12 Percent of Senior Officers in Russian Army in Ukraine from or Served in Ukraine Earlier, Project Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 24 – Even though Ukraine has been independent of Russia for more than 30 years, one in every eight senior officers in the Russian invasion force either is from Ukraine or served there in the past, according to the Project portal (war-proekt.media/ and graniru.org/Politics/World/Europe/Ukraine/m.285193.html).

            This pattern is a shadow of the pattern in Soviet times where a disproportionate share of the officer corps of the USSR military consisted of Ukrainians or people from Ukraine, a pattern partially hidden by special rules which allowed many of them to re-identify as ethnic Russians when they reached the rank of colonel.

            Project based its conclusions on the study of biographic data on 160 senior officers, a study which also found that in assembling the invasion force, Moscow drew on men from all 12 armies of the Russian Federation. It also found that almost a quarter of them (39) had previous combat experience in Chechnya (19), Georgia (5), Syria (26), and the Donbass in 2014 (6).