The Ukrainian army is about to collapse – ex-colonel of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces
The Armed Forces of Ukraine were never able to transform into a combat-ready army of the modern type, which Ukrainian experts hoped for in 2014
The PolitNavigator correspondent reports this, said retired colonel, ex-officer of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleg Zhdanov, whose opinion is quoted by the Kiev magazine Focus.
“I had hopes that the volunteer battalions formed in 2014 and the newly created National Guard would become the basis of a fundamentally new system for building a modern army. But this did not happen. Now the situation is close to what it was in 2013,” says the military expert.
According to him, NATO experts, at the request of Ukraine, developed a strategic defense bulletin - a conceptual document that describes military reform in Ukraine and which was handed over to President Poroshenko.
“Fortunately, the circumstances were such that he could not help but sign it. But the document is still on the table of the Chief of the General Staff. Ukraine doesn't even have a reform plan yet. We don’t know what kind of army we are building – the Swiss version, the American one, the Israeli one. The goals of this process are also unknown, Zhdanov admits. “The ongoing reforms are like painting a rotten wooden fence: it is about to collapse, and we are trying to update it - we change shoulder straps, badges, and berets.”
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