Russia’s mobilised forces are, still, just cannon fodder. This is how mobilisation made the Ukrainian army stronger, and why we can tell it didn’t do the same for the Russian army. To get that effect, the army needed horizontal structures, motivation and bottom-up initiative. As no one had got round to telling them “It cannot be done” they set about creating new ways of solving problems, inventing processes and things that showed “Ah, actually it can”. People bring knowledge and skills from their civilian professions into the army.
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For every professional service member, there are two or three newly mobilised ones. Over the past year, the Ukrainian army has grown to be at least three times larger.
All three of them had had businesses before the war and all three were good commanders. “Good businesspeople make good commanders” is an expression I heard three times: first in Donetsk Oblast from a battalion commander, then near Zaporizhzhia from a recce platoon sergeant, and finally near Kharkiv from a man who was number 88 on the Forbes list of the 100 richest Ukrainians. I saw directors of private clinics leaving their practices in order to lead medical units in combat brigades on the front line, wedding photographers turning their hand to aerial photoreconnaissance, bartenders becoming artillerymen. We went on to serve in the same battalion. I met two gay men in the queue at the recruitment office.
It contained ordinary workers and company directors, parents and their children, schoolteachers, theatre people and new university graduates. I found myself joining a true people’s army. As we say in Ukraine, “If you need to explain, then you needn’t bother explaining.” Then in 2022, on day two of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I went and joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
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