David Patrikarakos reports that young Ukrainians are training as partisans for a potential guerrilla war with Russia:
Ukraine has 130,000 personnel in its armed forces that could be boosted to about one million with reservists, but few troops are battle-ready while much of their equipment is outdated and unable to function effectively in a modern war situation. Ukraine’s parliament recently allocated six billion hryvnias (about $523 million) for the repair and restoration of military equipment, but given time constraints, improvement is likely to be limited.
As a result, the single biggest threat to a further Russian invasion remains the possibility of a militarized population in urban areas and perhaps the forests—and Moscow knows it.
The epicenter of the struggle for Ukraine’s east these past few weeks has been the small, seemingly unimportant town of Sloviansk. I was there the night its central police station was stormed by pro-Russia separatists, and it was a clear turning point in the crisis. The baseball bat-wielding militia I had seen in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk had been replaced with professional soldiers clearly dictating events on the ground.
Kyiv has a large strategic reserve of Kalashnikov assault rifles and other light weapons—around 5 million pieces—as a mobilization reserve dating back to Soviet times. It has made clear to the Kremlin that it is now considering the possibility of opening up this stockpile to its citizens in East Ukraine. At least half this reserve is concentrated near Sloviansk and it is the reason that Russian special forces were sent there to secure the area.
Meanwhile, Eli Lake notes, Kiev has solicited the advice of Georgia’s defense minister, Iraki Alasania, who knows a thing or two about being invaded by Russia:
Among Georgia’s tips for Ukraine: hunt moles early; watch for “non-governmental organizations” that are really Moscow’s fronts; seek out encrypted communications from the West; and if Russia does annex more territory, keep humanitarian, economic and cultural lines of communications open without formally recognizing the transfer of turf—it could be a useful way for the government in Kiev to address some of the needs of Ukraine’s Crimean citizens. …
As a general rule, Alasania said it was important “to rely more on diplomatic resources” than the military. He noted that none of the militaries of the former Soviet republics could withstand a full-scale Russian invasion. But the Russian sabotage and provocation operations currently underway? Those have a chance of being countered.
The Dish 