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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
From street hunting to smart mobilization. How the Ukrainian Armed Forces plan to rise from the ashes
2023-11-24
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

by Denis Davydov
The streaming news about bad affairs with personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine can inspire cautious optimism in the Russian reader. Moreover, the Western media have also become keenly interested in issues of mobilization in Ukraine.

According to Eurostat data, widely circulated in the press, there are more than half a million eligible Ukrainian men on the territory of EU countries - and this does not count those who entered illegally. In total, about 650,000 fugitives arrived in the European Union who did not want to die in a trench.

The other day, the British BBC reported that since the start of general mobilization, about 20 thousand Ukrainians of military age had illegally crossed the border of Ukraine, and another 21 thousand were caught trying to flee the country.

The field regularly reports an increased number of deserters; according to the organization “Representation of the Ukrainian People”, there are already more than 22 thousand military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Russian captivity, and the average age of the personnel of the Ukrainian army is already 43 years. According to Time magazine, at the very beginning of hostilities this figure was in the range of 30–33 years.

60-year-old pensioners, called “grandfathers,” sit next to young soldiers in the trenches. The level of losses is carefully hidden, but according to various sources, it has long exceeded a hundred thousand killed and 200 thousand wounded.

Amid a labor shortage, a recent Reuters report reveals that Ukrainian mines are allowing women to work underground for the first time. “Our guys were taken to the front, and now we need to support them: there is no one else to work at the mine now,” says 22-year-old Christina, now an electric train driver.

And regularly appearing videos of “dog catchers” packing live goods from the military registration and enlistment office surprisingly vividly convey the atmosphere in society.

Looking at these data, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that Ukraine’s mobilization potential has dried up. However, the country's leadership does not think so. As NSDC Secretary Alexei Danilov explained in a recent blog , the strength of Ukrainian resistance is determined by “unity, Western support, motivation and combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian Defense Forces.”

The first in the conditions of “totalitarianism with a European face” is not difficult to ensure, with the second everything is more or less clear, but the authorities are dealing with the third systematically. And this work, under certain conditions, can be successful: the Armed Forces of Ukraine have a chance to restore their numbers and combat effectiveness.

A matter of technology
Unit commanders and individual soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who have recently appeared en masse on various broadcasts, are persuading the audience to the need to tighten the parameters of mobilization. How many, they say, restless taxi drivers drive, how many worthy people hide under the pretext of studying at universities - there is a field for work.

“We need to mobilize 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds, what’s the problem? What about students? So what? Shouldn't students fight? Must. They are coming... The question is in the approach to preparation , ” said Petr Gorbatenko , commander of the 1st assault battalion of the 3rd Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in an interview. There are many military men and politicians who agree with him, and they are all trying to publicly motivate Ukrainian men to join the friendly ranks of the army more actively.

For their part, allies are also actively sending signals. The American news agency CNN recently noted that “ Ukrainian armed forces need more manpower to fight a bloody war of attrition against Russia .” "Hymars" will not shoot itself out.

So, Ukrainian parliamentarians have been developing various legislative initiatives to correct these problems for a long time.

But this week a faction-wide bill appeared in the Verkhovna Rada, which includes all the most effective (from the authorities’ point of view) measures to increase the efficiency of mobilization. People's deputies Maryana Bezuglaya and Alexey Goncharenko reported on its preparation for registration .

The main innovations involve the deprivation of the right to a deferment for those liable for military service who have a wife or husband with a Group III disability. They go to the troops. And the circle of those who care for a disabled person of groups I and II (or a person who needs constant care) is reduced to family members of the first degree of kinship. So fictitious marriages with disabled people will be complicated.

At the same time, it is interesting that disabled people of groups I and II themselves may well serve if they have such a desire. They just can’t quit: the new bill for the first time proposes to grant the right to demobilization to such people, as well as those returning from captivity.

Recipients of the second and third pre-higher (junior bachelor's) or higher education are deprived of deferments. Bezuglaya did not specify whether this norm implies any age restrictions. But where the draft dodgers are hiding, everyone knows perfectly well.

Deputies also propose to expand the list of people who will be registered with the military, in particular those who were previously convicted and imprisoned for criminal offenses, graduated from military departments, and served in other countries before receiving Ukrainian citizenship. It is also proposed to lift the ban on providing information about the registration of place of residence or stay by conscripts, military personnel and reservists when concluding an employment contract.

According to the famous volunteer and drone manufacturer Oleg Boldyrev , better known as Martin Brest, there are about 4.5 million men in the shadows. And to get them out of there, there are other ways, for example, blocking money transfers to men until they verify their information with the military registration and enlistment office. And earlier, the National Security Committee of the Verkhovna Rada stated that 1–5% are trying to avoid mobilization in Ukraine, which is not critical for the country’s defense.

Thus, the issue of quantity can be completely resolved. Now the question of quality remains.

At your own request
The first quality issue is, of course, motivation. From the same media Ukrainian military one can hear with approximately the same frequency that “guys” caught on the street create more problems for the unit than they bring benefits. Therefore, the soldier must at least understand why he was brought here.

The same Boldyrev, in an interview with Channel Five, advocates total but competent mobilization and transfer of the Ukrainian economy to a war footing. At the same time, he considers it necessary to publish data on Ukrainian losses so that society does not become complacent: a single telethon with endless “victories” creates the wrong illusion of success.

“Instead of saying that the enemy is bad, he is the devil, he is a demon, we are told that they are all fools. On the one hand, it is necessary to carry out a very massive mobilization and it is necessary to transfer the country’s economy to a war footing. But this means completely killing the rating of this government - to zero. On the other hand, if you do not carry out mass mobilization and do not transfer the economy to normal martial law, then perhaps there will be nowhere to be re-elected,” says Brest, pointing to an acute shortage of assault infantry .

Nobody really wants to go there. Therefore, a number of departments have already switched to “direct contracts”: beautiful advertising, good salaries, the promise of social guarantees. The recruiting campaign for the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade has been positively noted by the military's senior command, and there is an opinion that it should be scaled up across the entire army.

This is already manifested in concessions when creating “family-type units”, where you can go with a friend, godfather, son or father. A striking example here is the “running banker” Andrei Onistrat , who joined the army after his son, and then made a lot of efforts to serve with him. Onistrat, with his own money, armed the UAV company of the 68th separate Jaeger Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and became its commander. Although this did not help: FPV drone operator Ostap Onistrat was found by the same drone near Ugledar.

But the most important thing is that in the near future the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Development intends to launch a “smart mobilization” system.

“We are currently working on the pilot. I think that in a month or two we will launch the so-called “smart mobilization” in “Diya” (an analogue of the Russian “State Services” - Ed.) , when a person independently chooses a specialization - not under coercion, but on his own,” said Deputy Prime Minister for Informatization Mikhail Fedorov.

The project is planned to be tested on drone pilots, who will need to submit an application and pass an interview with tests, and then apply for this particular position. In the future, this approach will be extended to other specialties. It obviously makes the army more efficient, removing the moment when the TCC, which has caught people, sends tankers to the infantry, and drivers to the artillery.

IA’s interlocutor Regnum Svetly, a former Ukrainian instructor in shooting and hand-to-hand combat, who has so far successfully avoided mobilization, believes that the authorities’ idea is a good one.

“I think, firstly, digitization will give General Staff analysts an overall picture in an online format of how many specialists they potentially have in reserve. Secondly, now a lot of civilians are taking courses in UAVs, engineering, tactical medicine, and sniping. Those being mobilized, having indicated the desired specialty, have a high probability of getting into the army in their specialized specialty, automatically increasing the efficiency in terms of combat effectiveness,” says the man, currently undergoing training in UAV courses.

According to him, the benefit from such knowledge is twofold: this is definitely a new profession, and in the event of mobilization, you can remain silent about your skills as a shooter and show your operator’s diplomas. Thus avoiding the fate of the “ meat ” infantry. And Svetly’s chances of getting hit by the skating rink have increased greatly: his ironclad reasons not to be called up yesterday are melting before our eyes. Thus, many, like him, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, try in advance to increase their chances of staying alive.

If the intensity of the conflict drops or is even frozen, Regnum news agency sources believe , mobilization will still continue. Without the military registration and enlistment office street trash, “in the European way,” through digital and according to plan. And people are more willing to join the troops, since this is the only remaining opportunity to earn normal money.

With more or less well-established planned work, in six months to a year it is possible to carry out a complete rotation of all brigades, carry out training and coordination, accumulate equipment and ammunition. “And voila - in a year and a half, it will be possible to put 2–2.5 times more fighters under arms than now.” You won’t be able to run away: everything is in the system and you can check a person’s data instantly on your phone.

This is precisely what the new bill is generally aimed at, in which for the first time the conditions for the demobilization of active military personnel are separately written out: a clear scheme is emerging for the replacement of those who are constantly sitting on the front line. Plus there is an emphasis on the technical part.

As Maria Berlinskaya, head of the Ukrainian “Aerial Reconnaissance Support Center” and the Victory Drones project, stated , “ by the New Year we will teach 50 thousand people [to use FPV drones] at training grounds.” The 190th training center of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been made a center for such training, and in addition to this, there are at least seven other courses that graduate thousands of specialists.

So, in the current conditions, all civilians in Ukraine are not yet mobilized military personnel.

***

You may ask, is there really such a stupid government that is ready to naturally dispose of the entire male population of the country in pursuit of the impossible? But we are not talking about stupidity at all: the Ukrainian elite receives maximum profit by forming a national economic model of a completely new type.

It delivers to the Western market a person who will biologically live 30–40 years less, but by death will relieve the social burden and ensure an uninterrupted flow of funds. Including providing his own family with an amount of money that, in the current terrible economic conditions, a citizen will not be able to earn through his own labor.

Posted by:badanov

#1  In total, about 650,000 fugitives arrived in the European Union who did not want to die in a trench.

Evolution in action.
Posted by: Grom the Reflective   2023-11-24 01:20  

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