Ukrainian Deputy Premier for Defence Says Personnel Cuts to Affect Army
The Ukrainian deputy prime minister for defence and security matters, Oleksandr Kuzmuk, who is running for parliament on the Party of Regions’ list, has said that cutting the army personnel over the next few years will affect the functioning of the Ukrainian armed forces, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted him as saying during a web conference on the cabinet’s portal on 10 September.
“In my opinion, further cuts [in the army personnel], especially in the coming two or three years, will cause difficulties with training the armed forces and the army’s functioning,” the agency quoted him as saying.
Kuzmuk also views the Ukrainian army’s switching to contract service by 2010 as “problematic”, the agency said in a separate report released on the same day.
“To switch to contract service, additional 37,000 contract with servicemen have to be signed. This is why this is not going to happen by 2008, it would be rather problematic to do by 2010 either,” the agency quoted him as saying.
In Kuzmuk’s view, the idea of contract service in the army is not really popular among servicemen.
“Young people should fully dedicate themselves to the service, both morally and physically, whereas the current dynamics shows that the number of contract servicemen is not increasing but fluctuating. It seems that people stay in the army to avoid unemployment, turning into a kind of seasonal workers,” he said.
Earlier, Ukrainian Defence Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, who is running for parliament on the list of the [propresidential] Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defence bloc, said the Ukrainian army could switch to contract service by the end of 2010. The leader of the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc has said that this could happen as early as in 2008.
Sources:
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1103 gmt 10 Sep 07
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 0951 gmt 10 Sep 07
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