As the president was being debriefed after his fact-finding tour of the Ukrainian Armed Forces units stationed in the Crimea, Defense Minister Gen. Volodymyr Shkidchenko submitted his resignation, Interfax-Ukraine quotes the presidential press service as saying. High on the session’s agenda was the question of “meeting statutory requirements as to the appropriate use of public funds, equipment, materials and real estate.” The session heard Ihor Smeshko, Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC); Sviatoslav Piskun, Prosecutor General; Petro Hermanchuk, head of the Supreme Auditing Directorate; Valentyn Symonenko, chairman of the Accounting Chamber of Ukraine; Security Service Chairman Volodymyr Radchenko; and NSDC Secretary Yevhen Marchuk.
What prompted the session were the personal impressions Pres. Kuchma of what he saw when visiting the Crimean military facilities. The visit to eight military units late last April was unexpected by the top brass. The chief of state seems to have decided to see with his own eyes the real condition of the Ukrainian army and the treatment soldiers receive in it. For this reason he made an unannounced visit to avoid eyewash. The president was unsatisfied with what he saw, to put it mildly. “Suppose a sailor served in the Navy — but he will say he used to guard a dumping ground,” he said. Opening the session, Mr. Kuchma noted that this meeting was immediately after his tour of the Crimea, when he “decided to see the Armed Forces from the rear, not through the grand entrance.” It will be recalled that, immediately thereafter, the president dismissed Vice Admiral Mykhailo Yezhel, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Navy. The president also ordered a detailed study of the situation in the Navy. The first results of this study came very soon: it was reported on May 21 that the Prosecutor General’s Office had opened a criminal case against Vice Admiral Yezhel for abuse of office and dereliction of duty. The second and perhaps last phase of the study culminated in Gen. Shkidchenko’s tendering his resignation on June 20.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kuchma did not confine himself to the Crimean military problem alone: the session discussed the Ukrainian military reform as a whole. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine have been reformed for many years, but we so far have only heard negative opinions from everybody. For the reform is going slowly, chaotically, without a clear program,” the head of state noted, adding, “if the reform continues at this pace, it will take decades to form adequate and viable armed forces.” The president admitted, however, that the economic situation did not allow complete funding of these changes. Mr. Kuchma pointed out a paradoxical situation in the military: “it turned out that we have one of Europe’s largest and, at the same time, least combat-ready armies.” The president also announced that the Ukrainian Navy had been inspected 13 times in the past two years by various Ministry of Defense and General Staff commissions, and these inspections reported about the increased effectiveness of the Navy. “The peak was reached in November 2002, when former Commander-in-Chief Yezhel reported that almost 95% of the ships and units on standby-alert were assessed as ready to fulfill their combat duties. Most likely, even the former Soviet Navy did not have such achievements in the best times,” Mr. Kuchma noted. As he put it, this country’s leadership was in fact misinformed about the true state of naval affairs. “What I saw in Sevastopol really struck me, so I instructed the NSDC secretariat to prepare this meeting for us to have a frank talk. Thus, the aim of this meeting is to work out urgent and indispensable measures to be taken in this field,” Mr. Kuchma said.
The president’s criticism and arguments must have been convincing enough for the defense minister to offer his resignation well before the meeting ended. The participants of this session did not have to strain themselves to find proof of the Ukrainian army’s plight. The Day has repeatedly pointed to the current problems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces: forcing soldiers to guard dumping grounds and attend to domestic cattle kept by military units is only one of many examples of how servicemen do their military duty. The recent tragedies that occurred through the fault of the military (a missile hitting an apartment complex in Brovary, a passenger airplane downed over the Black Sea. the Sknyliv Airfield disaster) have dealt a staggering blow to the Ukrainian army’s reputation. Significantly, these three tragedies (each causing a higher toll) were the handiwork of three out of four branches of service: the Ground Forces’ missile artillery in Brovary, Air Defense in the case of the Tu-154, and the Air Force in Sknyliv. All we can hope for is that the navy will not be put on this list as a result of personnel surgery. Incidentally, Gen. Shkidchenko also offered to resign days after the Sknyliv tragedy last summer. The president refused to accept his resignation then. When the Russian Tu-154 was shot down over the Black Sea (which resulted in the dismissal of then Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk), Gen. Shkidchenko was Chief of the General Staff. As we were going to press, there was no news about the president’s response to Gen. Shkidchenko’s latest resignation. In any case, this time the president seems to have sufficient facts to accept the minister’s request.
