Bankers Called Up for Ukraine War as Rolls-Royce for Sale
A knock on the door for Andriy Gerus
came on a Monday morning in July.
Fresh from getting his MBA in London, a managing director
at Ukrainian investment company Concorde Capital was preparing
to go for a stroll with his baby in Holosiyiv, a leafy district
of Kyiv, when a surprise visitor handed him a military summons.
“I imagined myself with a gun, marching,” Gerus, 32, said
at a cafe in central Kyiv. “Everyone has two choices: to comply
with Ukrainian law, go with your conscience and prepare for
mobilization or avoid joining the army by relocating and risk
three to five years in prison. I prefer the former.”
The war is coming home for thousands of Ukrainians as part
of the latest wave of mobilization ordered last month by
President Petro Poroshenko to defeat a pro-Russian insurgency
simmering since April in the easternmost regions of Donetsk and
Luhansk. By putting professionals like Gerus near the frontline
of the country’s bloodiest battles since World War II, Ukraine
is trying to offset a mismatch in military capability in a
conflict that’s pitted it against neighboring Russia, which it
accuses of backing the rebels and whose defense spending is
about 56-fold Ukraine’s outlays on the army.
Ukraine, the second-most-populous former Soviet republic,
and its allies in Europe and the U.S. are laying the blame for
stoking the conflict on Russia, a country of 143 million people
with a $2 trillion economy, which this decade has embarked on
its biggest overhaul of the armed forces since the Cold War.
‘Poorly Equipped’
In contrast, the Ukrainian army numbered about 70,000 at
the start of the conflict, the U.K.’s Royal United Services
Institute for Defense and Security Studies said in a report in
April, adding that it’s “poorly equipped and would struggle to
mobilize fully.” Russia’s 2013 State Defense Plan puts the
nation’s total troop level at 80 percent of the planned strength
of 1 million soldiers, according to London’s International
Institute for Strategic Studies.
Russia has deployed 45,000 soldiers near its neighbor’s
borders, a Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, told
reporters in Kyiv yesterday. That makes it the biggest buildup
since Russian troops were withdrawn from the area in May. The
renewed deployment raises the specter of a possible invasion,
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said yesterday.
The separatist forces now number about 15,000, up from 300
when the conflict started, and hold less than half the territory
they did four weeks ago, Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey said in an interview with the BBC, broadcast on Aug. 3.
Geletey’s son got his call-up notice on Aug. 1, the minister
said on Facebook Aug. 1.
‘Severe Cuts’
“The Ukrainian army has been facing severe cuts in the
last years,” said Janis Berzins, director of the Center for
Security and Strategic Research at the National Defence Academy
of Latvia in Riga. “The result, as always, is reduced
operational capability.”
Since Ukraine went on an offensive against rebels in mid-April, the army has lost 363 soldiers, with 1,434 wounded, a
spokesman for the military, Andriy Lysenko, said July 30.
To replenish the ranks, Ukraine is turning to people like
Gerus and Oleksandr Bondar, 32, who employs seven people at his
IT business in Lviv near Poland. Deployed on the border of the
regions of Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk about 1,000 kilometers
(620 miles) from home, he’s serving as deputy chief of a
logistics support squadron, supplying munitions and fuel to the
frontline about 100 kilometers away.
Vacations, War
“My first thought was: All is lost!” Bondar said by phone
from his area of deployment about his reaction to being drafted
in mid-April. “I wasn’t prepared for serving in the army at
all. I was preparing to have vacations, and already had tickets
on hand. Another question on my mind was: How long will my
business operate without me?”
While Bondar says he answered the “call of duty,” for
others the drive is bringing to the surface regional tensions
and conflicting priorities.
As soon as Poroshenko issued the call to mobilization,
protests — led mostly by women — swept through Ukraine from
Mykolayiv on the Black Sea to Chernivtsi near Romania. People
scuffled with the police and blocked roadways and bridges,
questioning why their men are enlisted to fight far from home.
The protests were “very local,” said Bohdan Senyk, a
spokesman for the Defense Ministry.
‘Everyone’s Problem’
“In any country, there are different people — patriots
and those who would rather avoid a fight, and Ukraine is no
exception,” said Anton Mikhnenko, a deputy head of the Kyiv-based Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies. “But
they, too, should understand: if their husbands and sons don’t
help now, this military conflict will spread and could cover
their native territory as well. It’s everyone’s problem.”
With the insurrection nearing its fifth month, the
government may be running short on time before the country
cleaves in two, Berzins said.
“Ukraine needs to finish the rebellion ASAP,” he said.
“People there want peace and stability. If they feel Russia is
able to end the conflict, they will support Russia. If Ukraine
wants to keep the eastern part, it shall resolve it very quickly
and should not underestimate the potential support of local
people just wanting to have a normal life again.”
With the country on a war footing, some Ukrainians aren’t
waiting for their draft notice. Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, 53,
who with his brother shares a fortune estimated by Focus
magazine in 2013 at $355 million, put up his Rolls-Royce Phantom
for sale and joined a volunteer battalion fighting in eastern
Ukraine. The proceeds from the sale will go to meet army needs,
he said.
No Exception
“Why did I do that? I don’t want to say I’m a big
patriot,” he said by phone. “It’s more because of a sense of
justice. And because a lot of nice, clever, well-educated,
friendly people are on the frontline now. So why should I be an
exception?”
The partial mobilization will enable the military to deploy
forces in areas cleared of rebels, which are lacking in security
and need to guard against attacks by saboteurs, said Mikhnenko,
the military analyst in Kyiv. Two earlier waves of mobilization
were carried out in March and May.
Should Ukraine draw a larger lesson for how to overhaul the
military, the authorities will use the experience to upgrade
weaponry and turn the mostly conscript army into a more
professional force, he said.
‘Europe’s Israel’
“Ukraine’s army has existed for the past 20 years without
having any external or internal military threat,” Mikhnenko
said. “The best option for us would be to implement, say, the
army model used in Switzerland or Israel, where most of
civilians are engaged, constantly undergoing training. If we
become Europe’s Israel, that would be great.”
Unlike most enlisted men who received little preparation,
Konstantinovsky, who served in a tank brigade in the Soviet
conscript army, went through a “few months” of training before
joining the fight. His twin brother, Oleksandr, has assumed a
caretaker role in their joint business, which includes the Kyiv-Donbass Development Group, a real estate company.
“Now I’m an ordinary soldier again,” he said. “Of
course, it’s scary. What did I see there? Everyone with a gun,
moving very fast, everyone is very tense. Forest, fields of very
high maize, ruined buildings. And there you understand very well
that one man doesn’t matter much.”
Pervasive Fear
It’s a sentiment echoed by Bondar, the IT entrepreneur from
Lviv. “I feel scared every time we are heading to the
frontline, and every time I realize that what I have experienced
previously is nothing compared with the current situation,” he
said.
Swept up in the conflict, the enlistment may mold a nation
that’s been torn apart by conflicting loyalties. Gerus, the
banker in Kyiv who has no military background, said an official
at the recruitment station told him that he can be mobilized at
any time now.
“Military service in wartime affects your thinking a
lot,” Bondar said. “You can see people from different spheres,
to which you don’t belong, and you can compare their life with
your own. You understand all are equal. For the shell or the
bullet, it doesn’t matter who you were in your civilian life.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
Volodymyr Verbyany in Kyiv at
vverbyany1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Balazs Penz at
bpenz@bloomberg.net
Paul Abelsky