Reporter of Informator.lg.ua Anton Goloborodko joined Armed Forces of Ukraine few weeks ago. In his interview to our media Anton tells about his motivation, his hopes and experience. He also tells about the current condition of Ukrainian Army analyzing its advantages and disadvantages from a point of view of a soldier and reporter.
–How mobilization process of volunteers goes in modern Ukrainian Army? Did you have any problem at any stage?
– In general, they accept everybody in the sixth wave of mobilization, because there are not enough of people. You can even refuse to go through medical check and they will take you anyway. Among volunteers there are people who can’t be mobilized. They refused medical check and they were accepted.
From another side, people who work in recruitment offices are not used to the fact that there are volunteers coming to them. I have couple of friends who came to recruitment office on their own. Officers look at you and ask “Everything is ok with you? Go to the medical check anyway, and we will see what to do”. It’s not like they don’t want to accept you, it’s more likely that they have some kind of dissonance in their heads and they are probably just overcautious.
I want to add that they didn’t even look for my file. I was in another department, among those who go according to regular mobilization process. They just gave me military ID, they gave me invitation right away without even looking for my profile.
–Military service is new for you, but you have been to ATO zone as a reporter before on a regular basis, so you already know something about this war. Tell me, did our government manage to build a system of army supply, logistics and so on?
– For sure during this time a lot of things changed for the better. A year ago there were no uniform, no boots, nothing at all. Even if there was something in storehouses, they couldn’t give that for some reasons. And now we come, not everything goes smooth, but we received all needed, pants, T-shirts, caps, socks, towels and soap, boots and so on. I want to say more about boots, the boots that our guys were getting a year ago were terrible, the base didn’t bend at all and they were starting to fall apart almost right away. Now this is not ideal variant, but this is the boots are ok. I was wearing them for a week, it was a little tight for my feet at the beginning, but in general the boots are comfortable if you wear and lace them right.
They even gave me a backpack. And that was not old USSR haversack, but convenient 30 liters backpack. What I can say more about stuff they gave us? They gave me warm jacket and weatherproof jacket right away.
I can summarize that we have all warm clothes needed till December. If you go now to recruitment center without anything with an empty bag (or without it) and join the army they give you everything needed for the first time.
– But volunteers have to collect money and bring something to the soldiers anyway…
– Well, volunteers will have to go for sure. They are supposed to give us two sets of clothes for a year and so far they gave us only one and it’s not clear when we are going to get another one. You can’t use only one set of clothes, you need to wash it.
Ministry of Defense gives us medical kits, before there was nothing. But our instructors on tactical medicine say that a lot is missing there, no good tourniquet, only rubber bands. They don’t include equipment to restore breathing if there is injury to the lung and some drugs are not there.
So, yes, sure, volunteers help is needed, the government can’t provide everything yet. But nevertheless this is much better than a year ago. And I hope it will be even better.
– What you relatives and friends think about your decision to join the army?
– It is hard to explain my motives to relatives and friends and to other people. They look at you and say “You are doing good thing, but where are you going?”
My mother is very nervous about it. She accepted that, it’s already 2 weeks. But I see that’s hard for her. It’s good that my father supports her.
I also noticed that girls, women panic more about it. And men are more discreet and adequate.
Another important thing, I think it doesn’t matter if you went to recruitment office voluntarily or after getting invitation. If you received invitation, you go there yourself anyway, nobody force you to go.
All that discussion, criticism, panic conversations influence the mood of a soldier. You start to think if you made correct decision.
Besides, one year that’s a long time, many things can change. Will your girlfriend wait for you and what can happen to you during this year?
So the support of other people is very important. I am glad that many people write to me on Facebook, call me to support and find out how I am doing. All that gives me the feeling that I did right thing. And since I did right thing, everything is going to be good.
– In the last two weeks that you are in the army did you change your attitude to this war?
– When you listen to the news and they say “2 men got killed, 5 men wounded” and you listen to that every day at some point that stops to be personal tragedy. I mean when they were telling us about 1st deaths that affected us a lot. And after some time that became statistics, 1, 2, 5… But when you start to realize that you are going to be there and they will be shooting at you also and you don’t know if you will have time to take cover and if that’s going to pass by you or you will be hit in your vest of leg, or somewhere else, after that your attitude changes. That affects you a lot.
Your team plays important role. Many of those who came here were in panic at first. But later they start to realize where they got and what is going to be. We talk and support each other.
– What do you think about the level of training in the modern Ukrainian Army?
– Well, I haven’t been on the military training ground yet, I can only say about my training center here in Poltava.
I have a feeling that people who are teaching us have no idea where they are sending us. Most of the teachers are theoreticians who have never been there. Many begin their lecture with the words “All we are telling you, more likely none of that will be needed for you and most of you won’t be communication officers, you will be using firearms, grenade launchers, machine gun and so on… But we will tell you this anyway…” And after that they start to read us their lectures. That confuses me a lot. In two weeks I only saw a gun from a side, in another platoon.
For example, today we had telegraphy class. We were training using old machine that looks like typewriter, but a little bigger. They were teaching us how to type without watching the keys. Colonel himself was teaching us! He said “You do this in case you type on computer, so you get prepared…” And the keyboard on that machine is not like on computer, 10 letters have different position. Tomorrow we are going to the military training ground. I hope that everything will be a little different there.
Another thing that makes us feel better is that when “buyers” are coming to take us to different military units, we are going to have additional training there.
There are a lot of things in the army that I can’t understand as a person with logic who focus on results.
Just one example, there are a lot of us here in the training center. I don’t understand why they are taking all of us to the dining as the same time, the last ones have to wait until the 1st ones finish eating. Why they can’t make 15 minutes intervals, so everybody happy? Now we line up 15 minutes before, and after that wait another 15-20 minutes to go in and so on… This time can be spent much better. So there is still a lot of “USSR legacy” in our army.
– But something changed?
– Absolutely. Recently there were tactical medicine instructors who trained us. I can say that this didn’t exist 20 years ago and this only started in USA at that time. This is something new, but very important for saving lives of soldiers on a battlefield.
Guys from other platoons told us about tactics training, how they teach them to deal with weapon correctly, not “USSR style”, how to works in small units of 2 or 3 men together and so on.
– One of fundamental USSR legacy in the army was bullying. This basically vanished in modern Ukrainian Army. Is that so?
– I can’t say anything bad about relationships in our platoon. There are different people here, from loaders to top-managers, plumbers and lawyers all together, nobody cares about social status, and this was left behind the recruitment center. Everybody support each other, everybody try to help. Every of us realize that we are “in the same boat” and you never know who will cover your back tomorrow. So the spirit of friendship and support was a pleasant surprise for me.
Aleksey Chernov for Informator.lg.ua