Above: Ukrainian snpiers.
AFP – Feb 4, 2022
When he arrived at the front line as a volunteer to fight Russian-backed separatists in 2014, Pavlo Dolynskiy found Ukraine’s army in a desperate state.
Kyiv had just lost the Crimean peninsula to Moscow without a shot being fired and its regular forces — eaten away by years of neglect and corruption — couldn’t cope with the spiralling conflict in the east of the country.
“The army had reached the point where it couldn’t stand up to the enemy,” Dolynskiy, who now works at a veterans association, told AFP.
Soldiers struggled to get uniforms and boots, they had antiquated Soviet-era weapons, equipment often malfunctioned and the army relied on a ragtag mix of volunteers to plug the gaps.
“It really was in a lamentable condition,” he said.
But now, as tensions soar over a massive Russian military buildup on its border, Ukraine’s armed forces present a far tougher prospect.
Battle-hardened by nearly eight years of a simmering war that has claimed over 13,000 lives, the military has undergone reforms and been bolstered by Western arms and training.
“Eight years ago, the Ukrainian army did not exist. It was only on paper, and did not have the potential to fight,” said Mykola Beleskov, a defence analyst at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv.
“Now they are the best armed forces that Ukraine has had in thirty years of independence. The best prepared and the best trained.”
Drones, anti-tank missiles
The conflict has forced Ukraine’s pro-Western leadership to try to turn their depleted Soviet legacy forces into a more modern military aligned closer to NATO standards.
Ukraine’s defence budget has tripled over the past decade in US dollar terms to around $4.2 billion in 2021 and reforms have looked to tackle rampant corruption and improve command and control.
Tanks of the 92nd Mechanised Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces take part in a combat drill in Kharkiv. Click to enlarge
The US has provided some $2.5 billion in military aid since 2014 and training from NATO allies — including also Canada and Britain — has helped bolster battle readiness.
As part of the modernisation drive, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky this week signed a decree to add an extra 100,000 personnel to the armed forces over the next three years — taking its total to some 360,000.
The authorities have pledged to ramp up wages for those serving and professionalise the army by ending conscription by 2024.
A crucial addition has also been the influx of foreign weaponry that has bolstered the military’s Soviet-era stockpile.
Ukraine has purchased Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones — which proved pivotal in the 2020 Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia — and received shipments of anti-tank missiles from the US and Britain.
“Its forces probably are stronger than they have been for a long time,” said Sam Cranny-Evans, a research analyst at the RUSI think tank in London.
“Nonetheless, there are key deficiencies in Ukraine that have not been addressed.”
He pointed to its limited air defence systems, lack of assets able to carry out long-range strikes and doubts over its reconnaissance capabilities.
Ukraine’s airforce and navy also remain weak points.
Kyiv lost an estimated 70 percent of its vessels when Russia seized the strategic Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, a recent report from the US Congressional Research Service said.
British minesweepers are on their way but more ambitious plans to rebuild are hampered by severe budget constraints as the economy struggles.
And graft remains a problem draining those tight resources.
“It is widely recognised that Ukraine’s path forward regarding reforms and building appropriate military capabilities is predicated upon eliminating corruption in its defence sector,” said an analysis from defence intelligence agency Janes.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, insisted to journalists Thursday that the military “have taken a big step forward since 2014 — we increased our combat capacity and ability to repel an invasion”.
But he still listed a raft of hardware his troops require: anti-sniper gear, anti-tank weapons, air defence systems, anti-drone systems, reconnaissance systems.
“We are working on this and we have agreements in place to try to improve all this,” he said.
Outgunned, outmanned
After years of conflict, Ukraine’s forces are combat-experienced and highly motivated.
Pictured: members of the Kyiv Territorial Defense Unit train in an industrial area of Kyiv. Click to enlarge
There are also hundreds of thousands of people in the reserves and volunteer fighters have been brought under government control.
Civilians too are preparing, with survival courses becoming increasingly popular among Ukrainians worried about a possible Russian attack.
Despite the improvements, Ukraine understands that its military remains massively outgunned and outmanned by Moscow’s vastly superior armed forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has pumped vast sums into turning his own creaking military into a well-equiped modern outfit able to impose the Kremlin’s goals in global hotspots like Syria.
Analysts said Ukraine would struggle if Moscow unleashed its missiles and aircraft in a major bombardment of critical infrastructure.
“It is no secret that the Russian army is bigger and stronger,” said analyst Beleskov.
But, he insisted, if there was a major invasion and Russia tried to hold territory then Ukraine’s forces could still turn it into a costly “war of attrition” — especially if Western arms kept flowing in.
I’ve not read the article. While the Ukrainian military has been beefed up and MI6, & the SAS, along with countless mercenaries, they believe they can retake the Dombas and maybe Crimea.
This link is a MUST READ by Scott Ritter.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/548322-war-russia-us-nato/
wait or the mass import of migrants after this by your government
http://www.renegadetribune.com/the-state-sponsored-secret-invasion/
The State-Sponsored Secret Invasion
renegade. Thanks for being a reader of this site. Your contributions make this all possible. You can send support to: Kyle Hunt, PO Box 1052, Sorrento FL 32776.
http://www.renegadetribune.com
Nazis never were a pushover. But they were beaten.
i had several years training in child protection
The archbisop donald coggan speaking for the archbishop of canterbury said
quote if we legalise homosexuality it will lead to a massive increase in child rape cases
as most child rapists go for the anus, this massive increase has proved correct
because homosexuality is now legal the police federation say it is a minefield.
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/548188-child-sexual-abuse-uk/
As a cop, here’s the unsayable truth on why we can’t stop child sex grooming — RT Op-ed
The first is the usual complaint when we talk about public services – a lack of money. This has resulted in social services, children’s homes and educational establishments being short of appropriately trained staff who can spot girls at risk of exploitation and take action to protect them early on.
http://www.rt.com
Bad-Boris knows the Uk is a spent force
its now a toothless lion ruined by criminal politicians
I used to work with and for ” mispers”
mispers is missing persons the huge number of children who go missing each year and never found
some of them are jewish ritual slaughters some in the north of england into kebabs but what of the rest ?
see this oldie on runaways
https:/iwww.youtube.com/watch?v=wSWMJxbxj7c
What a load of absolute b*llocks. They’ll get a monumental shoeing from the Russians. From air power alone.
I was taught by the British Army that if Russian Spetsnaz show up, you’re dead.
Someone has been puffing up the Ukrainian’s confidence like a boxing coach. I have a friend with a Ukrainian wife who reckons they’ll ‘fight to the last man and bullet’.
So be it. That’ll take about a week then. Or less.
Russia will go through them like shit through a goose….
It sounds a lot like “Saddam Hussein’s Elite Republican Guard” that never did anything.
From the article Carl Jones provided in the link he posted:.
“Biden’s view of NATO and Ukraine is drawn from his experience as vice president under Barack Obama.”
The only experience Biden has: pedophilia, shady foreign deals, and usual political sleaze. He is a marionette whose strings are operated by his Jew infested government. He is nothing more than an empty suit open to all manner of demonic possession.
The part where the author states Jen Psaki does not deal in reality can be said in regard to the rest of her tribal buddies. The only thing Jews deal in is; division, strife, bloodlust, etc. In another words, their own reality.
All in all, a good article.
Why any American would give a rat’s ass about that corrupt shit-hole Ukraine when our own borders are being sodomized on a daily basis by hordes of mongrels, miscreants, degenerates, and worthless parasites is beyond me. The United States has been under siege while the Jewnited States criminal cartel aids, abets, and otherwise facilitates the invasion at home and engineers psychopathic foreign provocations.
“Ukraine’s path forward…is predicated upon eliminating corruption in its defence sector,” Ummm no matter how much corruption has been occurring in the Ukrainian defence sector, and I’m sure it is significant because corruption permeates everything Ukrainian, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the corruption in the defence sector in the Jewnited States.
The Pentagram, er I mean Pentagon, cannot account for TENS OF TRILLIONS of dollars over the past couple decades. Don’t forget, the satanic maggot and treasonous scum Donald Rumsfeld announced on September 10, 2001, that the Department of “Defense” was missing over 2 TRILLION dollars just from the previous couple years. I’m sure the dual-citizen Talmudic Jew “Rabbi” Dov Zakheim, whose appointment as Comptroller at the Pentagon was criminally insane high treason, was JUST about to find all that money when 3,000 people were murdered in the Jewnited States the very next morning in a shockingly evil display of treason by government cartel insiders and an egregiously outrageous betrayal by Israel, er I mean attacked by “terrorists” in a highly coordinated and sophisticated fashion by a few guys in a cave in Afghanistan. Everyone then forgot about those missing trillions of dollars.
And the beat goes on, as the amount of money disappearing has only increased. The American taxpayers and future generations of American taxpayers are on the hook for all the wholesale theft, treason, and demonic machinations, of course. Short of Washington DC being burnt to the ground with all the occupiers and inhabitants in it, which is a tantalizing thought, the criminal cartel posing as legitimate government needs to be removed and large-scale executions conducted.
pig-swill fly: yep, Russia beat the Nazi’s.
@carl jones…remember Jewish-Communist Russia didn’t beat them on their own, it was a phony victory.. since without the enormous amounts of material aid (Lend/Lease) in the form of guns, tanks, planes, trains, trucks, ammo, food etc..from the USA & UK, the Germans would have defeated them.
“The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.” –Stalin
Trust in the doris. He knows best. Her holy majesty the queen has spoken his name, and so it must be. You can send support to: Kyle Hunt, PO Box 1052, Sorrento FL 32776.
I don’t read Garbage.
America also trained the Terrorists over in the Middle East to fight the Syrians as well as the Iraqi army as well as the Afghanistan army and yeah how did that work out.
You need heart, soul & brains to win a war, something Russia possess. Ukrainians are lazy, just look what happend in Debaltsovo they called it the Cauldron. All Ukrainian Servicemen rounded up by pensioners & miners. They said Ви прийшли сюди не для того, щоб знищити моє життя і вбити мою дружину та дітей, ви, нацистські виродки.
Russia should just roll on Ukriane. Or better still just place Nuclear weapons in the far East if its own country. 250 miles away from Alsaka.
Ohhh Come on Carl Jones ? If there’s a Russian Ukrainian war, within 48Hrs Ukrainian Army will be parading on the Red Square in Moscow , of course escorted by the Russian Army & then sent on a to Magadan or Kolyma Club Med for a well deserved R&R ??
Russia has been owned by the dirty jews since 1917
the USA since 1913 and the UK since cromwell
This is why these 23 nations stopped the German freedom movement under Adolf Hitler do you really think there will be war ? how as all these countries are owned by the dirty jew
This article is nothing but wishful thinking. The Ukrainian military is outnumbered and outgunned by the Russian, while the Russian one has a heap of sophisticated missile systems and combat planes which Ukraine can only dream of.
The Ukrainian military now being “The best prepared and the best trained.” Really ? According to one analyst, the bulk of Ukrainian troops are poorly trained and utterly demoralized, which is not surprising bearing in mind that Ukraine is an impoverished country, from which million’s have emigrated (4.1 million emigrated to Russia by December of 2017). Analysts are of the opinion that is case of war, the Ukrainian military would be crushed in just three to seven days.
Finally, what is interesting is that even Zelensky has openly stated that the West is dramatizing a possible Russian invasion. He is obviously getting cold feet, knowing full well what the repercussions in Ukraine would be if he went to war against the Donbass.
Mr Reynard: grow up you saddo troll.
Just look up “russian thermobaric display”
@ Carl Jones Carl, I believe Mr. Reynard was offering satire in his comment, suggesting the defeated Ukrainian dimwits would be paraded through Red Square like the Romans used to do with some of their conquered foes.
Some excellent commentary above by many Truth-seekers, particularly like the comments by Hotel Bastardos and Greg’s “shit through a goose” quip. lol
Nonsense. Most of the Ukrainian military will go over to the Russians. Bigging up the Ukrainian military is an attempt to acclimatise the Western public to the forthcoming war.
@ ellis c taylor of all the comments yours is the most accurate, it was the bolshevic,s aka the jews
that won the war, the russian peasants fled with the German army they wanted out of Russia
knowing what was to come, russians that had to fight in the war did so with machine guns aimed at their backs
END the UN