Ukrainian people’s army prepares to resist Putin
Ragtag band of ordinary citizens is undeterred in the face of Russian troops massed on the border
Three groups of men and women, in khaki uniforms and automatic rifles in their hands, comb a pine-tree grove near an abandoned building on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Politicians across Europe may be jittery about what many believe is an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, but for civilians taking part in weekly training of territorial defence the idea is less remote.
“I have to be prepared to take up arms at any moment and go where my commander tells me to,” said Andriy Kudinov, a mild-mannered 45-year old bank employee who trains every Saturday morning. He is not too worried about the constant stream of news about a Russian military build-up at the border.
“If there’s an incursion into our territory, we will take something better than training weapons and we will drive the uninvited guests out from our land,” he said as the sun rose over a disused power station, frost glistening on the ground.
The banking manager is one of thousands of Ukrainians who have signed short-term contracts with the army to join territorial defence. They keep going about their lives but in case a war is declared, they need to be there to defend their city.
Civilians and the military in Ukraine, which in 2014 lost Crimea to Russia and large swathes of industrial heartland in the east to Russia-backed separatists, are mentally prepared for a large-scale invasion although residents of Kyiv and the rest of the country are mostly unfazed.
“You don’t feel it in Kyiv that a war is about to break out unless you take part in military training,” said Mr Kudinov who joined territorial defence earlier this year now that his children are grown up – something that kept him from signing up to fight separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine’s armed forces have made a stunning turnaround since the country first faced a Russian invasion in Crimea.
The disintegration of Ukraine’s military was clear to all when Russia annexed Crimea without a single shot being fired, and a month later Kremlinbacked separatists started seizing town after town in the east.
In the early stages of the war, the Ukrainian military left the fight to volunteer brigades who took up arms with almost no training, relying on donations or their own funds to buy everything from gear to weapons and ammunition.
Ukraine’s military budget has since grown threefold and it is expected to hit an all-time post-Soviet high of 133billion hryvnias (£3.7 billion) next year. Thanks to better funding, arms purchases and Western military aid of several billion pounds including £2.2billion from the UK in non-lethal equipment, Ukrainian troops feel secure on the front line against Russia-backed rebels.
But Russia’s massive military build-up in recent months raised the spectre of a large-scale invasion that Ukraine will struggle to counter.
Ukraine first set up territorial defence battalions shortly after the separatists went on an offensive in the east in 2014 but it is only in recent years that they started to attract a large number of volunteers.
Ukraine adopted a law this summer that will incorporate territorial defence into the armed forces in the event of a war, putting as many as 10,000 people like Mr Kudinov on temporary contracts.
For many in Ukraine who wanted to serve their country but thought they were too old – or too female – for the army, territorial defence is a welcome outlet.
Mr Kudinov’s unit commander is Maryana Zhaglo, a 52-year-old who looks the part when she gives orders to her team moving in to “seize” an abandoned building, but still admits she is nervous about the war.
“I go to bed every night thinking I might be called up,” says Mrs Zhaglo, a mother of three.
“I feel anxious every morning. My husband is in the military. What if we’re both called up? What’s going to happen to the kids?”
But Mrs Zhaglo, who works in marketing research and first tried training with territorial defence to follow her fitness instructor, finds satisfaction in her new pastime. She even splashed out on British-made fatigues and other gear.
“It’s like a day off. I’m outdoors every Saturday. It’d be hard to get yourself out that much otherwise.”
To Col Mikhailo Shcherbyna, who resigned from the army to join the Kyiv City Hall, the fall of eastern Ukraine is a cautionary tale.
“You remember the protests outside the Donetsk City Hall? People pushed, shoved and left. Then the next day pro-Russian forces with their Kalashnikovs moved in while our guys had nothing,” he told a conference this week.
“Putin is unpredictable. Our goal is to be ready at any moment.”
Col Shcherbyna, who oversees territorial defence in Kyiv, said he expected the forces in the city to reach 4,000.
Ukraine’s army has 251,000 troops and 900,000 people on reserve duty, which is more than in China or the United States.
Yet Russia’s army can outdo Ukraine almost on every front: Ukraine, for one, does not have much missile defence or Navy to speak of.
Ukrainian volunteers and NGOs including Come Back Alive have for years crowdfunded to buy gear and equipment for the army. It was only this autumn that Come Back Alive stopped purchasing expensive night-vision goggles for the army as the government finally allocated funds for them.
Andriy Rymaruk, who fought in eastern Ukraine before he retired a few years earlier to join Come Back Alive and starred in an award-winning film about a veteran struggling with PTSD, worries that Ukraine is lagging behind in military technology and points out that its navy and air force are tiny compared to Russia’s.
“Let’s face it: We don’t have a navy. We can’t resist Russia’s navy in the Black Sea. We also have problems with the air force: we literally won’t have anything to fly on in five to seven years,” says Mr Rymaruk, from his office in central Kyiv, which is decorated with used tank rounds and a shot-down Russian drone.
Mr Rymaruk lauded recent efforts by the government to rebuild the Ukrainian navy, including a £1.7billion deal to secure loans from the UK to jointly produce eight missile ships and a frigate.
Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, earlier this week echoed Mr Rymaruk’s concerns, listing missile defence, the navy and the air force as areas that Kyiv needs to invest in.
“Even if war ends tomorrow and Russia leaves the occupied Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, things will never be the way they were,” he said in an interview with the army publication Army Inform.
“All citizens have to be ready to defend the country so that the Kremlin doesn’t get any thoughts about doing it again.”
‘My husband is in the military. What if we’re both called up? What’s going to happen to the kids?’