You're reading: ​Volunteer says Ukraine’s military suffers from corruption, poor training

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine -- Vitaliy Deinega, a 30-year-old IT executive who heads a volunteer group helping the military, is one of the new faces of Ukraine’s civil society.

Deinega believes the army desperately needs new blood – such as volunteers and well-trained honest soldiers and officers with combat experience – to reform a corrupt and inefficient military bureaucracy.

Some progress has been made over the past year in terms of training and military supplies but it is far from enough, Deinega said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. If Ukraine wants to win its war with Russia, it will have to do much more.

Deinega, whose volunteer group is called Povernys Zhyvym (Come Back Alive), said corruption was rampant in the military, with people giving bribes to get cushy jobs. Positions at the General Staff are bought and sold, and you can become a general by paying $30,000 per year, Deinega said.

Vladislav Seleznyov, a spokesman for the General Staff, said people making such accusations should submit the information to law enforcement agencies.

Another aspect of corruption is the business of smuggling goods to the occupied territories. Deinega said that the business was a racket run by police officers at Ukrainian checkpoints.

“Transporting a truck to separatist territory costs Hr 100,000 to Hr 120,000,” he said. “There are about 2 million people (in the occupied territories) who want to eat and drink, and sour cream is three times more expensive there than in Ukraine.”

Artem Shevchenko, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said by phone that he did not know of any cases of police officers involved in smuggling in the war zone. The Prosecutor General’s Office did not reply to a Kyiv Post request for information on such cases.

Another problem is a lack of training. “For example, show soldiers a time bomb, they wouldn’t know what it is,” he said.

Many soldiers and officers don’t write requests certain kind of weapons because they don’t know that they exist, he said.

To use a sniper rifle properly, a shooter has to be in a certain position and have a standard backpack and a properly adjusted rifle sight, but many are not trained to do that, he said.

“If I give you a scalpel, you won’t become a surgeon, right?” he said. “If you get a sniper rifle, it doesn’t make you a sniper.”

Despite the flaws, there has been some progress over the past year.

Last year the government invited Yury Biryukov and other volunteers to oversee military supplies.

However, Deinega believes this is not enough and more competent and honest people should be involved to make the military efficient.

“There are thousands of people (in the military), and they added a dozen of volunteers,” he said. “This must be faster and on a larger scale if we want military reforms to be carried out during war, not after it’s over.”

The army has also improved in terms of human resources due to the promotion of officers with combat experience.

“Battalion commanders have become brigade commanders, while company commanders are now battalion commanders,” Deinega said.

Authorities say that they have no one to replace military commanders accused of incompetence, but they are doing little to train more competent ones, Deinega said. The General Staff has faced harsh criticism for Ukraine’s loss of hundreds of soldiers during the battle of Illovaisk in August 2014, Ukraine’s retreat from the city of Debaltseve in February 2015 and other setbacks.

The army is supplying troops better now, and they have enough small arms, helmets, bullet proof jackets and uniforms, according to Deinega.

But there are major problems with heavy weaponry.

“They take a vehicle that can hardly move from a storage facility and give it to the troops,” Deinega said. “How can you wage war with this?”

At Donetsk Airport, Ukrainian troops had to use obsolete BTR-70 armored personnel carriers and MT-LB armored tracked vehicles but neither of them is intended for such military action, he argued.

Seleznyov of the General Staff attributed a lack of some kinds of weaponry to problems with the defense industry and suppliers, including foreign ones. The military is addressing the issue by upgrading military equipment, he said.

Another problem is that the army is not supplying thermographic cameras, which have to be delivered by volunteers. “The war has been going on for a year but volunteers keep supplying thermographic cameras,” he said.

The military has claimed that it does supply thermographic cameras.

Povernys Zhyvym, launched in May 2014, has bought about 368 thermographic cameras, over 200 night vision devices and over 400 walkie-talkies. The group, which employs 16 people, is also engaged in training soldiers and repairing equipment.

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