Why did the Ukrainian army initially perform poorly compared to the pro-Russian forces in the Donbas?
Over two decades of corruption and neglect following the end of the Cold War left the Ukrainian army in shambles. What little money the state spent on its armed forces melted away in corrupt schemes without reaching the barracks, where the painted-over, old Soviet equipment simply rotted away.
Most Ukrainian governments promoted generals and admirals based on the same criteria they applied to other functionaries and business associates—connections, loyalty, and financial gain—while paying little heed to military ability, training, or experience. As for rank-and-file conscripts, their composition reflected the ambiguous political loyalties of the population at large, and the majority of them tried to evade service.After the first clashes with pro-Russian militants in the Donbas in April 2014 revealed the weakness and poor leadership of the regular army, Ukrainian volunteer battalions started forming alongside it. Some of them had their origins in radical right groups that came to prominence during the defense of the Maidan, such as Right Sector, while others were regionally based. Local patriotic oligarchs, most notably the new governor of Dnipropetrovsk province, Ihor Kolomoisky, reportedly funded the battalions. The arrival at the front of Ukrainian volunteers proved to be a double-edged sword. Although ideologically motivated and better supplied, they remained somewhat of an unruly paramilitary force. Some battalions were subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior, others to the military command, and others only to Right Sector. Cases of looting or abandoning positions without orders in some volunteer units did not help the public image of the campaign; in others, the use of neo-Nazi symbols as emblems only helped the Russian media to tarnish the Ukrainian civil-society revolution as a neo-Nazi coup. Militarily, the battalions were not capable of replacing a modern army.
Moreover, the political ambitions of their leaders were bound to come to the surface, as they did in February 2015, when several battalions announced the creation of their alternative General Staff as a way of indicating their mistrust in the army command in the wake of recent defeats.The Ukrainian army also faced a strong opponent. The original pro-Russian rebels in the Donbas were a mixed group of local separatist activists and disaffected military veterans cum Russian empire builders. As such, they possessed both ideological motivation and military expertise. A typical representative of this group, the Moscow-born Russian citizen and military-intelligence veteran Igor Girkin (nom de guerre: Strelkov) had been for years a participant in battle re-enactments in the Crimea, usually appearing in the uniforms of the tsarist or White army. In April 2014 he made the transition from leading fake imperial army formations to organizing real ones when his group trekked from the Crimea to the Donbas. Soon Girkin was fashioning himself into the commander of the Armed Forces of New Russia and minister of defense of the Donetsk People's Republic. However, in May 2014 he complained in a video address that he could not raise “even a thousand” local volunteers in Donetsk province to fight at the front.10
Whether or not Girkin's desperate appeal stirred anti-Ukrainian feelings among the Donbas residents, it was definitely heard in Russia. Beginning in June 2014, pro- Russian fighters in the Donbas began receiving heavy weapons, including tanks, from across the border. Underemployed war veterans from all over the former Soviet Union arrived in large numbers to take part in what was now a well-funded local war, supplementing empire builders, Russian Cossacks from the nearby Don region, and local Donbas activists. After the rebels shot down several Ukrainian army helicopters and aircraft, Kyiv lost control of its airspace. Yet the Ukrainian army recovered just enough to undertake a counteroffensive in July, briefly threatening both of the region's main cities, Donetsk and Luhansk.
It was at this point that the Russian support of the rebels—in the form of money, war material, and personnel—escalated. In August 2014 the self-proclaimed republics miraculously matched and likely exceeded the Ukrainian forces in tanks and artillery, including the truck-mounted multiple Grad (“Hail") rocket launchers, apparently with an ample ammunition supply. The heavy weapons came complete with trained operators, who reportedly used drones to guide the Grad salvos. Russia consistently denied the involvement of its regular army units, claiming instead that the military personnel crossing into the Donbas did so as volunteers on contract.In late August 2014, Russian-backed fighters went on the offensive, pushing the Ukrainian forces back from their two capitals and trapping thousands in a pocket in the town of Ilovaisk. The separatists also managed to reach the Azov Sea coastline south of Donetsk province, taking the port of Novoazovsk but stopping just short of the major port and industrial city of Mariupol. The September ceasefire did not last long, and fighting soon resumed near Donetsk International Airport, which Ukrainian units doggedly defended until January 2015. The fall of the airport, which by then served as a symbol of new Ukrainian patriotism and heroic sacrifice, and yet another encirclement at Debaltseve in February 2015, underscored the need for the Ukrainian side to re-evaluate its policy. As another ceasefire was concluded the same month in Minsk, Belarus, Ukrainian politicians pondered if their country could hope for a military victory without both a reform of the army and Western weapons to supply it.