Sviatoslav Babilya: “Patriots are fighting, officials do nothing, featherbed soldiers steal” (OPINION)

The community activist, coordinator of the OPORA educational and electoral projects in Transcarpathian region Sviatoslav Babilya wrote post on facebook, which we publish here in full.

"On patriotism and sabotage.

 On Saturday, August 30, 27 soldiers of the Transcarpathian territorial defense battalion went to the ​​ATO area. Yes, of that battalion, which, according to Valeriy Lunchenko, is supposed to perform tasks only in the region. The story itself is very controversial. It so happened that I became a part of the story, because my friend, Ivan Paida have been serving in the unit as a volunteer for almost a month.

 I do not want to delve into the situation in the batallion, because I believe that it is soldiers who should talk about it, but it is a fact that things are not so good. So, some soldiers, given the situation in the country, have long appealed to the management of the battalion (and the military commissariat) to send them to perform combat missions in the ATO area. Their initiative has always been ignored, so the guys decided to officially appeal to the head of the RSA (the copy of the appeal is attached). After the registration of the appeal, a representative of the soldiers visited a bunch of RSA offices where they promised to resolve the issue, and then nothing.

 Realizing that their appeal was shelved, finally they decided to write to the Minister of Defence of Ukraine Valeriy Heletey. They appealed through Facebook, added the copy of the appeal to Lunchenko. And a few hours later, the order to dispatch came. The next day, a group of 27 soldiers was dispatched to the ATO zone. It turns out that they, after all, were very much needed in the ATO. 

 It should be noted that these 27 soldiers are only some of those who wish to go to the East. The rest are not deployed in Uzhgorod, so they were not able to sign the appeal. Immediately the question arises as to how local officials, primarily the military commissariat and the Regional State Administration, who are supposed to deal with mobilization campaign, are performing the assigned tasks. By the way, among those, who went to defend Ukraine, there was not a single officer of the territorial defense batallion. Mr. Doroshenko, the head of the Coordination Headquarters set up at the RSA, as a pretty young military retiree also prefers distributing funds for the batallion over fighting. In general, it seems that the regional administration treats the ATO as some minor issue.

 This is how we live. Patriots are fighting, officials do nothing, featherbed soldiers steal."