Ukraine Tackles and Overcomes Manpower Issues
10 Reserve Brigades Eagerly Waiting for Equipment
Ukraine has made a few mistakes over the course of the two-and-a-half-year war. Among these mistakes, nothing has hurt them as much as their failure to order a nationwide mobilization of troops required by the army.
This was a very bad decision. For nearly two years, the 110th Mechanized Brigade defended Avdiivka. The brigade was formed in March 2022, a month after Putin invaded Ukraine, and they were immediately deployed in Avdiivka.
They remained there until the very last day, until the Russians took control of the town on February 17, 2024.
That was a very bad decision. I am using just one example, but there were many brigades that were asked to stay at the front without rotation. To maintain the intensity and effectiveness of your troops, you need to give them rest. You need to rotate them. There are military manuals that recommend constantly rotating soldiers at the front, but this rarely happens in the combat zone.
However, you must find some way to give them a break. You cannot keep them forever in a highly stressful environment and expect them to perform at the highest level. Unfortunately, that is what Ukraine did, as they never had enough soldiers. By the second half of 2023, American aid came to a standstill, and this rotation-less, reserve-less army came face to face with the rising manpower of the Russian army.
We saw the results. After spending two years barely giving an inch to the Russian forces, Ukraine started losing territory. “Creeping advance” became part of our wartime lexicon.
Lack of equipment did play a role.
But so did the lack of manpower.
Ukraine’s manpower crisis is over. Of course, the Ukrainian armed forces are never going to tell us how many soldiers they have at the front, how many they have in reserves, or their daily recruitment capacity. However, we can infer the situation based on their actions.
A few weeks ago, reports started trickling in, indicating that Ukraine is struggling to train its forces.
“We are just wasting a lot of time here on basic training,” deputy battalion commander of 93d Mechanized Brigade, told the Washington Post last month: “If, God forbid, there will be a breakthrough near Chasiv Yar, and we get new infantry that doesn’t know basic things, they will be sent there to just die.”
President Zelensky signed off on the mobilization law in April, lowering the age limit for recruitment from 27 to 25. Ukraine opened military recruitment centers all over the country, created an online registry of draft-eligible men and women, made public pleas to Ukrainians living overseas to return, and released prisoners to join the front. It was an all-hands-on-deck effort, which has started to yield results.
The Institute for the Study of War reported today that Ukraine is struggling to fully equip the newly formed brigades.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in an interview with Bloomberg published on July 3 that Ukrainian forces are better positioned in terms of manpower than they were a few months ago and that Ukraine’s ability to conduct a future counteroffensive operation depends on equipping brigades with heavy equipment, such as mechanized fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, and heavy artillery (likely referencing at least 10 planned new Ukrainian brigades.)
The commander of a Ukrainian brigade operating near Chasiv Yar provided a similar assessment at the tactical level on July 3, stating that Ukrainian forces in his area of operations are more in need of ammunition than manpower.
Zelensky stated that military equipment is taking too long to arrive at the front, however, echoing his comments from early June 2024 about how the slow arrival of US security assistance was complicating Ukrainian efforts to equip reserve brigades sufficiently to commit them to defensive operations
From being acutely short of manpower, Ukraine has moved up the ladder. They are now facing trouble on the training front and struggling to fully equip their soldiers.
However, I would rather have these two problems to lose sleep over than face the problem of not having reserves.
Yes, Ukraine needs to get those Western trainers inside the country and ramp up their training efforts. Then they need to push their Western allies to send the equipment as quickly as possible, because they do not want to keep giving the Russians month after month to calibrate their response.
You want to seize the momentum and then sustain it.
I have been one of the incessant critics of the Western response to this war. However, I don’t feel the need to complain this time. The way the West has acted following the G7 summit in Italy a couple of weeks ago has given me a lot of confidence.
The Biden administration announced on the sidelines of the meeting that it would send all the Patriot interceptors off the production line to Ukraine until their stocks are replenished. They said they would rearrange the order queue to prioritize Ukraine.
They said it, and they did it.
Yesterday, the administration released a $2.35 billion assistance package for Ukraine. Of this, $2.2 billion was allocated specifically for Patriot interceptors and NASAMS air defense systems.
The United States is sending hundreds of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine.
The delivery of Czech-sourced artillery shells has begun. The first tranche of artillery shells, rumored to be in the tens of thousands, has already been shipped.
Once again, I am just noting the key deliveries.
This is not February 2024, when we had no idea if anything would ever make it to Ukrainian warehouses. We now clearly know which weapons are earmarked for Ukraine. The problem we are facing now is the usual Western bureaucratic delays — red tape and slow responses.
This is also not the same situation we faced last year, when Europe promised to send 1 million shells to Ukraine by March 2024 and ended up delivering less than half by that time.
The promised delivery queue is not based on forecasts; it is based on weapons that are already available. The situation at the front will improve. The window the Russian army had to exploit the manpower and equipment shortage of the Ukrainian armed forces has been drastically reduced.
Perhaps another four to six weeks.
That is all they have.
Out of the two key challenges Ukraine faces, training is the more immediate priority they can address. It’s the low-hanging fruit that needs the quickest improvement. They should establish a robust system capable of producing thousands of well-trained soldiers every week.
Absolutely doable.
They can do most of it by themselves.
Thanks for reading. Making critical information on Ukraine accessible is one way to fight misinformation. That’s why I’ve made 222 stories free to the public in 2024, including this one.
