Knowing that they cannot possibly compete with Russia's mass levees of conscript cannon fodder, the Ukrainians are concentrating on developing elite assault units of 'firefighting' paratroopers, marines and special operations troops dispatched to fix crises and turn them around, backed by technologically sophisticated drone crews and artillery units. This allows Ukraine to make the most of the soldiers it has, focusing on their experience, whether in special operations or in drone warfare. JL
The Financial Times reports:
Kyiv has been increasingly relying on “firefighters”, assault units dispatched to crisis points in order to stabilise the situation. The operation that ended up dislodging most Russian forces from the northeastern city involved battle-hardened units, elite drone operators from the “Lazar group” and several assault regiments. “Ukrainians prioritise manning and equipping these [assault] regiments.’ A 26-year-old platoon sergeant in that brigade described the operation to retake Kupiansk as methodical and undertaken in secrecy. Units quietly moved in over the autumn, before making their way through the forests surrounding Kupiansk and into the city itself. “It didn’t happen quickly, the news about Kupiansk came much later, after we had worked there,”
Ukraine’s forces said this week they had almost pushed back Russian forces from the northeastern city of Kupiansk, a dramatic reversal in a town that seemed on the brink of being overrun a few months ago. But 250km away on the southern front line, near the similarly sized town of Huliaipole in Zaporizhzhia, they were pulling back.
The two cities’ different fates largely came down to the number and quality of the Ukrainian troops sent there, analysts say. Some of Kyiv’s best-trained soldiers were deployed to Kupiansk, while the brigades in Huliaipole were understaffed and battle-weary. The case highlights how Kyiv’s strategy of deploying its shrinking pool of experienced, reliable units to one place can lead to Russian advances elsewhere, as Moscow uses its superior manpower to keep pushing across the entire front.
With the Russian full-scale invasion in its fourth year and Ukraine’s mobilisation campaign in a long-standing crisis, Ukraine’s front lines are defended by a patchwork of units with varying levels of training, equipment and motivation. Kyiv has been increasingly relying on “firefighters”, assault units dispatched to crisis points in order to stabilise the situation. “The Ukrainians are stretched thin, so even though they were able to relieve pressure in Kupiansk, the front then cracked in another place,” said Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group. The operation that ended up dislodging most Russian forces from the northeastern city involved battle-hardened units, elite drone operators from the “Lazar group” and several assault regiments, according to Yuriy Butusov, a military commentator and soldier in the 13th brigade. “Ukrainians prioritise manning and equipping these [assault] regiments,’’ said Rob Lee, a military analyst and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “They’re given priority for armoured vehicles and mobilised soldiers, they’ll see their ranks replenished faster than other brigades.”
One of the seasoned assault units sent east to defend Kupiansk was the 13th “Khartia” brigade. A 26-year-old platoon sergeant in that brigade described the operation to retake Kupiansk as methodical and undertaken in secrecy. Units quietly moved in over the autumn, before making their way through the forests surrounding Kupiansk and into the city itself. “It didn’t happen quickly, the news about Kupiansk came much later, after we had worked there,” said the sergeant, who joined the military last year and took the call sign “Somatra”.
The brutal, confusing nature of the fighting meant Ukrainian units had relied on passwords and distinctive signs as they advanced in the city, to avoid mistaking enemy squads positioned in buildings and basements for friendly troops. She said it was hard to find people to volunteer to fight as the war dragged on. “We don’t have a lot of people in Ukraine, everyone who was motivated enough went in 2022 or 2023,” she said. “Others . . . they’re either not motivated, or they were injured.”
Two million Ukrainians are wanted for evading mobilisation, and another 200,000 soldiers are absent without official leave, Ukraine’s new defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Wednesday. Geography partly explains why determined Ukrainian troops could push back in Kupiansk. The former railway hub is surrounded by forests and split in two by the Oskil river — a natural obstacle that made it harder for Russian units trying to establish a foothold. Troops near Huliaipole have to contend with the steppe landscape of the largely flat Zaporizhzhia region. By mid-December, Ukrainian troops had been successful enough to allow Volodymyr Zelenskyy to shoot a video in front of the concrete sign marking the Kupiansk city limits, giving the country’s president a chance to emphasise the rare military success two days before crucial talks with the US in Berlin. “Today, it is extremely important to achieve results at the front, so that Ukraine can achieve results in diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said in the video. He claimed a few days later the Ukrainian advances in Kupiansk had “a great impact on the Americans and the Europeans” as Kyiv sought to counter Russian claims of a Ukrainian military on the verge of defeat.
While Zelenskyy was celebrating, Ukraine’s forces on the southern front in the agrarian plains surrounding Huliaipole were mired in confusion and chaos. That allowed Russian forces to advance nearly 15km in two months, beating undermanned Ukrainian brigades to reach the city itself last month. Top Ukrainian general Oleksandr Syrsky blamed the Russian advance on the 102nd brigade, a territorial defence unit based around Huliaipole. The unit had not managed to “withstand the enemy’s pressure”, allowing Russian troops to enter the city and capture an intact battalion command post, he told Ukrainian TV.
Such brigades were built up in the early stages of the Russian invasion and often have poorer equipment and fewer soldiers. “These are typically weaker units, territorial defence brigades often don’t have a good drone component for example,” said Lee, the military analyst. Huliaipole was still contested with battles ongoing, Vladyslav Voloshyn, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern defence forces, told Ukrainian television on Sunday.
Russian troops also pushed elsewhere on the southern front to reach within 15km of the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia, according to the Ukrainian war monitoring group DeepState. Kyiv dispatched the 225th assault regiment to Huliaipole to shore up defences in late November. The intense use of assault units has been controversial. Critics argue that, in a situation where all brigades struggle to fill their ranks, the priority given to assault units could leave regular brigades, some of which have been guarding swaths of the front for months and even years, even more starved of men.
Kupiansk and Huliaipole, both hollowed out by years of artillery and drone strikes, before the war were unremarkable towns of some 20,000 residents. They are secondary objectives as Moscow remains focused on fully capturing the coal-rich Donetsk region in a part of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas, analysts and Ukrainian soldiers say. The commander of Kyiv’s 429th UAV regiment, an elite drone formation operating across the front line, said Russia’s tactic of pushing across a wide front aimed to prevent Ukraine from reinforcing the parts of the front line Moscow considered the most important. That explained Russian attacks in parts of the front line far from Donbas, “where the enemy is concentrating its efforts”, Yuriy Fedorenko said. The tactic “forces us to throw additional reserves there . . . and does not give us the opportunity to allocate the necessary reserve to strengthen the priority areas”, Fedorenko said.
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