JohninMK Tue Aug 18, 2015 12:47 am
Long interview translated on Fortrus, these are the initial paras and a snipped question. Worth reading to get a feel of the creaky structure of Kiev's forces.
Roman Chernyshev, a Ukrainian journalist for the information agency “LigaBusinessInform” conducted an interview with two officers who at different times were dismissed after voluntary service in one of the special battalions in the ATO zone.
Ilya is a career war psychologist and Sergey is a spetsnaz officer who for objective reasons wished to be presented in this text under a pseudonym. However, there is no doubt as to his qualifications and combat experience. Their tales of the war differ radically from the official reports and posts by politicians, bureaucrats, and various advisers on different social networks. The text does not mention the names of parties, geographical points or unfortunate heroes which were mentioned in the interview with the officers. However, to the reader interested in the situation, it won’t be difficult to find out and figure out everything from the context...
This is an assessment by military personnel with combat experience in Donbass. (The text is abridged, with Ukro-nationalist-toxic passages omitted).
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Q.: Can American instructors pull our army together?
Sergey: When was the last time Americans fought an equal? The Second World War. Any armed conflict in the past 30 years involving the USA was waged under an overwhelming superiority of America in the air and in precision weapons. I saw this in the Middle East and I know what I’m talking about. A group of their infantry doesn’t enter a combat zone before even the air has been purged. If there’s no cover, they generally refuse to work. The USA doesn’t fight like we do in Donbass. The Taliban took a base from them in Afghanistan, so they tried to storm it, and it didn’t work out, but the inevitable loss is unacceptable. So they struck it with a high-precision missile from an aircraft - that’s it. There’s no base, and no Taliban.
Ilya: In a TV show, an official from the Ministry of Defense asked the general of the UAF the question: Where did the 70% of the weapons, which only in 2014 were transferred to the army, go? Our tank colonels can’t operate a tank cannon. Right at the front, at Donetsk airport, the commander of one of the regiments of the Intelligence Division of the General Staff was compelled to teach fighters how to shoot a grenade launcher.
http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/ukrainian-volunteer-battalions-are.html