Isabelle Khurshudyan and Anastacia Galouchka
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military is facing a critical shortage of infantry, leading to exhaustion and diminished morale on the front line, military personnel in the field said this week — a perilous new dynamic for Kyiv nearly two years into the grinding, bloody war with Russia.
In interviews across the front line in recent days, nearly a dozen soldiers and commanders told The Washington Post that personnel deficits were their most critical problem now, as Russia has regained the offensive initiative on the battlefield and is stepping up its attacks.
One battalion commander in a mechanized brigade fighting in eastern Ukraine said that his unit currently has fewer than 40 infantry troops — the soldiers deployed in front-line trenches who hold off Russian assaults. A fully equipped battalion would have more than 200, the commander said.
Another commander in an infantry battalion of a different brigade said his unit is similarly depleted.
The soldiers interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and could face retribution for their comments.
The reports of acute troop shortages come as President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday replaced his military chief, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny. While their relationship had long been tense, in recent weeks one chief disagreement has been over how many new soldiers Ukraine needs to mobilize. Zelensky elevated Oleksandr Syrsky, the 58-year-old commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, to replace Zaluzhny.
The Ukrainian presidential office declined to comment, referring questions to the Defense Ministry, which in turn referred questions to the Ukrainian military’s General Staff. The General Staff did not respond to a request for comment.
Zaluzhny told Zelensky that Ukraine needs nearly 500,000 new troops, according to two people familiar with the matter, but the president has pushed back on that figure privately and publicly. Zelensky has said he wants more justification from Ukraine’s military leadership about why so many conscripts are needed and has also expressed concern about how Kyiv would pay them.
Financial assistance from Western partners cannot be used to pay soldier salaries, and Ukraine’s budget is already under strain, with a $60 billion aid package proposed by President Biden stalled in Congress. The European Union last week approved roughly $54 billion in aid after it was delayed for weeks by opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The debate in Kyiv about mobilization — and to what degree the country should ramp it up — has angered soldiers on the front line.
Oleksandr, a battalion commander, said the companies in his unit on average are staffed at about 35 percent of what they should be. A second battalion commander from an assault brigade said that is typical for units that carry out combat tasks.
Asked how many new soldiers he has received — not including those who have returned after injuries — Oleksandr said his battalion was sent five people over the past five months. He and other commanders said the new recruits tend to be poorly trained, creating a dilemma about whether to send someone immediately onto the battlefield because reinforcements are needed so badly, even though they are likely to get injured or killed because they lack the know-how.
“The basis of everything is the lack of people,” Oleksandr said.
“Where are we going? I don’t know,” he added. “There’s no positive outlook. Absolutely none. It’s going to end in a lot of death, a global failure. And most likely, I think, the front will collapse somewhere like it did for the enemy in 2022, in the Kharkiv region.”
In fall 2022, the Ukrainians took advantage of a weak spot in the Russian front line, where Moscow’s forces were undermanned, and managed to liberate most of the northeast region in a swift one-week September offensive. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the embarrassing defeat by announcing a mobilization in his country.
The Ukrainian parliament is in the process of revising a draft law on mobilization that will lower the minimum conscription age to 25 from 27. But lawmakers working on the bill and soldiers alike have acknowledged that Kyiv has done a poor job explaining to the public why sending more people to the front is necessary.
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