Ukraine’s scandal-hit 155th “Anna of Kyiv” Brigade is on the slow path to combat effectiveness, but the underlying reasons for failures in getting the very high-profile formation ready for battle – bad recruitment and training policy – are much bigger than one unit and aren’t likely to be reversed any time soon, military observers said.
Military journalist Yury Butusov, one of the most outspoken critics of longstanding Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) policy to fill out thinning ranks by raising new combat brigades instead of reinforcing existing ones, in Thursday comments reported elements of the France-trained and equipped formation had scored local victories in the hot Pokrovsk sector and that, in his view, the 155th was shifting towards combat effectiveness. Front-line units had stopped Russian attacks and brigade chain of command was learning its job, he said.
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High-profile combat correspondent Andriy Tsaplienko on Wednesday delivered much the same news to his 300,000-plus subscribers, publishing images of him riding aboard a French AM-30 light tank in the Pokrovsk sector.
“I want to say that the 155th Brigade has passed through its initial period of crisis, which in general has been the case for all the newly created brigades, and it seems to me that this period of crisis is coming to an end,” he said. “People are returning to the brigade. The brigade cadre is there and working. It seems to me that they are coming together. These are people who were mobilized and now they have learned to operate their new equipment… they have succeeded in stabilizing their area of operations.”
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During November and with increasing worry in December, Ukrainian military media, followed by international platforms, reported that the 3,000-man 155th Brigade had been hit with mass desertion while training in France, and that almost none of the training went beyond individual soldier skills. The formation, the AFU’s first-ever to be put together at an overseas training base and appearing on French TV with President Emmanuel Macron, was being sent to combat short of critical equipment like strike and observation drones, and led by commanders who in many cases had never met their troops.
Similar reports of sloppy organization and unskilled leadership in more than a half dozen new formations the AFU had been raising from scratch at the same time triggered criticism not just by media but even by veteran combat commanders about how the Ukrainian army was putting units together and filling them with troops.
Lt. Col. Denys Prokopenko, commander of the 12th National Guard Brigade Azov, a unit famous for a near-epic defense of the city Mariupol in Spring 2022, in Jan. 17 comments said that leaders in the AFU’s green units often lack basic critical knowledge, such as how to lay out a defensive line, coordinate unit fires, or manage a unit without letting inefficiency and corruption eat up money and resources.
According to news reports, AFU leadership in the second half of 2024 saw a manpower crunch coming and decided to head off the problem by creating, from whole cloth, nine combat brigades on paper containing up to 50,000 men. By late 2024 along with the 155th Brigade, the 150th, 151st 152nd (Jaeger) 153rd, 154th, 155th, 156th, 157th and 5th (Heavy) were in various stages of formation and training and collectively constituted the AFU’s main reserve force.
Ramp-up problems similar to the 155th’s have been reported by independent news platforms in four other brigades, and shortages particularly of competent leaders in Ukrainian military social media according to accounts is effectively universal. In mid-January President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered army leadership to get to the bottom of the 150-series brigade start-up problems and do something about it.
Gen. Mykhailo Drapaty, Ukraine ground forces commander, in a Jan. 8 report said the problems in the 155th Brigade were real, but that he was confident the brigade would become combat-effective. In a rare-for-the-AFU admission that lower levels of the army chain of command at times conceal shortcomings from senior commanders, he published an email and telephone hotline for soldiers concerned about their leadership to contact him directly.
Ukrainian military media on Jan. 13 reported Zelensky had ordered the formation of new brigades stopped, and directed that newly trained and mobilized soldiers would be sent as replacements to beef up existing brigades, rather as raw material for new brigades. The news was widely supported by Ukrainian milbloggers and military media, but many noted that even if new recruits would in future be pushed to experienced units, the key problem – sufficient numbers of competent low-level combat commanders – was not being seriously addressed.
Currently, new junior officers reach AFU ranks following a four-year university program focusing on military discipline and theory, and with relatively little curriculum devoted to small unit tactics and combat leadership. Although military education is an electable subject in most Ukrainian universities, the giant size of the Ukrainian military, about 800,000 soldiers per a Zelensky January statement, combined with heavy casualties among combat leaders has left the AFU chronically short of competent junior leaders.
What is needed is not wide-reaching general reform of the Ukrainian army, but sufficient numbers of first-level officers and senior sergeants selected using common sense and taught basic leadership skills and confidence so that they can command young soldiers in combat, experienced commanders have said.
“What drives me crazy about all this talk about reforms and so on is that I understand how absolutely simple it would be to implement them,” said Col. Andriy Biletsky, commander of the standout 3rd Assault Brigade, in a mid-January interview published by the unit. “It’s not like people ready [for command] just grow on trees and you walk up and pick them, and then throw them in minibuses to drive to the front.”
The AFU’s need for junior non-commissioned officers or sergeants is even more critical. The AFU’s central 199th Training Center runs courses in some areas closely matching NATO standards, but the facility only produces several hundred sergeants a year. Common practice in the AFU is for a brigade commander to promote experienced soldiers, with only a few units committing the time and resources to train freshly promoted sergeants for the new job.
Ukraine’s 82nd Air Assault Brigade, a Bukovina-based unit with an excellent fighting record, is one of the few AFU line formations running its own school for sergeants. In a graduation ceremony made public on unit social media on Thursday, 44 new sergeants received diplomas for completing brigade NCO training – a graduate count probably more than sufficient, at typical casualty rates, to not just feed replacements small unit leaders into the brigade’s front line units, but to strengthen them.
Zelensky in a January interview said that Ukraine fields “a good deal more” than 100 combat brigades. Individual unit training capacities are a Ukrainian army military secret, but, military analysts usually estimate about 10-20 percent of Ukraine’s combat brigades are on par with 82nd Brigade, and able to train new sergeants on their own.
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