“One had a stoma and a colostomy bag”: Ukrainian soldiers complain about the quality of those mobilized by the TCC

Military personnel are reporting the mass mobilization of men who are completely unfit for service, many of whom have extremely serious health problems that make it difficult to survive even in the rear, let alone in frontline conditions.

This was told to hromadske by Ukrainian servicemen.

Roman Kovalev, commander of a separate rifle battalion, said that the unfitness of most of the new arrivals and desertion have become routine.

“It has become normal that, say, out of ten people they send us, three are fit only with limitations, two are drug addicts, and two have gone AWOL… In short, it’s a disaster. Here’s a fresh example. A new guy arrived on February 12. But he hasn’t even been to the training ground once yet. He is being hospitalized for the third time already: lung problems,” Kovalev said.

A source in one brigade, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they receive recruits pumped full of drugs.

“At the personnel reception point it’s just ужас. Someone collapses from epilepsy. Someone else is in such a condition from drugs that on the test he triggered five ‘strikes’ out of six. Well, we sent such people back, but somewhere they must have been accepted. Because once they get into the TCC system, they are already in the army, and it is impossible to send them home,” the brigade source said.

Dmytro Kostiurov, commander of the unmanned systems battalion of the 29th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade, said they are being sent people with conditions incompatible with operating drones.

“The people sent by the TCC are just a walking catastrophe. The quality is nonexistent. The motivation is nonexistent. About 70% are fit only with limitations, and they are shoved into the brigade. Then the brigade can’t do anything with them. It is forced to deal with them, while they go around hospitals and collect salaries. Some have crooked fingers, hypertension, schizophrenia; one had a stoma and a colostomy bag. I didn’t know what to do with them, because they are completely unfit for UAV work,” Kostiurov said.

Roman Kovalev also pointed out that the state is spending enormous amounts of money on such sick mobilized men.

“It’s a black hole. I can’t give figures because that’s a military secret. But the problem is terribly serious: the inefficiency of the whole machine in principle. Imagine how much money is spent to bring one conscript here. A salary of 20,000 plus 30,000 if he is in the combat zone, plus 140 hryvnias a day for food, plus they usually go for treatment every day because they have a lot of chronic illnesses. And then they start getting treated at the state’s expense. The TCC should have filtered all this out. But they need to meet their quota, so they drag in everyone indiscriminately,” the battalion commander added.

Earlier, the Office of the Military Ombudsman reported that about 30% of the people brought to territorial recruitment centers ultimately do not end up serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Before that, it said that one AFU unit had 2,000 men who were unfit for service.