What Ukraine risks if Minsk agreement fall trough

The peace process in the Donbass is in a limbo. Europe and the United States accuse Russia of not doing enough, while the world’s eyes are watching elsewhere. What if Moscow blows up the agreement?

Ukraine is unprepared to face a possible escalation of the conflict in the east. In the event that something in the path of peace should go wrong, for Kiev it would be almost impossible to contain an advanced of Russia-backed separatists. In addition, as demonstrated by the recent history, Europe and the US would be willing to little to defend the country.

Yaroslav Tynchenko, an Ukrainian military expert and historian, has x-rayed the Ukrainian Armed Forces and all that was has(n’t) be done so far to get the army ready to war, the real one.

Four cornerstones

Tynchenko’s analysis is fierce. Through the picture of the Ukrainian armed forces, battalions deployed in the field, hierarchy and armaments, a portrait emerges against the entire country. That makes it hard to shake off the problems and vices atavistic.

Tynchenko examines the four cornerstones of an armed force: recruiting, weapons supply, military training and motivation.

To date, the Armed Forces of Ukraine is about 250,000, including 84,500 servicemen conscripted during the last mobilization campaigns and 46,000 of civilian workers. The latter also include a large number of reserve officers. All others are officers, whose number is incredibly disproportionate to common soldiers, and contract servicemen. Within a year, however, those drafted during the mobilization campaigns will have to be discharged, while contracts of many other servicemen will expire. That being the case, who will keep the front lines?

In terms of equipment and weapons, the situation is even worse. The Ukrainian military industry is the remnants of the Soviet era. Obsolete fragments of a chain whose production centers were scattered throughout the USSR. So today quite a lot of enterprises manufacture parts of combat aircraft, but none builds such aircrafts, just like many plants make hulls and engines for armored vehicles, but there are virtually no manufacturers of artillery pieces for them. Seven out of 11 enterprises producing ammunition and explosives are in territory controlled by the separatists.

The war in Donbass, a small local conflict according to international standards, has practically emptied the warehouses of ammunition of all calibers, and the Russians know this. The result is that Ukrainian forces were forced to use weapons built before the Second World War, as the Maxim machine guns (for which there is quite large amount of ammunitions) in crucial battles such as the defense of the Donetsk airport or at checkpoints.

3.4%

The expenditures of the Ministry of Defense in 2014 reflects the situation well. The 80% of the budget goes to army maintenance, compared to 50% of a modern army, 16% to weapons and equipment development (compared to 30%) and just 3.4% to army training (compared to 20 %).

The training of troops is virtually nonexistent, also because of the lack of ammunition. Air defense units are almost not being trained, partly because a moratorium imposed after a Su-25 crashed near Zaporizhzhia on November 2015 and ground troops exercises are not held at all, apart from a quick training base to newly enrolled civilians.

A professional serviceman’s monthly salary is UAH 2,300, some € 90. Officers with 20 years of service earn up to UAH 6,000, € 240. Only those having no chance of finding a job in civilian life would risk their lives for that much money. The Ministry of Defense ended hiring people with mental and physical disabilities, and the issue of professional competences is not even raised.

With this situation, a possible escalation of the conflict would have devastating effects on Ukraine.

@daniloeliatweet