"The Ukrainian military, U.S. officials say, is seeded with high-level Russian sympathizers. It is also rife with corruption." - What the Ukrainian military really needs – POLITICO Saturday August 29th, 2015 at 9:30 AM | Who Are The Russian Generals That Ukraine Says Are Fighting In The Donbas? (UPDATED)
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Ukrainian servicemen on the 24th anniversary of the Independence Day | ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty
By Jen Judson
In the 18th century brick colonial that serves as the Ukrainian Embassy, and where George Washington signed the deed to the nation’s capital, Kostiantyn Liesnik proudly showed off his brand-new camouflage fatigues, with its “lizard” pattern.
The new uniform might seem inconsequential to outsiders, the head of the Ukrainian military’s Logistics and Procurement Reform Working Group recently told a small group of reporters in broken English. But it is “important for Ukraine army to have their own face because realistically, we still have Soviet uniform and they stay in the brain of our officers.”
As Washington continues to wring its hands over whether to provide advanced weapons to Ukraine in its fight against separatists backed by Russia — including anti-tank missiles — much of the discussion has focused on fears of stoking a more direct and dangerous confrontation with Moscow.
But another major quandary is that no one can really answer how much equipment is really needed; whether it could be put to good use; and even if the equipment would end up in the hands of the intended recipients.
The Ukrainian military, U.S. officials, say is seeded with high-level Russian sympathizers. It is also rife with corruption.
Many of the units fighting on behalf of the Ukraine government are volunteer forces not fully integrated into the Ukrainian military. And they are often better equipped than many soldiers in regular military, who wear a combination of U.S., British, and German uniforms often bought online. When the soldiers go off to fight they are issued merely one pair of socks, a pair of underwear, a Kalashnikov assault rifle and some ammunition, say those who have seen the war up close.
“If you are a young patriotic man or woman in Ukraine and you want to fight for your country, what do you do instead? You join a private battalion and an oligarch usually funds these private battalions … you get the latest assault rifle, the latest body armor, the latest Ray-Ban shades, the latest boots and you are taken care of,” said Luke Coffey of the Heritage Foundation, who traveled to war-torn country earlier this year.
There remains a severe lack of coordination among fighting units: There are an estimated 50 volunteer battalions comprising over 10,000 volunteer fighters and the Ukrainian government has been slow to integrate them into he official command structure.
“They still have their own budgets, they still do their own training completely independent of the government,” said Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who embedded with a volunteer unit in Ukraine, They still have their own command structures, they still pretty much operate autonomously from Kiev,” he said via Skype.
The Ukrainian military, which U.S. officials also say is seeded with high-level Russian sympathizers, is also rife with corruption.
Military parade in Kiev (Getty)
“When I was in Ukraine back in April, I was pretty much told it takes a bribe from the upper-echelon of the military down to the supply sergeant to get a pair of boots and there are Ukrainian soldiers that are going to the front lines wearing tennis shoes instead,” said Coffey.
Since the pro-Russian unrest that boiled over last year following the Russian invasion of Crimea peninsula, the U.S. has given a variety of non-lethal equipment to Ukraine. An estimated $244 million worth of Humvees, lightweight counter mortar and artillery radars, night vision and protective gear, shelters, diesel generators, water tanks and medical supplies are being shipped over.
But leading members of Congress — and the Ukrainians themselves — have been clamoring for more advanced weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles that could pierce Russian armored vehicles. Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has said it is “shameful” that the Obama administration has not done more.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has said he, too, is inclined to support a more aggressive effort to arm the Ukrainians.
Yet convincing Washington — or other Western allies — that it is addressing the dysfunction and starting to look and operate like a modern military is a major, often under-appreciated challenge for the Ukrainian government.
“We are trying to figure out how to plug into that very complex situation and work with the right people and get the right results — and it is not easy,” said a senior Pentagon official with direct purview over the issue.
The lack of what he described as an effective acquisition and logistics system on the Ukrainian side “has real ramifications for what weapon systems one might provide them.”
“If they have better systems in place to maintain accountability and sustain those systems, then a donor can provide those systems with more confidence,” he added.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, also expressed concern about Russian “plants or sympathizers” within the Ukrainian military hierarchy.
“It has been incredibly challenging because you have the political leadership that is very much committed to Westernization,” he explained. But there are “some military leaders who are sort of old guard.”
A soldier has the right to have one pair of boots for six months.
Liesnik and his comrades tasked with convincing Washington to do more insist that they are making progress in improving the military’s institutions — starting with simple things like ensuring soldiers have what they need and tracking items through an electronic distribution system much like the U.S. military has.
For example, cabinet ministers used to have to sign off on orders for soldiers’ gear, according to Viktor Plakhuta, the program manager for logistics and procurement reform, said at the embassy event. But a new law has changed that.
“It was a very long process in order to, for example, a soldier has the right to have one pair of boots for six months. If you want introduce, for example, two pairs of boots, you have to go through whole long process through cabinet of ministers approval,” he said. “This is half a year, a very long process.”
Now, “we can supply what we want, what we think a soldier need,” he said.
Peterson said that acquiring such weapons as Javelin would be a major symbolic victory for the Ukrainian military. But what it really needs to confront the Russians is far more basic than that.
“You’ve got trenches coexisting with drones,” he said. “It is this strange dual nature of warfare you might have seen 100 years ago. It’s just bizarre.”
Bryan Bender contributed to this report.
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Oleksandr Turchynov, head of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, has issued a statement outlining the structure of the military forces of the Russia-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.
"Russia has completed the creation of a powerful ground formation, based on two army corps, ready to conduct active offensive operations," the statement released on August 27 reads. "Key command and staff positions in these army corps are occupied by Russian staff officers."
The force is largely made up of local enlistees and "contract soldiers and mercenaries from Russia," the report claims, and has an authorized strength of up to 35,000 men.
The same day, Aleksandr Borodai, the former self-proclaimed prime minister of the unrecognized Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), said between 30,000 and 50,000 "Russian volunteers" had fought in eastern Ukraine over the last year.
Moscow insists that its military is not involved in the Ukraine conflict and that any Russian citizens fighting there are civilians.
Turchnyov's statement also names four active Russian generals it says are playing key roles in the military organization of the separatists. One of them, Major General Aleksei Zavizion, was included on a list of five Russian generals working in Ukraine that was released by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in July.
This brings the total number of active Russian generals that Ukrainian security officials have named as being in command positions of the separatist military forces in eastern Ukraine to eight.
RFE/RL takes a closer look at the officers who have been implicated:
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Colonel General Andrei Serdyukov
Colonel General Andrei Serdyukov
Turchynov said on August 27 that Serdyukov is carrying out "the command of all the grouping of Russian occupation forces," using the code name "Sedov."
According to most sources, Serdyukov, 53, was born and raised in the town of Ambrosiivka in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, on the very border with Russia. Other sources say he was born in Russia's Rostov Oblast.
After completing school, he enrolled in the paratrooper academy in Ryazan in 1979. In the 1990s, he spent one year as deputy commander of Russian peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. He served two one-year rotations in Chechnya. In 2013, he became chief of staff and first deputy commander of the Southern Military District based in Rostov-on-Don.
As a colonel general, the equivalent of a U.S. three-star general, Serdyukov is the highest-ranking officer named by Ukraine as participating in the war.
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Major General Yevgeny Nikiforov
Major General Yevgeny Nikiforov
Turchynov said that Nikiforov is the commander of the 2nd Army Corps in eastern Ukraine and is operating under the code name "Morgun." Other sources say that he is using the code name "Tambov," which he purportedly inherited from his predecessor in Ukraine, Major General Sergei Kuzovlyov (see below).
According to the Ukrainian website Informnapalm.org, Nikiforov completed the Kolomenskoye Artillery Academy in 1991. He became a brigade commander in 2005.
He is currently the deputy commander of the 58th Army of the Southern Military District, a unit that participated in the 2008 war in Georgia.
Lieutenant General Sergei Yudin
Turchynov claimed that Yudin formerly commanded the 2nd Army Corps before being recently rotated out and replaced by Nikiforov.
Yudin was reportedly born in Baku in 1959 and performed his military service with the Soviet Red Army in the Transcarpathia region of western Ukraine. He later enrolled in a military academy, from which he graduated in 1984. He served with Soviet forces in Germany before being transferred to the Russian Far East.
He graduated from the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow in 1993. He served in the first Chechen war from 1994 to 1996 as a brigade chief of staff. He returned to combat in Chechnya in 1999 during the second Chechnya war.
He graduated from the Academy of the General Staff, also in Moscow, in 2004. From 2004-06 he commanded the Russian forces in Tajikistan.
Major General Oleg Tsekov
Tsekov graduated from a military institute in Chelyabinsk in 1988. He then served in various parts of the Soviet Union and Mongolia.
He graduated from the Academy of the General Staff in 2011. The same year, he was appointed commander of the 200th motorized special-forces brigade of the Northern Fleet. In September 2014, the volunteer information service InformNapalm published evidence that the unit had been mobilized from Murmansk Oblast to Rostov Oblast, together with evidence that service personnel from the 200th had been identified in Ukraine.
Tsekov was promoted to major general on February 21, 2015.
The July SBU dossier charges that Tsekov commands the so-called 2nd brigade of the separatist forces near Donetsk.
Major General Valery Solodchuk (left) purportedly signed a certificate given to a soldier "for the return of Crimea."
Major General Valery Solodchuk
Born in Astrakhan, Solodchuk graduated from the paratroops institute in Ryazan in 1992. In 2012, he was named commander of the 7th guards air-assault division based in Novorossiisk. A media reference in 2014 identified Solodchuk as deputy commander of the 5th Army in the Far East.
Digital-forensic investigators have drawn attention to a soldier of the 7th guards air-assault division named Stanislav Ramensky. He posted on social media several photographs that seem to have been taken in Crimea in March 2014, when Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine. He also published a photograph of the medal and certificate he was given on April 14, 2014, "for the return of Crimea," which was signed by Solodchuk.
In an interview with the Russian-government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta in March, Solodchuk was asked if the 7th guards air-assault division is a designated rapid-reaction unit within the Russian military. He answered that there are no such units and that the entire military is in a state of constant combat readiness. Asked if that meant that his unit is prepared to be ordered into battle at any moment, Solodchuk answered, "Exactly."
The SBU dossier charges that Solodchuk is the commander of so-called 1st Army Corps of Novorossia in the Donetsk area.
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Major General Sergei Kuzovlyov
Major General Sergei Kuzovlyov
Sergei Kuzovlyov was born in 1967 and graduated from the paratroops institute in Ryazan in 1990. He also studied at the Academy of the General Staff. He was promoted to major general in February 2014. Since 2014, he has been chief of staff of the 58th Army based in Vladikavkaz.
In January, the Ukrainian SBU released an audio recording that it alleged showed Kuzovlyov organizing the military forces of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine. The SBU says Kuzovlyov goes by the pseudonyms "Tambov" and "Ignatov."
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Major General Aleksei Zavizion
Major General Aleksei Zavizion
Aleksei Zavizion was born in Narva, Estonia, in 1965 and graduated from a military institute in Chelyabinsk in 1986. He served in the Far East, in Chechnya, and as commander of Russian forces in Tajikistan.
In 2009, he began studies at the Academy of the General Staff.
In March, Ukraine's SBU claimed Zavizion, using the nom de guerre Alagir, directed the shelling of Kramatorsk and Mariupol. Referring to Zavizion, SBU official Markiian Lubkivskyi wrote on Facebookthat "a citizen of the Russian Federation...with the call sign Alagir is currently in Donetsk within the rotational assignment of running the Operational Headquarters since January 2015, coordinating military operations with the participation of representatives of illegal armed formations."
"Alagir is the person in charge of the deployment of artillery, mobile rocket systems, and heavy equipment," Lubkivskyi continued. "Major bloody attacks on Ukrainian cities, particularly on Kramatorsk and Mariupol, were carried out under his direct command and coordination."
Lubkivskyi also wrote that Zavizion was scheduled to be replaced by Russian Major General Andrei Gurulyov.
Major General Roman Shadrin
Roman Shadrin was born in Rostov Oblast in 1967 and graduated from a military institute in Kazan. He served in the Soviet contingent in East Germany after graduating in 1988. In 1995, he was awarded the Hero of Russia medal for his service during the first war in Chechnya. After service in Armenia and the North Caucasus, Shadrin was named deputy commander of Interior Ministry troops in the Urals region. In 2008, he served during the conflict with Georgia in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, after which he was promoted to major general.
In September 2013, he was elected to the Yekaterinburg City Duma from the ruling United Russia Party.
The SBU dossier says Shadrin is the so-called minister of state security for the self-proclaimed "Luhansk Peoples Republic" (LNR) in eastern Ukraine. According to a media report on July 3, Shadrin denies the allegation, saying he has only traveled to Ukraine's Donbas region "with a humanitarian mission."
The Yekaterinburg-based Novy Den news agency reported the same day that Shadrin has "repeatedly traveled to eastern Ukraine with humanitarian missions." It also noted that Shadrin resigned as chairman of the city legislature's security committee in January and quoted an unidentified source in the Yekaterinburg Duma as saying Shadrin "holds one of the top positions in the security service of the LNR."
The same source said it is not known when Shadrin will return to his duties in Yekaterinburg, but there have been no efforts to strip him of his mandate.
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Ukraine’s security service on Thursday revealed the names of four Russian generals whom it says were fighting with so-called separatists in Ukraine, a statement from the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council said. The statement said Ukrainian forces were facing “structured military units of Russian regular army” troops organized along the same formations as the Nazis' Waffen SS units, a reference to German troops in World War II.
In the statement, Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov identified the four Russian generals as Andrey Serdyukov, who fights under the code name Sedov; Alexey Zavizyon (aka Pilevin); Evgeniy Nikiforov (aka Morgun); and Sergey Yudin, who was recently rotated out.
Russian officers hold key positions with the so-called separatists, while residents of the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine make up 40 percent of the forces, in addition to mercenaries and contract soldiers from Russia, the statement said. The troops have been organized into two army corps, one in the Donetsk region and the other in Luhansk. The mix of professional soldiers and volunteers mimics the structure of the Nazi Waffen SS unit, which also used volunteers, the Ukrainian government statement said.
A tweet sent by the presidential administration detailed that Russian military leaders were purportedly managing militants.
In July, Ukraine released the names of other generals believed to be involved in the conflict,RFE/RL reported.
Nazi comparisons and terminology have been cited by both sides, with Russia describing the Ukrainian government in Kiev as fascist and run by Nazis. Russia continues to deny any direct involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, saying that any Russian citizens fighting there are doing so as volunteers, not officially part of the Russian military.
Earlier this week it was reported that a Russian website accidentally published and then quickly removed the number of soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine, along with the amounts of financial compensation they receive.
More than 6,700 people have died and at least 1.4 million have been displaced as fighting continues in the Donbass region. The Ukrainian government will have to continue with a seventh wave of mandatory conscription after failing to meet its goal of 25,000 conscripts, as reported last week.
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