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After a year of war, Kupol, a lieutenant colonel, said his battalion is unrecognizable. Of about 500 soldiers, roughly 100 were killed in action and another 400 wounded, leading to complete turnover. Kupol said he was the sole military professional in the battalion, and he described the struggle of leading a unit composed entirely of inexperienced troops.
“I get 100 new soldiers,” Kupol said. “They don’t give me any time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into the battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it. Do you understand why? Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some reason, he has never thrown a grenade. … We need NATO instructors in all our training centers, and our instructors need to be sent over there into the trenches. Because they failed in their task.”
A Ukrainian battalion commander who gave an interview to The Washington Post describing how ill-trained troops were weakening Ukraine’s position on the battlefield quit his post this week, after his superiors demoted him because of his remarks, he said.
The commander, a lieutenant colonel who goes by the call sign Kupol, served in the 46th Air Assault Brigade. He declined to provide further details or to grant another interview. |