Naked populism of bare kings: who is calling for the dissolution of the TCC and why?

Recently, the representative of the pro-presidential party "Servant of the People," Yulia Yatsyk, announced the plans of the MPs to "eliminate" the TCK and SP. She clarified that this is mentioned in the commission's report, and the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (MOD) is already working on establishing recruitment centers. At the same time, a member of the thematic investigative commission of the Rada, Anna Skorokhod, who was expelled from the "Servant of the People" party and is known for proudly wearing a "Georgian ribbon" before the war, referred to the initiative of the temporary investigative commission as a "roadmap that will improve the protection of military interests." Furthermore, according to her, this will allow the redirection of current military personnel from TCK to combat zones. However, she did not specify how many staff members from military recruitment centers are proposed to be "reduced" and sent to the front, claiming that this is confidential information that cannot be disclosed.

Meanwhile, the head of the communication group of the Poltava regional territorial center for recruitment and social support, Major Roman Istomin, stated that it is "impossible to create any brigade from the workers of TCK and SP": "In TCK, there are employees and there are military personnel. No brigade can be formed directly from the workers, except perhaps a construction one. Regarding military personnel, no orders for any disbandment have been received so far." In turn, the deputy commander of the 3rd assault brigade, Maxim Zhorin, described the MPs' initiative as "empty populism" and suggested eradicating corruption in TCK instead of closing them.

Meanwhile, the ousted MP Marianna Bezuha stated that the disbandment of TCK would yield at least 50,000 military personnel. "It is still relevant that neither the Ministry of Defense nor the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has financial analytics; it is a 'black hole,' and the number of employees in TCK and SP, along with recruitment centers, amounts to up to 100,000 people. If we disband TCK and SP, leave only the recruitment function, transfer administrative duties to the CNAP, and introduce direct conscription into brigades with centralized monitoring, then at least 50,000 military personnel from TCK and SP could fill the ranks of necessary combat units," she wrote on social media. And "servant" Yuriy Kamelychuk, calling for the disbandment of military recruitment centers as such, "because there are too many people working in them," echoed Bezuha's suggestion to replace TCK with recruitment centers.

It is quite possible that such statements from several MPs are prompted by the growing negativity towards TCK and their methods of operation. Meanwhile, it is noteworthy that these statements began to emerge against the backdrop of a clear failure of the autumn mobilization and the lack of personnel in combat units. Recently, it was noted by the General Staff that the pace of mobilization has slowed down. Furthermore, the Financial Times recently reported that Ukraine's plans to call up another 160,000 people from November to February are "absolutely unrealistic." "Military experts and one senior Kyiv official expressed skepticism about achieving this goal, stating that it is more realistic to expect a conscription of up to 100,000 people. According to them, this would fill about half of the missing personnel," FT notes. Meanwhile, two commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported to the publication that "they have already begun sending medics and cooks to the infantry."

On the day before, opposition MP Oleksiy Honcharenko stated that untrained personnel are being massively sent to infantry units. According to him, combat medics, signalers, chemists, and support services are being sent to the infantry in large numbers. "The calculation and analytical unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has 70 people. An order has been given to send 20 to the front line. This is a unit of chemists who have undergone training abroad and were kept for nuclear danger situations. Well, future martyrs who will save everyone in extreme cases. The same goes for all units stationed in the eastern regions. All support services are supposed to send 25% of their personnel into the trenches. Personnel from the Air Forces are also being transferred to the ground forces: mobilized, one month of training, and then a week later transferred to the ground forces, to the front lines already, in the Zaporizhzhia direction. And from the air defense units and radio operators, everyone is being taken and transferred to the infantry," the MP quotes his unnamed contact from the Armed Forces, adding that some of those transferred to the front threaten to go AWOL (unauthorized absence). According to Honcharenko, the military are saying among themselves that this is how Commander Syrsky is solving the problem of failed mobilization. Additionally, the party associate of former president Poroshenko notes that at the same time "we have people with combat experience at TCK who are sifting through paperwork." As we can see, Honcharenko supports the idea of disbanding TCK. In principle, the statements of the aforementioned MPs can be interpreted as a kind of threat – if the military recruiters do not start enlisting more people, they may also find themselves sent to the front.

However, military officials insist that disbanding military recruitment centers will not yield the expected effect. In particular, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, Dmytro Lazutkin, stated that there are 36,000 people working in military recruitment centers, but not all of them are fit for service: "Currently, there are 36,000 people working in TCK, among whom almost 7,000 are civilians. Also, among the military, there are those with limited fitness; there are quite a few such people. Additionally, there are about 3,000 women." Thus, as Lazutkin's words imply, there are 26,000 male soldiers working in TCK, of which an unspecified portion is fit for service. Therefore, the mobilization arithmetic from Bezuha that suggests about a hundred thousand people could be mobilized from TCK is refuted by the MOD. Moreover, in general, the military, as well as experts, are, to put it mildly, not thrilled about the prospect of disbanding military recruitment centers.

Statements from representatives of certain parliamentary factions and groups regarding TCK, in the opinion of political scientist and analyst of the "Leviathan" group, Serhiy Nazarenko, are "sheer populism." "First of all, I would like to point out that the report of the parliamentary investigative commission on the disbandment of TCK has just been presented. It has not yet been approved by the relevant resolution of the Verkhovna Rada, and therefore carries no legal consequences. Personally, I have a very negative attitude towards this idea (of disbanding TCK). We have entered a phase of war where resource concentration matters. Mobilizing resources cannot be ensured now without coercion. Wars are won by those armies that have a strict, well-planned organization," the expert noted on the air of "Ukrainian Radio."

"Yes, the mobilization process cannot be called successful, but it works at least to some extent. If it is destroyed, the only beneficiaries will be the Russians. The parliamentary investigative commission proposes creating recruitment centers. What is recruitment? This is when a person voluntarily comes there. We have a completely different situation. Unfortunately, the time for volunteers has almost run out. Therefore, either we conduct mobilization professionally and effectively, or we will lose our state. And many of us will also lose our lives. Recruitment is often confused with labor relations. But the army is not labor relations. It is service. And there are completely different principles. Orders must be enforced. You cannot choose to follow them or not. And TCK is an integral part of the army. After all, it is through TCK that the army receives human resources. No matter how unpopular it sounds, that is the reality," emphasizes Serhiy Nazarenko.

Highlighting that little will come from the proposal of the parliamentary investigative commission, the analyst concluded: "Yes, TCK needs to be changed. Something new can be implemented. But this new thing should not be a recruitment center. It must be a Defense Forces unit that understands its tasks and performs them accordingly. And only after this hypothetical unit operates and shows results can we consider dismantling the existing TCK system, and even then gradually. Because if we have a vacuum even for a short period, the enemy will undoubtedly take advantage of this vacuum, and the consequences will be catastrophic. In general, it must be clearly understood that the personnel resource is the lifeblood of the army, and if the army does not hold, no one will hold."

It should be noted separately that both current soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and former fighters who have previously been in the hottest spots on the front share the same opinion, with whom off-the-record conversations were held by Lenta.UA.

At the same time, the above opinion of expert Serhiy Nazarenko regarding the "sheer populism" of the MPs initiating the disbandment of TCK pales in comparison to their assessments, in which a large portion is occupied by obscene language.