Demian Shevko reports in the New Voice of Ukraine:
At 35, the commander of Ukraine’s 46th Airmobile Brigade is broad, good-natured. He has an easy smile, a dry sense of humor and introduced himself simply as “Dima.” Being sent to difficult sectors became his career. His battalion fought around Klishchiivka and was repeatedly moved toward the Kupiansk front when Ukrainian positions came under pressure. During the Izium operation, senior officers defined the objective, but officers closer to the fight worked out how to achieve it, brought into planning because they would have to execute it. He sets the task and watches how subordinates translate it. What most determines a brigade’s success today: “The speed of decision-making.” An infantryman advancing toward a Russian position should not be expected to prevail through courage alone. Recon should identify the threat. Artillery and drones should work on it. Electronic warfare should help cover the troops moving forward.This is the first in a series by The New Voice of Ukraine based on exclusive access to the 46th Separate Airmobile Brigade during a reporting trip to the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk area. This story focuses on brigade commander Col. Dmytro Kapitula and the Ukrainian military’s changing culture of command. The second will follow the commander of the brigade’s unmanned-systems battalion and the rapid evolution of drone warfare. The third will go inside the brigade’s intelligence apparatus, from battlefield reconnaissance to the analysts and electronic-intelligence specialists processing thousands of signals from the Russian side.
We met in one of the cafés still open in Kramatorsk. Across the street stood a building wrecked by the war.
By September 2026, Kramatorsk and nearby Sloviansk had begun to feel increasingly like other Donbas cities when the Russian front draws closer. There were fewer civilians, more soldiers and the persistent threat of FPV drones. Military vehicles moved quickly. People had learned to listen to the sky.
Col. Dmytro Kapitula seemed almost at odds with the rank attached to his name. At 35, the commander of Ukraine’s 46th Separate Airmobile Brigade is broad, good-natured and unmistakably from Volyn when he speaks. He has an easy smile, a dry sense of humor and introduced himself simply as “Dima.”
A 40-minute interview became nearly two hours, and we kept talking after the recorder was switched off.
From parade grounds to war
Over the previous days, I had met officers and soldiers from different parts of his brigade, including drone operators and intelligence personnel. Their respect for the commander was difficult to miss. Talking to Kapitula helped explain it. He jokes easily, but becomes very precise when the conversation turns to command, responsibility and what a bad decision can cost.
His combat record is substantial. Kapitula holds all three classes of Ukraine’s Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, awarded after operations around Yatskivka, Klishchiivka and on the Kupiansk axis.
At Klishchiivka in 2023, Kapitula was a battalion commander when another Ukrainian battalion became stuck at a crossroads covered by Russian firing positions. Ukrainian troops had already suffered losses. Fire could suppress the Russians, he recalled, but they would shelter and resume firing.His battalion changed the approach. While part of the force maintained pressure, two groups moved around the position through gardens and entered farther along the street. Kapitula said the maneuver disrupted the Russian defense and helped Ukrainian troops advance deeper into the settlement. His second-class Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky followed.
By then, being sent to difficult sectors had become part of his career. His battalion fought around Klishchiivka and was repeatedly moved toward the Kupiansk front when Ukrainian positions there came under pressure.
It was a long way from the army he first joined.
Kapitula remembers soldiers spending hours cleaning military grounds even when there was almost nothing left to clean. It was not quite the Soviet cliché of painting grass green, he joked, “but it was almost getting there.”
He served with the 95th Brigade before Russia began its war against Ukraine in 2014 and remembers it as better prepared than many units around it. But the war exposed wider weaknesses: shortages of long-range and precision artillery, armored vehicles and much of the equipment required for modern combat.
More weapons appeared over time, yet Kapitula believes deeper modernization slowed after the first years of war and accelerated again after the full-scale invasion in 2022. Much of the new momentum came from below, he said, from commanders, soldiers, volunteers and civilian engineers solving problems before the system could respond.
He remembers early attempts to weaponize commercial quadcopters with improvised release mechanisms. They were crude but effective, and for a time Russian troops had few answers.
Then Russia adapted.
Kapitula says this became a recurring problem. Ukrainian units could innovate quickly, but scaling a successful idea across the force often took longer. The enemy was watching the same battlefield and learning from it.
Command means knowing when to say no
During fighting around Izium in 2022, Kapitula was wounded.
“My values in life changed,” he said. “You start valuing life more when you understand that you are one step away from the abyss.”
It also changed the way he looked at the people under his command.
“You value the soldier differently. You protect him.”
The same period shaped his approach to command. During the Izium operation, senior commanders defined the objective, but officers closer to the fight worked out much of how to achieve it. Company and platoon commanders were brought into planning because they would eventually have to execute it.
Kapitula says he now tries to work the same way. He sets the task and watches how subordinate commanders translate it downward. If they have thought through the risks and stages of an operation, he prefers not to interfere. If something is missing, he steps in.
“I give the commanders of the units an opportunity to develop,” he said. “It is their task and their responsibility too.”
That only works if information can move upward as well.
When I asked whether his subordinates could tell him a plan was wrong, Kapitula recalled missions he himself believed would fail. He discussed them with his company commanders, listened to their objections and sometimes carried those objections farther up the chain.
As a battalion commander, he said, there were occasions when senior officers demanded that he be removed from his post because he resisted.
“I understood that I would simply lose people,” he said.
The loss of one or two soldiers was already serious for a battalion, he added, particularly if the mission produced no result.
Kapitula does not argue that war can be fought without casualties. His distinction is between accepting risk for a military purpose and losing people because no one was willing to challenge a bad plan.
That becomes even more important on a battlefield where decisions have to be made quickly.
Asked what most determines a brigade’s success today, Kapitula answered almost immediately: “The speed of decision-making.”
An infantryman advancing toward a Russian position should not be expected to prevail through courage alone, he said. Reconnaissance should identify the threat. Artillery and drones should work on it. Electronic warfare should help cover the troops moving forward.
“The war has reached the point where we have to preserve the infantry as much as possible,” Kapitula said.
Preserving the infantry starts before the front
Many people arriving at the 46th Brigade were civilians until recently, and Kapitula does not want them treated as interchangeable manpower.
The brigade tries to establish quickly what a new soldier did before mobilization and what skills he already has. If someone spent 20 years driving and repairing tractors, Kapitula sees little sense in ignoring that experience. A programmer may be better suited to an entirely different role.
The objective, he said, is to understand “where he can bring the greatest benefit.”
One young woman was initially considered for several possible jobs, including medical work. Officers looked more closely at her civilian background and saw experience working with computers. They sent her toward unmanned systems.
She became part of a heavy-drone crew that Kapitula now describes as one of the brigade’s most productive, capable both of striking Russian forces and carrying supplies to Ukrainian troops.
New soldiers still need the same basic military foundation. They undergo initial training, followed by further adaptation in the brigade, where Kapitula wants them to learn infantry fundamentals regardless of their eventual specialty.
Ukraine needs more people, but trained people cannot simply be replaced by filling a vacancy. An experienced drone operator, mechanic, sergeant or infantryman carries knowledge accumulated over months or years.
Mobilization also raises a question of trust. Kapitula believes the burden of service is not always experienced equally and that Ukrainians without money or influence can feel more exposed to the system than others. He sees that perception as corrosive.
His idea of protecting soldiers extends beyond tactics.
While listing what makes an infantry unit effective, Kapitula moved from reconnaissance, electronic warfare and fire support to pay and family life. A soldier risking his life should know his family can live properly on what his service provides, he said.
“Not exist, but live a normal life.”
He remembers returning home on leave in 2022 and calculating what an ordinary visit to a café would leave for the rest of the month. For Kapitula, stable pay and the ability to provide for children or maintain a home affect morale just as surely as conditions inside the unit.
Then comes the person expected to lead that soldier.
“The sergeant is the foundation”
Several months before our conversation, the 46th Brigade opened its own school for sergeants.
Kapitula wanted junior commanders who could understand an order rather than merely repeat it.
“You cannot just send several soldiers somewhere and say, ‘You need to go there,’” he said.
The person leading them has to understand what the senior commander intends, recognize when the situation changes and decide what to do next.
“The sergeant is the foundation of the military collective,” Kapitula said.
He describes the officer as a manager responsible for organizing the mission, while the sergeant works directly with the small group carrying it out.
Training with American troops reinforced that view. What Kapitula remembers most was not their equipment but the responsibility placed on noncommissioned officers.
He contrasts that with a military culture he remembers from Soviet war films watched in his family. In those stories, almost an entire unit might be destroyed and the sacrifice itself became part of the heroism.
Kapitula thinks that can normalize the idea of achieving a mission “at any cost.” His instinct is to ask whether the same objective could have been achieved with fewer losses.
At the same time, the older culture of the Air Assault Forces has not disappeared.
Kapitula acknowledges that his troops now often fight much like other infantry formations and that helicopter-borne assaults are rare on a drone-saturated battlefield. The force has nevertheless resumed parachute training for selected soldiers and sergeants behind the front.
He remembers his own first jump and the unnatural feeling of stepping from an aircraft into open air. Kapitula believes confronting that fear still has value.
The more practical distinction today is mobility. His commanders are expected to be ready to move the unit quickly, sometimes to another sector within a day or two.
An army learning while it fights
Kapitula does not pretend the Ukrainian military has completed its transformation.
Some officers remain indecisive, he said. Others have risen rapidly during the war without spending enough time working directly with soldiers. Old habits also survive because commanders pass them to those who come after them.
For Kapitula, experience lower in the hierarchy matters because it teaches an officer who eventually has to carry out an order.
“You understand that these are people,” he said.
He sees Ukraine’s transition toward a corps structure as one attempt to improve command above brigade level. Under earlier arrangements, he said, senior officers could be responsible for so many brigades that sustained work with individual commanders was difficult.
A corps commander responsible for fewer maneuver formations can spend more time visiting units, understanding their problems and shifting resources.
“Every day you work with the commander,” Kapitula said. “You make corrections, you see the problems and you try to help.”
He said the transition caused confusion initially but is beginning to produce results.
Technology has changed faster.
A soldier reports movement. A reconnaissance drone checks the area. An FPV crew may already be preparing while the target is being identified. Information that once passed through several layers of radio reports can increasingly be seen by several parts of the command system at once.
But people still have to sit in front of the screens.
Kapitula reorganized his headquarters into two full shifts, with a reserve shift to cover leave and rest. Whenever possible, he tries to give personnel at least one uninterrupted 24-hour period each week to sleep, wash and deal with ordinary life.
Without rest, concentration falls and mistakes become more likely.
“He is not a robot,” Kapitula said.
When we spoke, he said Ukrainian forces in his sector had stabilized parts of the line after an earlier period of heavier Russian pressure. Operations against infiltrating Russian troops were still continuing in some areas.
Winter was approaching, and logistics to exposed infantry positions would increasingly depend on heavy multicopter drones and unmanned ground vehicles carrying food, ammunition and other supplies.
The ground itself has also become part of the diplomacy surrounding the war.
Russia continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw from the parts of Donbas it still controls, including territory Russian forces have not captured. Kyiv rejects that demand. Reuters reported in late August that the issue remained one of the central unresolved points in diplomatic efforts around ending the war.
I asked Kapitula what such a withdrawal would mean from a military point of view. His answer also exposed an apparent tension in his own philosophy: he had spent much of the interview explaining why a commander should avoid unnecessary losses, yet he was equally clear that Ukraine should not simply give up defended territory because Moscow demands it.
He did not see those positions as contradictory.
A commander may decide that the cost of holding or attacking a position no longer makes military sense. That is different, Kapitula argued, from handing over territory that Russian forces have failed to capture and then preparing to defend a new line farther west.
“You simply give away part of our land without a fight,” he said. If hostilities continued, Ukraine would then “start combat operations on the lines to which we withdrew.”
The territory around Sloviansk and Kramatorsk is not empty space on a map. It contains cities, roads, logistics routes and defensive ground Ukrainian troops have spent years fighting over. For soldiers who have served there, it also carries the weight of the people lost defending it.
Kapitula was not arguing that every position must be held regardless of casualties. His point was narrower. A battlefield withdrawal made because the tactical situation requires it is one decision. Giving up functioning defensive ground as a negotiating condition is another.
Sitting with him in Kramatorsk made the distinction less abstract. A destroyed building stood across the road from the café, but the city was still functioning. People were still working, buying coffee and moving through streets increasingly exposed to Russian drones.
Kapitula spoke about all of this without much rhetoric. During two hours, he moved easily from assault tactics to soldiers’ salaries, from parachute jumps to the need to let exhausted staff sleep.
His thinking repeatedly returned to the same practical problems: using people where they are strongest, giving subordinates enough authority to act, allowing bad news to travel up the chain, and refusing, where possible, to spend trained soldiers for results that do not justify their loss.
That helped explain the respect I had encountered elsewhere in the brigade.
Kapitula entered an army where soldiers could still be ordered to clean ground that was already clean. He later commanded troops around Izium, Klishchiivka and Kupiansk, carrying out difficult missions and, by his account, sometimes challenging them when he believed the price would be pointless.
Now, at 35, he commands a brigade in one of the most technologically demanding wars any modern army has faced.
The weapons have changed dramatically. The harder transformation concerns the people using them and the commanders responsible for sending them into battle.
For Kapitula, preserving soldiers is not something separate from accomplishing the mission. It is part of what command means.
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