How to Get More People to the Frontline?

Today, Ukraine has three problems on the frontline: Russian guided aerial bombs, a shortage of weapons and ammunition, and a lack of soldiers.

The latter, of course, is of primary importance. Foreign media have already written a lot about the depopulation of the Ukrainian army, quoting cliches about the end of the 2022 volunteer pool, etc. However, few of them paid attention to the fact that it is easy to see a sufficient number of people who are quite fit for service in the rear.

As a soldier who, on the orders of the military leadership, is looking for people to man a unit, I can categorically confirm that we still have people who are willing and able to serve, and in large numbers. To say that we are not running out of Ukrainians would be not at all true.

We just need reforms that will attract more people to the army by the carrot and, importantly, the stick.

The focus is now on new laws that expand conscription and strengthen the state’s powers in this area. The authors of these initiatives believe that if you pour more water into a leaky bucket, more water will remain there. But we need to start by patching the holes.

So, about the stick. The main reason for the exodus of soldiers from the army is the actual absence of punishment for desertion and unauthorized abandonment of units (UAU).

For instance, in January – March this year, a total of 12,776 criminal proceedings were registered under the articles of the Criminal Code “Unauthorized abandonment of a military unit or place of service” (Article 407) and “Desertion” (Article 408). At the same time, only 125 people received notices of suspicion during the same period. That is, if we assume that things will go on like this, the probability of being prosecuted for such crimes will be no more than 1%.

In reality, however, this figure is even lower! First, law enforcement officers often refuse to register criminal proceedings based on applications from commanders without any grounds. Secondly, only a part of the cases with indictments reach the court.

These figures are a direct invitation to the UAU, and unfortunately, many people do not turn down this invitation. Therefore, more active catching of evaders on the streets will not increase the combat capability of my unit (and all others) if there is no accountability for those who ran away.

How to solve this legal problem is the subject of a separate analytical paper. The main thing is to find statesmen who are able to comprehend and implement such decisions. In general, we can only say that without a drastic reform of military justice, without the creation of disciplinary units (for example, for the construction of engineering structures) as a method of punishing the members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, there will be no positive outcomes.

And now on the carrot.

As a representative of the army, who is interested in recruiting people to my unit, I feel remorseful when we resort to draconian measures to force people to serve without doing two things.

Firstly, we have not effectively utilized the human resources already available in the army. Secondly, we have not created the right conditions for volunteers, i.e., for those who are willing and able to serve and make their contribution.

To use the available resources efficiently means to allocate the available soldiers to military units so that they bring maximum benefit. We have to assume that unit commanders on the ground know best who they need and who they don’t.

The system is different now. Today, everything is centered around the leadership, with the chiefs, who supposedly know better (which they don’t). Within a military unit, the authority is vested exclusively in its commander, and within, for example, the ground forces, in the head of these troops. And if it is necessary to transfer a soldier, for example, from the National Guard to the Armed Forces, you cannot do so without the Commander-in-Chief personally.

As a result, the average time for transferring a person within the AFU is, according to anecdotal evidence, about six months.

What kind of effectiveness can we talk about when the speed of adaptation by redeploying personnel is six months? This is an application to lose the war.

The procedure for transferring by mutual consent of commanders needs to be simplified and accelerated. Otherwise, we will have another army in the army itself — a huge army of unmotivated people who are not where they should be.

Next, we have a problem with officer ranks in the Armed Forces.

Twenty years ago, a person studied to be an engineer, was obliged to study at a military department in the university and receive an officer’s rank. After that, the person never thought about military service, had long since forgotten everything they had been taught, but now it is impossible to conscript this person and appoint them to a position other than an officer.

Such an officer is of no use, he cannot give orders, he has no military knowledge, and it is impossible to send him for any retraining. At the same time, he could be an excellent logistics sergeant, company technician, or sapper, but because he has an officer’s rank from 20 years ago, it is impossible to appoint him to these positions. The man is happy to give up his officer’s rank, but he cannot.

There are thousands of such people.

I see no other solution to the issue but to introduce a mechanism for voluntary renunciation of the officer’s rank. Otherwise, those who really aspire to add value to the front will have to lie. I know of many cases where the existence of an officer’s rank was concealed (some of them are even undergoing internal investigations).

So we shouldn’t mock people. Instead, we should give them the opportunity to give up their titles voluntarily.

Then we should go further and consider how to utilize the volunteer resource to the fullest extent possible.

Do you think we have de jure recruiting? In fact, we don’t!

There is no publicly available legal act that would provide for such a procedure. That is, when a person voluntarily applies for a certain position by agreement with the unit commander.

Such norms were only submitted as amendments to one of the draft laws on conscription.

Nowadays, you can sign a contract (but even there, not everything is perfect). However, for some reason, many people do not want to sign a contract. We look at opinion polls and see that a large number of people hope for the war to end within a year, which is much shorter than the minimum contract period. Therefore, we should either reduce these terms or make a decision on conscription for a specific position.

As of now, we have these problems, which the military is solving by methods that are, let’s say, very informal. Those commanders who are too busy with the war and cannot bargain with their headquarters have problems with manning, despite the availability of volunteers.

Another example of blatant injustice in the legislation is the inability to voluntarily conscript people over 60 years of age.

Yes, they argue quite correctly that there are very few medically fit people in this age group. But, first of all, the law allows them to serve, and there is already a provision that provides for service at this age!

If a serviceman is 60 years old but has high professional training, practical experience in his position and is recognized by the military medical commission as fit for military service, he may retain his position beyond the age limit at his request.

However, the law does not provide for the possibility of recruiting physically healthy men over the age of 60, even if they have combat experience or unique professional skills. This has no logical explanation.

How much are we losing?

Let’s say we have 200,000 men in the 60–65-year-old category. If one out of a hundred is willing and able to serve, then we have 2,000 fighters with a lot of life experience. This is half of a full-blooded brigade. And they can replace 25, 26 and 27-year-olds by a small percentage.

I think we should not give up this opportunity.

However, I also believe that the current army, with its old regulations and the practices of totalitarian armies, is not viable (especially since they have not been fighting according to regulations for a long time). Both our army and the Russian army in their regulations have fallen behind the realities of the post-industrial, information society that we are. Moreover, according to American experts, the U.S. Army and its standards have also fallen behind these realities. Therefore, our army must undergo transformations on a much larger scale, and this is inevitable.