Ukraine: Soldiers welcome new US aid, but warn it won’t be enough

Ukrainian military who fight on the eastern front celebrated in an interview with EFE the unlocking of aid from USAbut they warned that Ukraine needs more soldiers and a qualitative leap in the level of support from its allies to achieve a victory to which they see no alternative.

“Morale in the Army has obviously improved“, says Oleksandr, a former warehouse manager who enlisted as a volunteer at the beginning of this war and is part of the fire support platoon of the Svoboda battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard.

After half a year of hesitation, the Congress of USA approved in April a new allocation of more than US$60,000 million to finance new military aid to Ukrainewhich has already begun to come to the front.

The interruption of the flow of American aid left Ukraine without enough ammunition to repel the attacks of Russiawhich has taken advantage of it to gain ground in the eastern region of Donetsk.

Oleksandr and his companions in the platoon are confident that this military material will serve to stop the Russian advancesbut they warn that Ukraine It will only be able to recover territories again if the pace of aid is accelerated and the kyiv Army is provided with the quality and quantity of weapons it needs.

“Everything will depend on that”says Anton Bosuy, who returned from Denmark more than two years ago to join the Army and fights with the platoon near Spirne (Donetsk), less than forty kilometers northeast of occupied Bakhmut.

Bosuy illustrates with an example the Ukrainian inferiority in military technologywhich in his opinion could be corrected with more decisive Western support: “We are using Soviet AGS grenade launchers made in the 1960s, while the Russians have modern grenade launchers”.

The range of the Ukrainian AGS, he explains, is 1.7 kilometers, much lower than the 2.5 kilometers reached by the grenade launchers used by Russia.

Demands for more and better weapons

These soldiers insist that there is no alternative to sending more and better material “of attack and not simply of defense”, and they relativize the importance of the military training that the West offers Ukrainians, considering that its Army is more prepared.

“One thing is the theory and another is the practice that our veterans acquired fighting in the east“says another soldier, Artem, who also identifies himself by his nom de guerre, Samurai, about a ukrainian military experience which began in 2014 with the war activated by the Kremlin in Donetsk and Lugansk.

The pace at which the western military aid Since the beginning of this war it has been a cause of frustration among these Ukrainian soldiers, who regret that decisions to send more or more effective systems are only made when the situation seems desperate for Ukraine and not when kyiv gains strength and has options to advance.

“They don’t give us enough weapons to attack, only to defend ourselves; If they had given us more ammunition and weapons, things would be different now”says another member of the platoon, Viacheslav Danchishin, who worked in the Spanish towns of Zaragoza, Tarragona and Benasque before returning to his country to fight.

Reduce the numerical gap

These ukrainian military They also agree in calling for more soldiers to be deployed to the line of contact to reduce the gap with the Russian forces, which have made their numerical superiority one of their assets in this war.

Concepts such as the ‘economic front’, used by male professionals who are not willing to fight and argue that they contribute to the cause by paying taxes, are cause for skepticism among these soldiers who left behind orderly and prosperous civilian lives to take up arms.

“I think everyone will end up going to the front, there are not enough soldiers and they should already be training“says Bosuy, the young man who returned from Denmark, on those who resist being mobilized. “Do they think that someone will come to wage war for them?”, he adds.

Fewer and fewer Ukrainians are joining the Army by their own decision, which affects the spirit of the units, which are renewed with those who take up arms out of obligation.

“At first the entire battalion (Svoboda) was made up of volunteers; now there are not so many”explains Danchishin, the soldier who lived in Spain, who recognizes that those mobilized do not go to war with the same morality.

Despite the difficulties, none of these soldiers see any chance of reaching a compromise with Russia. They see this war as a marathon that, in the eyes of Oleksandr, the warehouse manager turned soldier, began several centuries ago with the fight of his ancestors against the first attempts at domination of Moscow.