You're reading: Ukraine’s naval leaders resist switch to NATO standards

“To hell with NATO,” one high-ranking Ukrainian naval officer recently told his colleagues, according to Natalia Zeinalova, a volunteer who is trying to resurrect Ukraine's navy.

She says this phrase sums up the attitude that the
navy’s leadership has taken towards creating a more efficient force and
switching to NATO standards.

The Ukrainian Navy’s spokesman Oleh Chubuk said he
would not comment on the issue, stating that he knew
nothing about any criticism of navy commanders.

But analysts told the Kyiv Post that the navy’s
leadership is putting Ukraine’s relations with NATO at risk and may prevent the
country’s maritime forces from getting out of their current dismal state.

“The goal is to build a navy anew, because it’s
virtually non-existent,” Zeinalova, the head of the Committee for the Ukrainian
Navy’s Renewal and Development, a volunteer group, told the Kyiv Post.

Ukraine’s navy currently comprises 11 warships and 39
auxiliary ships. It was deprived of many bases and lost about two-thirds of its
fleet when Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.

Zeinalova said military authorities were currently
imitating reform.

Ukraine should look to Poland, Romania and the Baltic
States as examples of successful naval reform, Ihor Kabanenko, a former deputy
commander of the Ukrainian navy and deputy defense minister, told the Kyiv
Post. There was “political will from above, and willingness from below,” he
said.

“They had a team of like-minded professionals who wanted to carry out the
reform, as well as the knowledge, experience and all the powers.”

Kabanenko, Zeinalova and Andriy Ryzhenko – a deputy
chief of the navy’s staff for European integration – have been promoting a
naval reform project unveiled in May. The project was drawn up with the help of
Western experts.

But Serhiy Haiduk, the commander of the Ukrainian
navy, has been pushing for his own proposal.

Yet Haiduk’s project does not
comply with NATO standards and seeks to essentially keep the current system,
Zeinalova and Ryzhenko argue. “The navy will change on the surface, but
its essence will remain the same,” Zeinalova said.

Specifically, Haiduk’s project does not envisage
scrapping obsolete ships.

The project being pushed by Ryzhenko and Zeinalova
calls for laying off excess staff and increasing wages, while Haiduk’s project
does not.

The navy’s peacetime staff should be cut to about 4,000
to 5,000 people from the current more than 7,000, and servicemen’s wages should
be raised to between $30,000 and $50,000 per year, up from $7,000, Ryzhenko
said.

The Western-developed project also calls for switching
to a NATO-type military structure, creating an efficient logistics system, and moving
the residence of the navy’s commander from Odesa to Kyiv, which would allow him
to liaise more easily with the capital’s policymakers.

Ryzhenko and Zeinalova also say that the
Western-developed reform project would lead to more transparent spending and
eliminate loopholes for corruption, while Haiduk’s project retains the current,
murky financing practices.

The Western-developed reform project also takes a
force capability-based approach and focuses on quality criteria, while Haiduk’s
vision is quantity-oriented, Kabanenko said.

“It’s impossible to create something new with old
phrases and old approaches,” Kabanenko said of Haiduk’s project.

Dmytro Taran, a deputy chief of the navy’s staff, went
to Brussels in early October and presented a summary of Haiduk’s naval reform
project to NATO, despite the fact that it had not been signed by Defense
Minister Stepan Poltorak or any high-ranking Defense Ministry official,
Zeinalova said.

“The West will not support and will not accept this
blueprint,” Zeinalova said. “Its content is unclear. Our partners want to see a
road map, not a tale about how great we’re doing.”

After Taran’s return from Brussels, the reformers seemed
to have gained the upper hand, with Poltorak creating a working group on naval
reform headed by Ryzhenko on Oct. 13.

But Haiduk was unhappy with that decision and
repeatedly refused to let Ryzhenko attend working group meetings in Kyiv,
though Ryzhenko ignored the ban. Haiduk has also banned Ryzhenko from attending
meetings with NATO representatives.

In the end, Ryzhenko’s naval reform group was
disbanded when the Defense Ministry set up another working group on reforming
the entire armed forces, including the navy, on Oct. 26.

“They’re creating a hell of a lot of working groups,”
Zeinalova argued. “The purpose is not to do anything, but to procrastinate.
They don’t need competent specialists who will ask inconvenient questions.”

Ryzhenko was not included in the new working group. The navy has also removed Ryzhenko as deputy chief of staff
from its roster of personnel, and once plans for naval reform are finalized he
is expected to be fired.

Like
Ryzhenko, foreign advisors were not included in the working group either,
according to a document seen by the Kyiv Post.

“They
don’t need competent specialists who will ask inconvenient questions,”
Zeinalova said.

Vladyslav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the General Staff,
claimed by phone that foreign specialists had taken part in the process but
Zeinalova said volunteers had not seen them at the working group meetings that they
attended.

Last
week Haiduk’s reform project was signed by Viktor Muzhenko, chief of the
General Staff, and sent to NATO.

Haiduk is “building a closed system, and he
throws you out if you’re not on his team,” Ryzhenko said.

See related op-ed.

Kyiv
Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached
at [email protected].