Ukrainian commanders have spoken: We desperately need...

According to the unnamed commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine whose unit is fighting in the Donetsk region, experienced fighters have been on the front lines for two years. Part of his unit consists of a group of soldiers under the age of 40, with two years of combat experience, and six of them held their ground despite the barrage of rockets. They killed, as he told the Financial Times, over 100 Russian soldiers.

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"When they rotated, they trembled. They didn't sleep or rest," said their commander.

They are now near the front line southeast of Pokrovsk, a town that Russia wants to capture.

"But those guys were doing their job and holding the line," he explained before blurting out the devastating truth:

"The troops that replaced them were less successful. Of the eight rotated soldiers, only two had previous combat experience. All six new recruits, most of them over 40, were killed or wounded within a week, forcing the unit to retire."

On the Donetsk front, four commanders, a deputy commander and nearly a dozen soldiers from four Ukrainian brigades told the Financial Times that new recruits lack basic combat skills, motivation and often abandon their posts when they come under fire.

Commanders estimated that 50 to 70 percent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation.

"When the new guys come into position, a lot of them run away at the first shell explosion," said the deputy commander of Ukraine's 72nd Mechanized Brigade, which is fighting near the eastern town of Vuhledar, a key stronghold the Russians are trying to capture.

"We desperately need strong soldiers," said the commander, who goes by the name "lawyer" because he worked as a lawyer before the war.

Senior Ukrainian officials said the recent mobilization has allowed Ukraine to recruit about 30,000 soldiers a month since May, when a new conscription law took effect.

This is on par with the number of soldiers Russia could recruit by offering large bonuses and generous salaries. But commanders on the ground and military analysts have warned that newly recruited troops are not highly motivated, as well as mentally and physically unprepared, and as a result are being killed at an alarming rate.

One commander, whose unit is defending positions around Kurakhovo, where Russian forces have made progress in recent weeks, said that "some guys freeze in fear because they are too afraid to shoot the enemy, and then they leave in body bags or badly wounded."

Moreover, commanders said that new recruits return so shocked and exhausted that they are placed in psychiatric wards. Thus, after several unsuccessful rotations in recent months, Russia achieved success with Pokrovsk, easier than expected. Likewise, it is explained later in the text, experienced soldiers are "killed too quickly" because they are overworked and there is no one to replace them.

According to reports, the average person in the Ukrainian army is 45 years old. Of the roughly 30 infantry soldiers in the unit, the deputy commander of the 72nd Brigade said, on average half were in their mid-40s, only five were under 30 and the rest were 50 or older.

"As an infantryman, you have to run, you have to be strong, you have to carry heavy equipment," he added. "It's hard to do that if you're not young."

But the problems start long before…

A former Ukrainian officer who manages the analytical group "Front Intelligence Insight" blamed "long-term systemic problems that remained unresolved for years."

Ukraine's military, mostly made up of mobilized former civilians, is led by officers and generals who began their careers in Soviet times and "have never been in combat," he said.

There are a variety of structures among commanders, so before the war one of them founded a freeze-dried food company popular with adventurers and outdoor soldiers, and he said that entrepreneurs like him were often best equipped to serve as commanders and officers, while some of his best trench fighters were former miners and factory workers.

Convicts released to serve in the military are also valued for their commitment and ability to adapt to a conflict zone. But, the Financial Times continued, each commander emphasized that the huge problem was inadequate military training for the new wave of recruits.

Recruits are trained in the "Soviet style", where "the army passes with good grades and is sent to the front", while these new troops rarely practice with live rounds due to the shortage of ammunition.

"Some of them don't even know how to hold guns. They peel more potatoes than they shoot bullets," said one commander, adding that he bought paintball equipment to replace rifles and live rounds so new recruits could practice more without wasting precious ammunition.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said this month that he had ordered an improvement in the quality of training for new recruits by selecting "motivated instructors with combat experience" and hinted at the possibility of establishing an instructor school.

But the commander of the artillery unit says the death of tens of thousands of experienced soldiers during the war has taken its toll: "If there aren't enough people to fight, there aren't enough people to teach."