According to the Washington Post, Ukrainian military personnel on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield said this week that the Ukrainian army is facing a serious shortage of infantry, resulting in exhaustion and low morale on the front line - the above situation is a dangerous new move for Kyiv at a time when the bloody and vicious war between Russia and Ukraine has lasted for nearly two years.
Ukrainian military personnel on the front line said that at a time when Russia has regained the initiative on the battlefield offensive and stepped up its attack, the shortage of personnel is their most critical problem at present.
A battalion commander of a mechanized brigade operating in eastern Ukraine said his unit currently has fewer than 40 infantrymen. The commander said that a fully equipped battalion should have more than 200 people. The commander of an infantry battalion in another brigade said his unit was similarly short of men.
Reports of an acute shortage of military personnel were released at a time when Ukraine's Zelensky removed his top military commander Zaluzhny, and a major disagreement between the two was how many recruits Ukraine needed to mobilize.
According to two people familiar with the matter, Zaluzhny had told Zelensky that Ukraine needed nearly 500,000 recruits, but Zelensky denied this figure privately and publicly. Zelenskyy has said he hopes the Ukrainian military leadership will give more reasons for why so many people are needed to enlist in the army and expressed concern about how Kyiv will pay its military salaries.
According to the report, financial aid from Western partners cannot be used to pay for military salaries, while Ukraine's budget is already tight, and the $60 billion aid plan proposed by Biden of the United States is blocked in Congress. The European Union approved about $54 billion in aid to Ukraine last week. Previously, the aid package was postponed for several weeks due to the opposition of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Kyiv's arguments about mobilization and the strength of the build-up angered the servicemen at the front.
One battalion commander said that the average number of personnel in each company of his unit was only about 35 per cent of the number it should have. Asked how many recruits he had taken in (not counting those who had returned after recovering from wounds), he said his battalion had received only five in the past five months. He and other commanders said that recruits often lack training, creating a dilemma about whether to send them immediately to the battlefield because of the urgent need for reinforcements, even though they may be injured or killed because of their lack of experience, technology and military knowledge.
Shortage of ammunition and ** is also a problem. A commander of a unit that was recently transferred to a new area on Ukraine's eastern front said he had received only 10 shells for two howitzers. Zelenskyy acknowledged that artillery ammunition deliveries have slowed due to Europe's difficulty in making enough shells to meet Ukraine's needs and Washington's aid program remains stalled.
Ukrainian military personnel on the front line say that the shortage of personnel may have a domino effect. Especially in the winter months when the weather conditions were harsh, the infantry was supposed to rotate about 3 days. However, due to the lack of troops, the deployment time was extended, or those who were originally in the rear were forced to carry out tasks on the front line, although they were not prepared. The soldiers, physically and mentally exhausted by overwork, were sometimes unable to hold their posts, allowing Russia, which had more manpower and ammunition, to advance. (Compiled by Hu Wei).