Military reform in Ukraine 2000-2007

In the first 10 years of independence there was no well thought out plan for reform of Ukraine’s armed forces. In reality, military reform just meant that the military organization lost huge amounts of personnel without simultaneously making any serious changes to the structure of the organization. However, in the years 1997-2001 a number of important documents and concepts were adopted. These documents finally made it possible to begin talking about a “reform”. The gist of these concepts was that Ukraine wanted to transform its armed forces into an all-volunteer force organized according to Western models of military organization. Today there are widely diverging opinions on the question as to what extent Ukraine has been able to implement these plans. Some argue that the Ukrainian armed forces still are little more that a depleted version of the Soviet inheritance, whereas others think that these same forces are now better able to defend the country than they used to be, and that they are able to make significant and qualitative contributions to international operations. This report concludes that important progress has been made, especially in organizational matters, teaching and to some extent also training. There is, however, much less progress in rearmament. The report also highlights what appears to be the main stumbling blocks for the implementation of reform, such as for example corruption, entrenched Soviet mindsets, and conflicting interests between the military industry and the armed forces and between the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Industrial Policy. It is nevertheless important to point out that there is almost no open political resistance from the armed forces themselves to the direction of reform. Here the situation in Ukraine is very different from the one in Russia. In addition, it seems to be the case that military reform has speeded up after the Orange revolution. The appointment of Anatolii Hrytsenko as Minister of Defence in February 2005 appears to have given the reform new impetus. Still, the basic foundations for reform had been laid before he entered office. His contribution seems to be that of accelerating the tempo and giving a better direction to an already ongoing process.