“Up to 75% of the Ukrainian infantry has been lost in senseless banzai charges on bushes, without thinking about tomorrow,” – Saigon, a writer currently fighting said

Up to 75% of the infantry in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have been “destroyed in senseless banzai attacks on bushes without any thought for tomorrow,” which has now led to a shortage of personnel on the front lines.

This was stated by writer and soldier Serhiy Saigon, who is currently serving in the army.

According to him, “the infantry component has been neglected for a long time; no one cares about the infantry.” This situation, he says, is partly due to an “overreliance” on drones and unrealistic tasks set by leadership with “bought ranks.”

“In 2022 and early 2023, the Defense Forces outgunned the Russians in close combat effortlessly. Then drones appeared, and they were used to patch gaps on the front because, at that time, chaos in the army became total. Motivated infantry, potential platoon leaders, company commanders, and battalion commanders were lost in bushes and groves due to ‘Mission-200’ tasks. After Soledar/Bakhmut, no one wanted to serve in the infantry anymore. The word ‘infantryman’ came to mean someone who couldn’t get out of it, who didn’t have connections to secure a safer role within the army, and who lacked any professional skills to be protected by commanders. An infantryman is not a trained soldier capable of operating and completing missions in difficult conditions as part of their unit; instead, it’s an unskilled nobody who doesn’t need training because a neo-commander will waste them in two or three days, and then they’ll have to find a replacement,” Saigon wrote.

In this context, he criticized the potential lowering of the conscription age.

“Now you want to draft children? So that the uncles strutting around with ‘connections,’ boasting exemptions in their pockets and money in their wallets, can feel safe going to restaurants, right? And who will train these kids? Where will these kids find sergeants? Where will they get proper platoon leaders, company commanders, and battalion commanders? Or are you going to draft them just to waste them in a year in the groves, like you did with the ‘old infantry’?” the soldier declared.

It is worth recalling that the commander of the Third Separate Assault Brigade, Andriy Biletsky, criticized the AFU leadership, accusing them of incompetence.

Meanwhile, MP Serhiy Yevtushok stated that there are three times more military personnel in headquarters than on the front lines.