DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine – This winter could be long, cold and deadly for Ukraine's fighting army.
One soldier in the 25th Dnipropetrovsk Airborne Brigade at the Ukrainian military camp in Donetsk Oblast’s Debaltseve said that, when he enlisted, the government gave him one uniform, one pair of underwear, two pairs of socks and a used pair of combat boots that were a size too big.
“They told us this is supposed to last us two years,” the soldier said.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of soldiers in Debaltseve are unprepared for the harsh Ukrainian winter. Some of them only recently received coats warm enough for the chilly and wet autumn. While they might repel water, they have no insulation, which is needed to stay warm in sub-zero temperatures.
“Look at this,” says one soldier, pulling open his jacket to reveal its insides. “No fur, no insulation and no warmth.”
With the winter months approaching, the need for warm clothing for Ukrainian soldiers is becoming more acute. Most of them will be staying in the war zone through the winter, and they have very little grounds for optimism.
It seems that everything is in short supply, even very basic things like hats. As it is, the troops mainly have thin cotton balaclavas and military style caps. They will need something much heavier in just a couple months’ time.
As for the camp, there are a few dozen large military tents with furnaces that burn through the night and can keep about two dozen men in close quarters warm. But most of the troops at the camp sleep in personal camping tents. Their sleeping bags are light and thin. They aren’t the sub-20- or sub-40 degree bags necessary to stay warm through the frigid winter nights.
Officials, in the meantime, promise to equip the army with everything needed for winter by Oct. 15. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry is planning to spend Hr 84.2 million to buy 126,000 cold-weather coats, Hr 65.6 million to buy 105,000 sets of trousers and Hr 7.2 million for 795,000 socks as of mid-September.
Deputy Defense Minister Oleksandr Lishchynskiy recently said that 16,000 cold-weather coats were delivered to the war zone as of Sept. 24. “All the servicemen have hats and winter trousers,” Lishchynskiy said during a news conference in Kyiv on Sept. 25.
He also claimed that around 80-90 percent of winter gear is already in the army. In written comments to the Kyiv Post, the Defense Ministry said that 90 percent of military camps and infrastructure are ready for the winter, and have enough supplies for a heating season of 150 days.
“By Oct. 10, taking into account existing property and new supplies, 100 percent of servicemen will be 100 percent supplied for the winter,” the ministry said.
But volunteers who regularly travel to the east and supply the army are ringing alarm bells and saying they are seeing none of it in the field. Moreover, the ministry’s statement raises many questions because it claims that preparations for the winter were started “according to the order of Defense Minister Colonel General Valeriy Heletei… in the spring, after the end of the 2013-2014 heating season.” Heletei, however, was appointed on July 3.
Tetiana Rychkova, a volunteer from Dnipropetrovsk who helps the local 25th Airborne Brigade, says that soldiers still have no winter boots, no thermal underwear, no helmets, no white camouflage cloaks and no warm sleeping bags.
“The uniform the Defense Ministry sent to the war zone is okay for autumn, maybe while the temperature falls no lower than five degrees,” Rychkova says. But it will not keep them warm in the winter. Worse still, crowd-sourcing no longer works as well because the economic recession is starting to hit people’s pockets. Rychkova explains donations have “dropped significantly.” Rychkova says it takes Hr 25,000 to equip each soldier for the winter.
“Many people thought that the war has stopped, but we know for sure it hasn’t,” Rychkova said. “It’s very cold there. They (the soldiers) slept in tents n wet clothing because it was raining the whole last week. They have heaters I brought them, but we need to get at least another 50 for a single brigade,” she explains.
George Tuka, another volunteer from People’s Home Front group, also says it’s getting harder each day to raise money from people. “And they (the soldiers) have nothing there!” he says.
Heletei and the commander of land troops, Lieutenant General Anatoliy Pushniakov held a meeting with volunteers about supply of winter gear for the army on Sept. 29. The two sides came out of that meeting with very different sets of impressions. Volunteers said army commanders look detached and formal during the meeting. Heletei wrote on his Facebook page that Pushniakov apologized for his previous comments that volunteers have nothing to do with supplies for the army, and that the army command meets all their needs.
The servicemen themselves, however, say that volunteer help is what helps them to survive – quite literally.
“We get 99 percent of our supplies from volunteers,” a paratrooper from the 25th Dnipropetrovsk Airborne Brigade told the Kyiv Post in Debaltseve on Sept. 23, adding that without volunteers’ help they would starve and freeze. He declined to give his name for fear of retribution for being critical of the armed forces.
During a news conference in Kyiv on Sept. 25, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that winter clothing, heating equipment, wood and coal “need to be deployed to Ukrainian army within hours or days.”
He also thanked volunteers for all their work and explained that “Ukraine’s bureaucratic machine usually drags the suppliers.”
“For example, we couldn’t buy new thermal clothing for the soldiers because it should have been sent for a six-month test,” Poroshenko said, adding that he will propose an amendment to the bill to accelerate the process.
“We need to do everything to strengthen the Ukrainian army and the volunteers shouldn’t slow down,” Poroshenko said.
Recently the Help Ukrainian Army Foundation launched a project called “Keep the Ukrainian soldier warm” that aims to gather winter packages for Ukrainian soldiers. Anna Sandalova, the foundation’s chairperson, says it has already sent 200 packages out. It includes thermo underwear, socks, winter hats, gloves and raincoats.
“The volunteers need to keep working, because there are lots of thing the Defense Ministry won’t do,” Sandalova says. “We talked to procurement officials at the Defense Ministry and it turns out they don’t plan to buy either thermal underwear, or winter sleeping bags.”
There is a problem with sizes, according to Sandalova. “The servicemen we talked to told us that the sizes of the uniforms they get are not good for everyone. And sometimes the units have to exchange the uniforms to find appropriate sizes for the soldiers,” she says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
