Many people are aware of the problems which the Armed Forces of Ukraine (UAF) face from the beginning of an anti-terrorist operation (ATO). One of the main is a manpower shortage. (на русском)
I won’t be original if I say that male citizens of Ukraine don’t have a great desire to take guns and go to the front line. It concerns the current situation too when there are no fights on the front line. Everyone has their own reasons as always. I allow myself to declare the most important ones as for me basing myself on conversations with people I had a chance to talk to.
– I don’t want to go to the UAF, because it’s not my war.
Citizens of Kiev, Odessa, Nikolayev, Kherson are ready to go to the front if a danger hangs over their house in their city. Although they consider Donetsk and Lugansk regions as a part of Ukraine, they are not ready to spill blood for them!
– I don’t want to go to the UAF because of a bad material and technical support of the Army.
Perhaps it’s difficult to add something to this as the state of Ukrainian Army is beyond all criticism. The point is possibly not in the fact that money given for Army from the state budget has been banally stolen during the whole period since getting an independence, but in the fact that conditions hardly changed after the Maidan 2014. As an example I can show collecting of money for the Army from civilians with the help of mobile number 565. (By sending a message to this number each user transferred UAH 5 for the Army of Ukraine). (segodnya.ua) And the following fair questions from citizens: Where did this money disappear? (operkor.wordpress.com) Of course as it is accepted in Ukraine (during more than 20 years), nobody gave a report on received money! The explanations can hardly be considered as an answer: We are waging a war now, that’s why we can’t waste time on “trifles” (it is matter of more than UAH 100 million!).
– I don’t want to go to the UAF, because I distrust officer personnel and the main Headquarters.
Here you can also make sure of this argument’s validity. Of course it’s an exclusive case, possibly not the most terrible one, but nobody still has «answered» for the Illovaisk cauldron, Donetsk airport etc., where the UAF suffered from huge losses. The President Poroshenko was giving awards and saying extremely patriotic texts, but there was no talk about the guilty people who were responsible for such an outcome!
– I don’t want to go to the UAF, because I can be killed or crippled there, but my family will get nothing.
Oh yes! This is a war. Killing is considered to be a common thing on a war. Nevertheless, what is the fate of those families who lost their close people in a war? Or those who lost their limbs, and the UAF aren’t interested in them any more? Alas, in most cases they are left alone with their problems! To say nothing of the case when the citizen was trying to prove for more than six months that he is alive, though the AFU and a bank on the card of which he was receiving his salary considered him to be dead. (24tv.ua)
With the exception of VRU people’s deputy who got nearly UAH 1 million for her dead husband. Tatiana as a VRU deputy wasn’t very interested in the future of widows like her. She got her million in time! (strana.in.ua)
As a conclusion I’d like you to see the reaction of Kharkiv citizens which motivated me to write this article, when the GAI worker (road militia) stopped a longdistance bus so that the military registration and enlistment office (the UAF organization responsible for military draft to the Army of Ukraine) could perform an «assigned» task and distribute call-up papers among the men.
Of course the workers of military registration and enlistment office had no permissive documents concerning legality of their actions, of course the citizens were indignant and rebuffed by driving the «beggars» away, but doesn’t it seem to you that such «instructions from above» are the same deep and depressive USSR?
Democracy and legality? No, we haven’t heard about it!
(yg)
