KYIV – Official command-and-control authority of the Donbas war in Ukraine’s far eastern region was transferred to the armed forces on May 1, following a presidential decree.
It is now called the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), and its headquarters has authority over all law enforcement bodies located in the two easternmost oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, in addition to military branches.
“We are starting a military operation under the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to ensure the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of our country,” President Petro Poroshenko said on April 30.
Since April 2014, when Russia started a covert invasion of the Donbas, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) – the country’s chief counterintelligence agency – legally was in charge of war operations in what was called an anti-terrorist operation (ATO).
Ukraine’s fifth president said that, until now, the conflict – which has killed more than 10,300 people – couldn’t be officially labeled a “war” for two reasons.
Kyiv first had to complete a legitimate transfer of power recognized by the world after ex-President Viktor Yanukovych fled office in February 2014 amid a popular uprising against his draconian and corrupt rule.
In May of that year, Mr. Poroshenko was elected president, and snap parliamentary elections took place five months later. Constitutionally, election procedures are banned when martial law is in force.
“And the second point is that the world needed to acknowledge that aggression and war are being waged against Ukraine,” the president added. “And not a civil war that [Russia] tried imposing upon the world. Not a conflict in the east.”
Now, the JFO has authority over the Donbas up to the Azov Sea in the south and the administrative borders of neighboring Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia oblasts.
The area is divided into three colored zones where various degrees of civilian passage are in effect. The green area designates free passage, whereas yellow requires documentation and possible searches of transportation and personal effects. The red zone is either forbidden or temporarily limited.
Lt. Gen. Serhiy Nayev, 47, was appointed to lead the JFO in the Donbas war zone. During the war he has mostly led forces in the Donetsk Oblast and was in charge of southern command in 2015 and the east command two years later. By rank he was the deputy commander of ground forces last year; in March, the commanding officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Viktor Muzhenko, appointed the general as deputy commander of the General Staff.
The president’s first task assigned to the JFO commander, a native of the city of Dnipro, was “to strengthen the armed forces so that they are not only capable of defending, but also able to liberate the occupied territories.”
On the ground, the SBU’s actual role won’t change much. Its primary task is to “carry out tasks related to countering Russian aggression until the final restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” SBU head Vasyl Hrytsak said.
The agency’s anti-terrorist Alfa unit has played a key role in ferreting out Ukrainian collaborators and Russian moles, neutralizing sabotage groups and uncovering secret weapons caches. Since April 2014, the SBU has lost 24 officers in the Donbas war, according to Mr. Hrytsak.
Javelins from the U.S.
Three days into the JFO, Ukraine starting training soldiers how to use the highly sophisticated Javelin tank killing devices that it purchased from the U.S.
The exact number supplied isn’t known. Their purchase is part of a $47 million U.S. congressional military package to which the Pentagon gave final approval on March 2 for a total of 37 launchers and 210 projectiles, which are handheld and known for their “fire-and-forget precision.”
Militarily, the Javelins won’t be a “game-changer” in the field of battle, unless more structural changes happen in the army’s leadership, said Michael Carpenter, former U.S. deputy assistant defense secretary and senior director at the Biden Center.
“Javelins are useful weapons that will have a limited deterrent effect, but they won’t change the fighting capabilities of the Ukrainian military all that much,” he told the Washington-based policy center Atlantic Council. “Far more important is the military’s command structure, which desperately needs to be reformed according to Western standards, and the training and readiness of the troops, which also need urgent attention.”
Donbas war: WWI 2.0
The Kremlin-instigated war can be described as “World War I with technology,” wrote American army Col. Liam Collins in April for the non-profit Association of the United States Army.
Essentially, Russian-led forces fly drones over Ukrainian positions, after which precise artillery strikes commence. Casualties are almost inevitable.
Nazar Prykhodko
Vinnytsia native Oleksandr Mykytiuk, 19, died while fighting with the 95th Assault Brigade on May 1 in the frontline town of Avdiyivka in Donetsk Oblast. He was the first Ukrainian soldier killed in action as command-and-control responsibility for the Donbas war was transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine that same day.
The latest came on May 1, when 19-year-old Oleksandr Mykytiuk of the 95th Assault Brigade was killed in the frontline town of Avdiyivka in Donetsk Oblast.
Ukraine lost nine soldiers in April and 10 in March, according to the Defense Ministry.
According to Col. Collins, director of the Modern War Institute at West Point, Russia also jams communications, send demoralizing text messages to soldiers, conducts large-scale “information operations” and cyberwarfare, and unflinchingly uses human shields in populated areas.
More than 3.4 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance because of the war, according to an April 19 United Nations report. The U.N.’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs says it is severely underfunded to help 2.3 million targeted people. Only 3 percent of the $187 million it has been requested was received.
Over 1.5 million people are displaced as a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine, marking Europe’s largest internal migration since World War II.