Infantry officer Oleksiy simply spent 343 days with out leaving the front line, in what his battalion believes is among the longest fight deployments for an officer within the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
His prolonged deployment, within the woodlands between settlements within the japanese Zaporizhzhia area, underscores Ukraine’s extreme lack of manpower because the struggle drags on after more than four years.
The 37-year-old had the chance to go away the front at one level however volunteered to remain as a result of manpower challenges.
“My company is understaffed (as are all the others) and of those who are here, roughly half are in the 50-plus age bracket,” stated Oleksiy – whose name signal is “Botanik,” a.ok.a. “nerd” – in an announcement printed by his unit. “Ideally, an infantryman would spend a month on combat duty and a month recovering in a frontline village. But under current conditions, that’s completely unrealistic due to the shortage of men.”
His battalion, which recognized Oleksiy solely by his first title, advised NCS {that a} typical deployment is about three to 4 months for his or her unit. Throughout the army, troopers sometimes serve on the front traces in rotations of lower than three months, though it varies extensively.
“Infantry serve the longest, and the farther from the front line, the shorter the combat deployment,” Major Yaroslav Halas, an officer with the third Mountain Assault Battalion of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, advised NCS. “For example, reconnaissance UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) pilots may be in combat positions for 3 to 4 days, while FPV drone pilots stay for a week (as they are closer to the front line).”
The lengthening deployments come as Ukrainian commanders in different items have warned of personnel issues, acknowledging that the military won’t ever match the manpower of Russia’s far bigger army drive.
NCS has beforehand reported on Ukraine’s increased use of land robots and drones managed by pilots positioned miles away from the front line, because the nation tries to make use of technological advances to achieve a bonus. Ukraine has additionally stepped up its efforts to draft more men with no legitimate exemption from serving.
Other examples of Ukrainian males serving lengthy stints have been reported by native media in latest months. Senior Lieutenant Ivan Kavun, the commander of a machine-gun platoon within the thirtieth Mechanized Brigade, spent 486 days in a frontline deployment, in accordance with his unit.
“Supplies were dropped to us by drones. If a vehicle came in, it would bring a month’s worth of provisions,” Kavun recounted in a video shared by his unit. “There were both funny and not-so-funny stories. A cat was born in our dugout. Then it was wounded by a tank shell fragment, right there in the dugout.”
In the assertion posted on social media by his brigade, Oleksiy described the horror of shedding males underneath Russian fireplace, in addition to the fixed assaults that grew extra intense if the climate was too poor for Ukraine to thwart assaults with drones.
“I see my main role as a commander as minimizing personnel losses. Ideally, there would be none at all … But in war, and in the infantry, this is, unfortunately, impossible,” he stated. “As for my personal motivation, I don’t want my family, my daughter, to see what I see – explosions, incoming missiles, destroyed villages, death. That’s why I’m here.”
He is known as “nerd” due to his “intellectual appearance” and his glasses, but in addition as a result of he’s a scientist by coaching with a biology diploma from Karazin Kharkiv National University. In reality, Botanik’s complete unit of the third Mountain Assault Battalion are former civilians or reservists who solely made their manner into the armed forces following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Oleksiy described how he maintained morale throughout his almost one-year stint on the front line by ensuring he and the troopers working underneath him stayed in contact with these again residence.
“I made sure everyone had the chance to contact their families every day; that helps a lot,” he stated. “When the Starlink verification was taking place on the front line in February, our terminals weren’t working either … so we’d get in touch with the soldiers via radio and pass the message on to their families by phone. I know from my own experience just how important this is – I try to speak to my daughter every day.”
The officer was given a brief interval of depart after his 343 days on the front, which stretched from April 1, 2025, to March 8. 2026. During his roughly one month off, he stated he celebrated his daughter’s tenth birthday and taught her how you can journey a motorcycle. Then, he returned to his unit.