In the Yanukovych era, the Ukrainian army was almost eliminated under the guise of being reformed on a contractual basis. The year 2014 painfully punished us for this. Nevertheless, people have seen a new image of the Ukrainian soldier today, in wartime. It is a soldier who volunteers into the very hell of war, defends his country to the last drop of blood, and carries his wounded comrade off the battlefield under mortar fire. The soldier has become a true hero of our time.
At the same time, we can see today an avalanche of populism against the backdrop of woes and unsolved problems. Many have used the war as an open door to power. Manipulating a great deal of “sensations” and commonplace advice from heroized clairvoyants has formed an informational cloud which has buried real steps to reform the armed forces, organization of logistics, responsibility for decisions made, and, hence, aircraft, tanks, territories, and, most terribly, thousands of lives.
Recently, Serhii Halushko, deputy chief of the Defense Ministry’s Department for Information Technologies, drew our attention in a program of a Ukrainian national TV channel. He stood out against the backdrop of the other participants as a civil and well-behaved person with a clear vision of the state of affairs. To have an ampler dialog about the problems of and the current situation in the army, we invited Mr. Halushko to the editorial office.
He said at the meeting: “The attitude of society to us and, hence, the prestige of the military profession has increased manifold. It no longer needs to be advertised. When a ‘cyborg’ is voted person of the year and billboards advertise ‘I will marry a serviceman,’ it is a real example of the military’s clout in society.” As for the governmental information policy in wartime, Halushko pointed out: “Our weapon is the truth. We don’t need to invent things – all we have to do is say the truth in good time and call a spade a spade.”
Den’s journalists asked Halushko about particularities of the fourth wave of mobilization, the problems of logistics, evolution of the armed forces during an unexpected war, etc.
Read the interview with Serhii Halushko in one of the next issues of The Day.
