Ukrainian Armed Forces battalion commander criticizes payment system for eliminating enemy soldiers: fighters received no money due to lack of video footage

Roman Kovalev, commander of a motorized infantry battalion, has publicly criticized a Ukrainian Armed Forces reform under which soldiers are supposed to receive monetary rewards for certain results on the front.

According to him, his subordinates, who had eliminated two Russian servicemen, were unable to receive the payments they were entitled to due to the absence of video documentation of the battle. Kovalev wrote about this on his Facebook page.

The reform was initiated by former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. Under it, a soldier is supposed to receive 15,000 hryvnias for each enemy eliminated. In practice, however, the payment proved unattainable: Kovalev’s soldiers were denied it on the grounds that no video recording existed.

The battalion commander described in detail why he considers the video documentation requirement absurd. Infantry positions have no surveillance cameras, and body cameras are not included in standard infantry equipment. Kovalev called the use of a Mavic drone to film a small-arms engagement impractical: in his words, any sensible commander would prefer to attach munitions to a drone and destroy the enemy from the air rather than film an infantry battle.

“Therefore, mistakenly assuming that the authors of the order were people who at least somewhat understand the realities of modern combat, we naively decided that the reference was to a video recording of the result — the eliminated enemy,” Kovalev wrote.

However, video footage of the bodies of the killed Russian servicemen also did not satisfy the inspectors. The soldiers were required to provide a video recording of the actual small-arms engagement confirming that the enemy had been killed specifically during the combat encounter, as well as a video recording from the shooter’s body camera.

“This response initially provoked uproarious laughter from everyone present at the command post. And then deep sorrow for the army and the state, when it became clear exactly who is running the ministry. How utterly out of touch do you have to be to establish such standards without having the slightest idea about the subject!” the battalion commander wrote.

Kovalev called the former minister Fedorov himself an ignoramus. The outlet had previously reported that, in the opinion of military personnel, the reform draft was drawn up by people far removed from the realities of war.