After 2 years of war against Russia, Ukraine has to deal with the crisis of its armed forces. The change in leadership, with the appointment of General Oleksandr Syrsky in place of General Valerii Zaluzhny, is the move with which President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks a turning point in a complex moment of the conflict.
Kiev – still waiting for US weapons blocked by the standoff in the Senate in Washington – is facing a critical lack of infantry forces, with the soldiers at the front increasingly exhausted and demotivated. This is the picture that, almost two years after the start of the war on February 24, 2022, dozens of soldiers and commanders describe to the Washington Post, underlining how the lack of fresh forces constitutes the most critical problem now that Russia has regained the initiative of the offensive on the field and raising the aim of his attacks.
It is not clear how Volodymyr Zelensky's entirely political decision to fire Zaluzhny and launch Syrsky could improve the balance on the battlefield, asks the Guardian. Before the start of the tug of war between Zelensky and Zaluzhny, whose popularity was considered a political threat by the president who had lost confidence in him after the failure of the summer counteroffensive, the general had clearly said that the country needed half a million new soldiers.
A number which, however, had been disputed privately and publicly by Zelensky, who said he needed the military leadership to better justify this enormous number of recruits. Not to mention that the Ukrainian government would not know how to pay these recruits, since financial aid from the West cannot be used directly to pay the salaries of the military, while Kiev's budget is already in crisis, with 60 billions of US dollars that have been blocked for months by the Republicans in Congress and the 54 million euros from the EU which were approved only last week, after weeks of delays caused by Viktor Orban.
Anger among the military
In interviews conducted on the front, the Post recorded anger among commanders and enlisted men over the issue of mobilization. “The basis of everything is the lack of military. Where are we going? I don't know, there is no positive outlook, absolutely nothing. It will end with a lot of deaths, a global failure,” said Oleksandr, a commander of battalion, saying that on average units have only 35% of the strength they should have at full strength.
In the last five months – Oleksandr continues – only five new recruits have arrived, who are also poorly trained, thus posing him and the other commanders the dilemma of whether to send them immediately to the battlefield, where reinforcements are so necessary, even at risk. that they are immediately killed or injured due to their unpreparedness.
“We have to be replaced by someone, if someone doesn't replace them, the morale of the troops will drop further, they will get sick, they will get chilblains”, continues Oleksandr referring to the fact that with the prohibitive winter conditions, the infantry units would have to rotate every three days. But with the lack of personnel, the periods at the front are getting longer – up to 5, even 10 days, explains another commander, Serhiy – and thus the physical and mental tiredness of the soldiers grows, creating greater possibilities for Russia to break the front.
“Most likely, I believe, that the front will collapse somewhere as it did in 2022 for the enemy in the Kharkiv region”, concludes the commander, recalling how in the autumn of 2022 the Ukrainians exploited the weak points of the Russian front, where forces were in short supply , and managed to liberate much of the north-eastern region.
In interviews conducted on the front, the Post recorded anger among commanders and enlisted men over the issue of mobilization. “The basis of everything is the lack of military. Where are we going? I don't know, there is no positive outlook, absolutely nothing. It will end with a lot of deaths, a global failure,” said Oleksandr, a commander of battalion, saying that on average units have only 35% of the strength they should have at full strength.
The law to lower the draft age
Parliament is working on a law for lower the draft age from 27 to 25, but MPs are aware that they are not doing a good job of explaining why it is necessary to send more people to the front. Indeed, with Zelensky – who last August fired all the heads of the regional recruitment offices accusing them of corruption – and Zaluzhny who contradicted each other in public by showing an internal conflict on the issue, the message was even more confused. “Why doesn't anyone join the army? – asks Commander Oleksandr – Why hasn't the country told people that they have to go to the army, hasn't explained to them that they have to go, those who knew they had to go are now finished “.
Also because there is the harsh truth of war. “We have a direct personnel problem, because this is a war and it is the defense infantry that dies“, explains Mykyta, deputy commander of an infantry battalion, adding that the situation is the same in all units which also have to deal with a decrease in ammunition and weapons available, with deliveries slowed down by European difficulties in producing sufficient bombs to cover Kiev's needs and US military aid blocked in Washington.
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