New
York Times: Ukraine finds its forces are ill-equipped to take back
Crimea from Russia
Unelected leaders: Acting
President Oleksandr V. Turchynov, at the left lectern, on Saturday
with acting Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, at the right
lectern.
2
March, 2014
KIEV,
Ukraine — The new government of Ukraine called an emergency session
of its national security council on Saturday in the face of the
Russian military’s seizure of Crimea, but the leaders are facing a
grim reality: Their armed forces are ill equipped to try to reconquer
the region militarily.
Crimea
has always been a vital base for the Soviet and then Russian Navy,
serving as the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, which has
controlled the waters off southern Russia since 1783. After a period
of tension following Ukraine’s independence when the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, Russia got to keep its base in Crimea on a lease,
extended until at least 2042 by the now-ousted president, Viktor F.
Yanukovych.
But
the Ukrainian military has only a token force in the autonomous
region — a lightly armed brigade of about 3,500 people, equipped
with artillery and light weapons but none of the country’s advanced
battle tanks, said Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military expert at the
Royal United Services Institute in London. The forces also have only
one air squadron of SU-27 fighters deployed at the air base near
Belbek.
A
senior NATO official said that Ukraine’s small naval fleet, which
was originally part of the Black Sea Fleet, had been boxed in by
Russian warships.
The
Russian takeover of Crimea was relatively easy, in part because the
Ukrainian military was careful not to respond to a provocation that
would excuse any larger intervention. The military — which has seen
its top leader change constantly with the political situation — has
also made a point of staying out of the internal political conflict
in Ukraine.
The
current military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Mykhailo Kutsyn, was named
to the job only on Friday, after Adm. Yuriy Ilyin, 51, was relieved
of his post after traveling to Crimea and, reportedly at least,
having a heart attack. Admiral Ilyin had only been in the post for a
short time himself, appointed by Mr. Yanukovych on Feb. 19 after Col.
Gen. Volodymyr Zamana was fired for being unwilling to attack
protesters in Kiev. All these changes have been an object lesson for
the military to try to stay out of politics and civil unrest.
Even
so, Ukraine had no realistic contingency plan for a Russian takeover
of Crimea, given the size of the Russian forces legitimately based
there, said Mr. Sutyagin, the military analyst. But he also said that
he doubted that Russian forces would intervene elsewhere in Ukraine,
because Russian forces would be too stretched to control much
territory and even in the largely pro-Russia east, Ukrainian forces
would be expected to fight back, aided by self-defense militias and
partisans.
Matthew
Clements, editor of Jane’s Intelligence Review, said that while the
Ukrainian military was largely underfunded, “in a major land war,
it would be fighting on reasonable terms,” and was “far more
capable than the Georgian Army.” Any major conflict with Ukraine,
he said, “would also expose a lot of key weaknesses in the Russian
Army.”
Steven
Pifer, a former American ambassador to Ukraine now at the Brookings
Institution, said that if Russian forces tried to move into eastern
Ukraine, “there will be some Ukrainian units that will resist, and
a flood of people from western Ukraine saying, ‘This is my chance
to be my grandfather and fight the Communists.’ ”
Still,
owing to its legacy of Soviet bases to support any ground war to the
west, the military is poorly positioned to counter an attack from the
east, according to Ruslan Pukhov, the director of the Center for
Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a military research
institution in Moscow. The thin military presence in the east
complicates any response if Russia chooses, for instance, to back
pro-Russian activists who have reportedly seized administrative
buildings in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine.
According
to its website, the Ukrainian military has a total of 130,000 people
under arms, with reserves of some one million. While conscription
recently ended, it remains a largely conscript army. Ukraine has
partially reformed its military since the Soviet days, when it was
organized in large-scale divisions. It is now organized on the more
flexible brigade system and has been reducing the size of its
military forces, but it is underfunded with a lot of outdated
hardware.
Ukraine
had accomplished some military reform with NATO advice, but since
President Yanukovych said that Ukraine was not interested in full
NATO membership, cooperation has lagged, the NATO official said.
Ukraine has, however, taken part in some military exercises with
NATO, contribute some troops to NATO’s response force and helped in
a small way in Libya.
In
general, the Ukrainians are considered to have excellent
home-produced tanks, but have also relied in part on the BMP-1, an
infantry fighting vehicle that is a combined armored personnel
carrier and light tank dating from the early 1970s. Ukrainian air
defenses, all produced in Russia and a generation behind, are
considered weak.
Mr.
Pukhov, at the military research institution in Moscow, said that the
Ukrainian military inherited a vast supply of legacy weapons from
three Soviet military districts. “But 22 years have gone by during
a state of near continuous economic decline and the Ukrainian
military has received practically no new equipment,” he said. “Now
the force is somewhat pathetic.”
He
said the forces in Crimea were there less to defend Crimea than to
prevent Crimean Tatar separatism and even more unofficially, Russian
separatism. During Ukraine’s recent military reforms, contract
soldiers were allowed to serve near their homes, meaning that many of
the junior officer corps on the peninsula are also residents of
Crimea, which is majority ethnic-Russian, so they are possibly more
pro-Russian in their views.
On
Saturday, Pyotr N. Mekhet, a reserve colonel offered a top position
in Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, said the government should
mobilize, or “the people will form militias,” suggesting a
partisan movement could emerge.
Yuri
Lutsenko, an opposition leader, reached out on Saturday to residents
of eastern Ukraine who might be watching on television, saying the
protesters who had populated the Maidan, or Independence Square, in
Kiev had never harbored anger at those in the east.
“We
reach out our hands from Maidan to Donetsk, to Kharkiv, to
Dnepropetrovsk and to Simferopol,” he said, talking in Russian,
which is spoken by many in the eastern part of the country.
Mr.
Lutsenko also discouraged street fighters from arming themselves
immediately. “The hour for a partisan movement has not yet come,”
he said.
An update -
Telephone
conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama
March
2, 2014, 1:20
At
the initiative of the American side had a telephone conversation with
President Vladimir Putin of the United States Barack Obama.
Discussed
in detail various aspects of the extraordinary situation in Ukraine.
In
response to the interest shown by Barack Obama plans concern the
possible use of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine,
Vladimir Putin drew attention to the provocative criminal acts
ultranationalist elements, in fact encouraged by the present
authorities in Kiev.
Russian
President stressed the existence of real threats to life and health
of Russian citizens and compatriots multiple repositories on
Ukrainian territory. Vladimir Putin stressed that in the case of the
further spread of violence in the eastern regions of Ukraine and
Crimea Russia reserves the right to protect their interests and
living there speaking population.
It's fightening! First reports seem to indicate #volunteers are registering in #Kiev to fight Russian invasion troops... Is that legal??
First lines of people, enlisting for military service in #Kiev are already reported tonight. http://censor.net.ua/video_news/273620/v_kieve_otkrylis_voenkomaty_ukraintsy_gotovy_zaschischat_stranu_video …
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