Borders by failure The partition argument treats Ukraine less as a state than as a foreign-run wartime apparatus, with the Dnieper presented as the only remaining effective border. Years of emergency rule and external dependence reduced the state to this. Even the question of manpower is framed in brutal business terms: people as a resource to be absorbed before they serve someone else. A system that survives by recruiting bodies and outsourcing sovereignty ends up being debated in the same way.