Ukrainian Pulse #12
"The military should stop being a prison for heroes"
One Facebook post has dominated public conversation in Ukraine this past week. A summing up of frustrations that have been brewing in military circles for the past two years now, it was published on September 21 by Serhiy Hnezdilov, an activist who joined the ranks of the Ukrainian military in 2019, and centers on the absence of a demobilization process for enlisted troops.
It has been a very common grievance among soldiers for a while now, with many similar op-eds, Facebook posts or Instagram stories having been published in the past without much fanfare. This time however, Serhiy Hnezdilov, commander of a drone reconnaissance unit in the 56th Mechanized Brigade 'Mariupol', ended his post with a statement: as a protest, he would abandon his post “until clear terms of service have been established or until my 25th birthday, leaving behind me 5 years of impeccable military service.”
The debate about demobilization and the broader issues surround it has been ongoing for a while now (and has been discussed several times in this newsletter, most recently in Ukrainian Pulse #11).
Ukrainian Pulse #11
On June 13, a group of MPs from Volodymyr Zelensky’s ‘Servant of the People’ party introduced to the parliament a bill that, if passed, would allow companies to pay a monthly tax of 20,000 hryvnias (about $500) per employee in order to exempt said employee from mobilization into the military.
The discussion was in fact a lot more heated a year ago, when families of enlisted troops hoped that a new law on mobilization would include clear terms of service (it has not). Hnezdilov’s post came just as another discussion was picking up—about desertion. Several public statements (there have been more than 80,000 cases of abandonment of post since February 2022, MP Ruslan Horbenko told Novyni Live in early September) as well as the vote of a bill softening punishment for first-time offenders contributed to a more open discussion about what has long been an extremely taboo topic.
Hnezdilov—and many others—argue that desertions are in great part caused by the current inescapable nature of military service, which leaves both mobilized and volunteer soldiers without any way out, save for grave injury or final victory. But the frustration goes beyond that specific topic, Hnezdilov wrote:
In the past 11 years of the war with Russia, our society and our government did not find the strength to seriously and honestly talk about the realities of a protracted, permanent war. We were told that neither side would have enough resources to last a year, that the war would end in two or three weeks. These sweet lies dissipated, but we still ignore reality. We still haven't realized that it is possible to defeat any army, but it is impossible to defeat a nation that is armed and ready for the worst. The authorities wasted precious time, but we still have a chance and an opportunity not only to build a new national security architecture, but also to equalize citizens in terms of rights and responsibilities.
[…]
We are being told that there is no one to replace the infantry that have been bearing the burden of this war. Five million able-bodied men [in the rear] tell soldiers on the frontline that it’s not their war and that they, the soldiers, should remain on that frontline until victory.
Hnezsdilov's statement triggered a nationwide discussion, on social media and beyond (his Facebook post alone was shared at least a thousand times and garnered more than 700 comments). There’s been criticism, mostly muted (of the “the diagnostic is right, but this isn’t the proper way to do this” variety) but also more fierce: one former political activist and current soldier criticized the fact that Hnezsdilov had announced his decision to (effectively) desert while speaking at a civil society event in Kyiv, rather than directly from the trenches—essentially arguing that Hnezsdilov's portrayal of himself as an exhausted grunt is a facade. That specific Facebook post racked up close to 500 comments and was also shared nearly a thousand times, so I do think it’s worth highlighting.
Most reactions have been largely supportive however. Pavlo Kazarine, a Ukrainian journalist who has written a lot on the split between front and rear (and which has been quoted many times in this newsletter) told Ukrainian weekly NV he saw Hnezsdilov's actions as an attempt to “draw the attention of society as well as authorities on the unequal distribution of the burden of war in Ukraine today” (NV’s words, not Kazarin’s) :
“For two and a half years, the war has ceased to be perceived by Ukrainian society as a kind of eschatological threat. And people in the rear learned to live next to the war, learned not to notice it. Among other things, we see this through the low rate of mobilization,” Kazarin noted. In view of this, the entire burden of responsibility associated with the Russian invasion was put on the military personnel. An “internal fence” or even a “trench” is being built between the Ukrainian rear and the military. And this is dangerous.
In that same piece from NV, former MP and current strike drone commander Ihor Lutsenko criticized Hnezsdilov's decision to publicly abandon his post, arguing that this could trigger even more desertion: “Now we even see requests for the creation of a political force made up of people who deserted from the military. This is of course a major threat, and I don’t think Hnezdilov understands the consequence of his actions”.
But Lustenko also wrote a Facebook post on September 23 which doesn’t directly address Hnezsdilov's initiative but nevertheless was pretty clearly written in reaction to it. “Let's honestly admit that there will be no mass demobilization after 36 months of war, because there’s no relief coming” he writes, adding that “the pace of mobilization is barely able to follow the rate of losses”.
Rather, Lustenko advocates six measures he says would increase the relationship between society and the military:
Restore legal oversight in the military. Currently, a soldier cannot complain about the arbitrariness of commanders to anyone except higher-level commanders (that is, those who appointed these commanders). This leads to mass desertion.
Since we, the current military, will be forced to fight for at least a few more years, a system of rotation between civilian and military life should be introduced. The model can be “3 months at war - 1.5 in civilian life”, or “4 months at war - 2 months in civilian life", etc. This would make it possible to revive families, and in general to partially preserve the civilian life of the military. This would require a larger influx of mobilized troops — but not as large as a full replacement.
During the war, remove ranks requirements for appointment to certain positions. […]
Create a system to evaluate commanders. It’s a NATO standard if anything, and we urgently need to get rid of inefficient commanders, they are worse than the enemy […].
Speed up procedures to allow transfer of personnel. […]
Adopt a special status for high-tech branches of the military (drone units, cyber forces, electronic warfare units, etc) similar to the current status of the Special Operations Forces. […]
In other words, the military should stop being a “prison for heroes”, as one soldier aptly put it.