This brigade was Emmanuel Macron who announced its formation last October: 5,000 Ukrainians, trained and equipped by France. The Anne brigade of kyiv, equipped with Leopard tanks and Caesar cannons, was to be a showcase for the Ukrainian government’s project to create new brigades, with the help of its Western partners.
But the “media stunt” quickly turned into a fiasco: after hasty training and faced with the organizational chaos of the brigade and its staff, 1,700 soldiers, according to the Ukrainian press, defected as soon as it was deployed.
At the edge of a field, next to a Leopard tank, Volodya lights a cigarette in his fingers, red and dried by the cold. In the distance, artillery explosions: we are on the front, near the town of Pokrovsk assailed by the Russian army. “Those who defected, no one can blame them… It’s between them and their consciencesays the one who leads a company of tankers from the 155th mechanized brigade Anne of kyiv. The fault lies rather with the recruitment center which caught people en masse, without sorting them out, without asking who they were, what they did before, their age, their psychological state. These desertions, of course they have an impact on our ability to fight…“
Before his mobilization, Volodya, 51, was in the building. Six months later, he commanded a company of tankers. Like 90% of the men in Anne’s kyiv brigade, he had no combat experience. In fact, Volodya, like his colleagues, only benefited from one month of training. Like him, it was in France for the artillerymen and infantrymen, and in Poland for the others. Then, for everyone: the front, immediately.
-It’s little, too little, he admits half-heartedly. There is no point going back to the failures of the launch of the Anne of kyiv brigade. The remaining soldiers are trying to move forward. Today, he speaks like a soldier: “In combat, you don’t have time to think. You act, that’s all. It’s afterwards, when you come home from the field, that you think back to what you did“.
Further away, behind the trees, there are old farms and dachas, where his men sometimes rest. Sergyi, 31, is one of the few who have already served in the army: “A month of training is too little. There, straight away, we were thrown onto the hottest part of the front. Those who haven’t been there can’t understand. The shells exploding, the drones over our heads. And the people who are killed What our brigade lacks are career officers, people experienced in combat.“.
Two explosions shake the ground. Two KABs, Russian glide bombs of half a ton each, have just fallen on the neighboring coal mine. Near his tank, among the trees, Captain Volodya lights a cigarette again. “Everyone wants this war to end. It is not beneficial for anyone, neither for Ukraine nor for Russiahe says. Before sliding: “But we have to stop it, because it’s the people who die“. In his voice, weariness. And a hope, that of a ceasefire, as quickly as possible.
Related News :