Inexorable, the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine continues, and raises fears of a dark winter for Ukraine, exhausted energetically, and faced with the risk of a decline in American aid following the election of Donald Trump. Advance, pick up the dead, bandage the wounds and nibble territory: the insensitive mechanics of the Russian battalions are well-established. That of kyiv is struggling to cope. The Ukrainian situation became complicated with the arrival of the first North Korean soldiers on its territory – there are around 10,000 according to the Pentagon.
Ukrainian ranks depleted
Ukraine's ground forces have doubled in size in the 32 months since Russia expanded its war against Ukraine, Forbes notes. The Army, Air Assault Force, Marine Corps, Territorial Forces and National Guard have branched into dozens of new brigades, each with up to 2,000 soldiers and hundreds of vehicles.
Ukraine – Russia: military planes of the war
But Ukraine is still facing, and has been for several months, a problem of understaffing. On Tuesday October 29, a new mobilization of 160,000 men was announced by the Ukrainian authorities. According to Oleksandr Lytvynenko, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, this should make it possible to replenish the ranks of the army by 85%, while ““a total of 1.050 million citizens were enlisted” since the beginning of the invasion. This mobilization should be spread over the next three months, a source within the security sector told AFP.
The mobilization policy caused a severe crisis of unpopularity for the Zelensky government in May, after the entry into force of a new mobilization law, lowering the age of conscription from 27 to 25 years. The law also failed to allow the return of soldiers mobilized for three years or more, and made it easier to enlist and more punish those who resisted.
Where are the 13th Jager Brigade and the 88th Mechanized Brigade?
Faced with the lack of human force, it seems that another initiative has emerged in the ranks of kyiv: the false brigades. In the spirit of the famous maxim “Fake it until you make it” (“Fake it until you make it”), the Ukrainian camp would have simulated in 2023 the arrival of two contingents, the 13th Jager brigade and the 88th mechanized brigade, in the Ukrainian district of Varash, near the border with Belarus.
So during the month of February, accounts on social networks published photos of soldiers and equipment from these so-called brigades. A few weeks later, the Varash district announced that she had joined forces in the region.
This information was denied by Militaryland, a collective that tracks the structure of Ukraine's ground combat forces. Seized with doubts, the cell asked the Ukrainian general staff in kyiv to confirm the existence of these brigades. Answer ? “No entity named 88th Mechanized Brigade exists in the structure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”. A clear observation.
“The 13th Jager Brigade very probably does not exist either”a conclu Militaryland. “Both units may be a psychological operation or, more likely, a small group of soldiers informally referring to a platoon or company by those names”estimated Militaryland.
It remains possible, however, that a voluntary, unofficial paramilitary group claimed the name 88th Mechanized Brigade or 13th Jager Brigade, Forbes concedes. But the energy deployed to pass the unit off as an army unit is astonishing. The most likely hypothesis remains psychological warfare, involving creating a “decoy” intended to artificially increase Ukraine's military strength, to deceive Russia. So both sides regularly deploy decoy vehicles – either inoperative wrecks or inflatable fakes – to divert enemy fire from real vehicles. In the meantime, the mystery remains.
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