 594 — Ukraine: The Forgotten War, feat. Peter Korotaev

April 3, 2026·1 hr 33 min·5 clips

Peter Korotaev explains why the Ukraine war has vanished from U.S. headlines since Trump lost interest.

April Fool's Day opens sideways. Ames is on the Erie Canal, Dolan is in southern Italy, and the show wanders through ticks, mules, chickens, and backyard survival before Ukraine comes back in. The jokes run out fast. Korotaev pushes against the idea that Palantir, or some slick surveillance system, explains forced mobilization. The picture he gives is rougher and more physical. Press gangs move through gyms, workplaces, streets, and cities, taking men through pressure at close range rather than some dazzling technical trick. The reform language does not hold for long. Fyodorov comes in with the polished promise of fixing mobilization abuses, even using busification after Zelensky had used it too. Korotaev says the word had once been treated as a Russian propaganda label for men being forced onto buses while resisting. Now the abuse seems to spread instead of stop. More videos show mobilization officers entering apartment blocks and even apartments. The state gets right up to the door. The conversation keeps pulling official language back down to bodies, families, and paperwork. Kharkiv is the sharpest example. Korotaev says about 30 women there, along with many elsewhere in Ukraine, found themselves officially listed as needing mobilization. Some were also listed as draft dodgers, which the episode treats as scandal, not routine bureaucracy. The close stays blunt. Ames points listeners to Korotaev's Substack for wartime Ukraine as Ukrainians report, live, and argue through it, without the Western press polish. The draw is not comfort. It is ugly detail about a war story that keeps getting cleaned up for export.

As heard by us

Ukraine's mobilization crisis, stripped of euphemism and told with hard local detail.

Radio War Nerd spends this hour on Ukraine's mobilization machine, and it works best when it stays close to the mechanics of who gets pulled in and how.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a blunt Ukraine mobilization story told without the glossy filter.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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