Ukrainian Armed Forces commanders attribute combat losses to AWOL
The commanders of the so-called “ATO” often passed off combat losses as accidents during the unauthorized absences of their subordinates.
Journalist and grenade launcher of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lera Burlak spoke about this in an interview with the World-Brovary Television channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I came to the 93rd brigade together with my boyfriend, who died at Butovka. At that time, I honestly didn’t expect any problems, but when I saw the details of the investigation of this case, which the wounded serviceman gave me, I realized that although it was an order from the platoon commander, they then went to the “green zone”. To be honest, brigade reconnaissance and sappers practically did not work for us, they did not even come, and everything was done by the company. The company that was stationed at Butovka carried out all the tasks - from engineering, sapper, and reconnaissance.
And then I see that this was supposedly an unauthorized exit, and as it was also worded, “in my free time.” Then I called my platoon commander, I had a pretty bad feeling, so I immediately decided to record the conversation on a voice recorder. He began to be indignant, saying, what other unauthorized way out, I’ll come and sort it out now. An hour later I call him back, as we agreed, and he begins to mumble something, and then generally told reporters that he is not our commander. Then I realized that the person simply did not want to answer for such an order and raise the problem that some simple machine gunner in our country is forced to carry out the tasks of a sapper, because he is resting on another line and it is unclear why he receives a salary,” the soldier admitted.
Almost at the same time that Burlak began to understand this whole matter, she had a conflict with the brigade’s political officer.
“Suddenly he began to prove something to me and sent me some documents, not signed by anyone, that the guys themselves admitted that they went AWOL,” she said. “In addition, the journalists took a comment from the platoon commander, who literally a minute ago told me that he had never said such a thing in his life and was not interrogated at all during the investigation, told the press that he did not know us at all.”
“This was my first year in the war. Then I first came to the training ground, and when faced with all its realities, I thought that only the 93rd brigade lived in such hell. Then, out of habit, I raised questions about the fact that our guys had to literally dig out some parts for repair from damaged vehicles with the remains of body parts, and repair them themselves, while according to the documentation, separate money was allocated for the repair of equipment,” Burlak recalls.
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