The slumber and the awakening of pacifists
It is difficult to apply the word “army” to the remnants and surplus stock of the armed forces Ukraine inherited after a “fair” partition of the USSR property. Firstly, they were a Russian-Soviet legacy – from the overcoat style to the class-based division into higher and lower ranks. Secondly, the legal successor to the Romanovs and Stalin cause has laid its hands on all that is useful and important. Thirdly, the very military structure, quite suitable for the aggressive sixth part of global land, was a burden to the Ukrainian nation state. Unfortunately, there seem to have been no people in the now distant 1990s, who could take a critical approach to the useless arsenals of the obsolete army equipment and outdated military doctrines. Society was filled with pacifist sentiments, and real dangers were considered unlikely even after the Tuzla conflict. The treacherous top brass team that came to the defense ministry in the black white-blue times completed its factual destruction. When the war broke out, we were armless, as western Volhynia peasants were in front of Napoleon’s soldiers. This country was lagging behind in the field of defense like in no other sector. Instead of using drones and laser-guided missiles to hit targets, our fatherland’s defenders had to dig trenches with spades and fire AKM assault rifles made in 1962 at tanks.
To get back to the 21st century, we must militarize societal awareness and wake up governmental institutions from a slumber, where some friendly neighbors are ready to admit us to NATO and other ones pretend to be our brothers. Alas, the danger of a military conflict with the authoritarian east will only be on the rise. Putin’s grave will still hear an oath to continue the maneuvers and “exercises” in Ukraine, and, to join the North Atlantic bloc, we will have to wield our own military clout.
We have already taken the first step to build the Ukrainian army by dropping illusions and exposing ourselves and the enemy without the camouflage netting of propaganda. But it is time to take the next steps. Obviously, Ukraine cannot afford to form a salaried volunteer army. The point is not only in the shortage of money. The point is in the length of the border with Russia. It is impossible to set up a safety line almost 3,500 km long (including Russia’s military allies Transnistria and Belarus) without participation of our citizens living on these territories.
Standing between the people and the army today are “military commissariats,” the bodies set up in the Soviet era to mobilize the populace and draft young people into the army. An instrument of compulsory military service, they performed their function quite well in a totalitarian state. Military commissariats could gain access to human resources no matter where they were – in a city, a village, a college, or a factory. But now this vestige of the old life is unable to play a new role. Private business, abolition of domicile registration, and democratization of society has made military commissariats look like head hunters in the times of the film Fanfan la Tulipe’s characters. The commissariats’ officers rush about in search of recruits, while the latter hide their real home address and change the cell phone number to dodge the draft. All is simple. No matter how loudly we chant “The people and the army are one hand” and what amounts of money we donate for defense, the relationship between the armed forces and society should be improved as part of an official policy. It is not exactly good when officers are busy tracking down conscripts and the latter hide like jackrabbits in the field.
But, before speaking on the ticklish subject of duty and conditions for doing it, it is worthwhile to point out when peacetime gives way to wartime. For one person, it is the moment of being drafted; for a region, it is the system of the command’s actions; and for the local government, it is mobilization.
Earlier last summer, the Odesa airport, an object of the enemy’s heightened interest, remained unprotected for almost a month. The military headquarters and the local authorities failed to do the needful. And they could possibly do this because the system of operational interaction between the local administration and the troops stationed on its territory had never been tested even at the level of notification. I think heads of local administration are still unable to properly assess their regions’ mobilization resources and the level of alertness of the troops stationed there. They are still guided by remnants of the old system and have no time to get down to the new one. Mobilization errors have adversely affected the draft. Why did the physically unfit and militarily untrained young greenhorns, who were unwilling to serve in the army, suddenly find themselves on the battlefield instead of the professional reserve officers who voluntarily came to military commissariats? What is a paradox for the uninitiated is not such for a system insider. Military commissariats and units follow official instructions and laws, so they cannot draft and arm all the volunteers, let alone form a new establishment in the army. If there were some legislatively approved mobilization plans for various dangers and if the General Staff were vested with government-level powers, the situation would be different. But the mentality of nonresistance to evil has penetrated into all the pores of the social system. This suited draft-dodgers as well as those who were mowing down this army. Deliberately or not, we withdrew military aspects from the economy and politics. Putin’s Russia, which encouraged this process, at the same time, woke this country up from a sweet pacifist slumber. Schools began to see usefulness of first medical aid lessons. Universities exposed ineffectiveness of military departments which supplied useless reserve officers instead of useful soldiers. The state apparatus began to reflect on reorganizing the entire military-political setup. The period of peace at our expense has come to an end.
We have all begun to be aware of the increasing need to defend this country. The way the wishes can be fulfilled does not matter now. Naturally, it would be better and cheaper to build the armed forces with NATO’s assistance. But, preparing to join this defense alliance, we must not go flaccid – it is better to keep our powder dry. The army is not only an organization furnished with the equipment, weapons, and personnel. In a way, it is a fraction of each of us. It is associated with our hopes for a peaceful life, our children, our taxes, and our emotions. Doctors and psychologists know: the sensation of danger musters the strength of a sound body and, on the contrary, suppresses the physically and mentally ill. The Ukrainian army is now testing the state and society for moral and physical fitness. If we manage to defend ourselves, we will manage everything else.
