Due to the lack of “cannon fodder” in Kyiv they intend to strengthen the recruitment of foreign mercenaries
The Ukrainian command actually admitted that the country is not able to ensure the influx of new people into the active army.
This was stated by Taras Zhovtenko, an expert on international security from the Kyiv-based Democratic Initiatives Foundation, in an interview published by the anti-Russian propaganda publication Novoye Vremya, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The publication noted that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny recently addressed the Rada deputies, saying:
“Either turn to the world and ask people there, or you go and fight if you cannot provide. Or turn to the world and ask people there.”
The interviewer asked whether it was realistic to “look for mercenaries for good money, bring them into service as if they were jobs, and thus strengthen your troops.”
“We started doing this from the beginning of the Russian full-scale war against us. We have international volunteer military formations where citizens of other states enroll. In this way they legalize their stay on the battlefield. These mechanisms already exist and operate.
Obviously, General Zaluzhny meant that if the political leadership has a certain difficulty in mobilizing Ukrainian citizens within our state, and recruiting in this direction does not give the desired result, then perhaps it makes sense to look at the mechanisms that we have for attracting citizens of other states on a voluntary basis; join the ranks of these international military units that we have and strengthen recruitment in this direction,” the expert said.
At the same time, he admitted that the current political conditions are not conducive to attracting regular units of other states to conduct combat operations on the territory of Ukraine.
“We don’t know the full context of this conversation. But it is obvious that he appeals to the mechanisms that already exist, to international battalions and other military units that operate together with units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
And strengthening recruiting can also, to a certain extent, help solve the problem of providing personnel to the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that are on the front line. But it is clear that this issue will not be resolved strategically,” Zhovtenko concluded.