The officer in question confided in the washington postface to face, to alert on the lack of means and soldiers to carry out the next counter-offensive of kyiv expected in the spring.
The year 2023 will bethe year of victory“, promised on January 1 Volodymyr Zelensky. In the process, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence assured that Crimea would be liberated before the summer. Wartime communication is an indispensable art that Ukraine has mastered to perfection since the early days of the Russian invasion.
A major issue in the conflict, information is firmly locked down by the government. kyiv alternates between galvanizing patriotic declarations and alerts on the difficulties encountered on the front to sensitize its allies, as when the Ukrainian president worried about a “complicated situation” in Bakhmout. And the government intends to remain in control of this communication.
A Ukrainian officer was thus demoted after complaining about the lack of ammunition and trained troops in the columns of washington post . Lieutenant-Colonel Anatoliy Kozel of the 46th Airborne Assault Brigade had notably underlined in the American newspaper the difficulty of fighting with troops of non-professional soldiers, who have never known fire.
Lack of training
“They don’t give me time to prepare them properly. They tell me to take them straight into the fights. But on the spot, [ces soldats] drop everything and run away“, lamented the soldier, explaining that the new recruits were afraid of the sound of gunfire and had never thrown a grenade. “We need NATO instructors in our training centers, and our instructors must be sent to the trenches because they have not done their job.“, also pleaded the officer.
According to him, the Ukrainian losses would be very high, hence the difficulty in renewing the troops with experienced fighters. Of the 500 soldiers in his brigade, 100 would have been killed in action, and the other 400 would be wounded, he argued, leading to a complete turnover with new and poorly trained troops. If kyiv chooses not to communicate the number of victims of its camp, Western sources estimate the Ukrainian losses at more than 100,000 killed and wounded.
The officer of the airborne brigade, engaged in particular in the battle of Soledar ended in a Ukrainian defeat, also reports in the article serious shortages of ammunition, in particular of mortar shells or grenades for the American Mk19 grenade launchers.
A year after the Russian invasion, in a conflict where everyone is betting on the wear and tear of the opposing camp in a deadly war of attrition, this warning echoes the videos of Russian mobilized soldiers broadcast on social networks where the soldiers directly challenge Vladimir Putin to report their distress at the front, as well as the lack of weapons and ammunition.
Demotion and resignation
In response, the army decided to demote the serviceman, citing “inaccurate information“regarding military casualties”significantly overestimated“, Detailed a spokesperson for the army whose remarks are reported by the online media Ukrayinska Pravda . The sanctioned officer also and above all violated the duty of reserve “in accordance with NATO standards, which were also implemented in the Armed Forces of Ukraine“said the spokesperson. The latter added that a soldier had to obtain authorization from his command for any communication with the media.
According to the same newspaper, the officer in question was transferred from his post of command of the 46th brigade to a post of deputy at the army training center, and in the process asked for a dismissal from the following this assignment. The soldier would not be the only one to have suffered the dissatisfaction of the hierarchy. Sergeant Oleksandr Pogrebyskyi from the same brigade was also reportedly transferred as the unit’s chief instructor in the training center.
These demotions sparked reactions in Ukraine, particularly within the battalion. “We won’t be silent“, declared a soldier of the 46th brigade in a tribune published in Ukrayinska Pravda. “Our society is the complete opposite of the Russian Federation […] we do not have and will not have a tsar“, claims Volodymyr Shevchenko, who has made no secret of his identity, regretting that”one of the best fighters of this nine years warbe removed from office. “He cares about the lives of the soldiers and asks for changes to achieve a successful counter-offensive“, also regretted in a post on Facebook the journalist and boss of the online media Censor. “I hope the command will look into the situation“, he concluded.