In December, the State Bureau of Investigation opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the formation of the 155th Mechanized Brigade named after Anna of Kyiv that entered the battle near Pokrovsk. The case is under the control of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief V. Zelenskyy, Defence Minister R. Umierov, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces O. Syrskyi. One of the leaders responsible for the brigade’s formation died of a heart attack, and the brigade commander was dismissed immediately after the brigade entered combat. Before the brigade fired its first shot, 1,700 servicemen deserted. Investigators from the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) were tasked with finding those responsible. I conducted an investigation and gathered a substantial amount of evidence and testimonies to show the public the consequences of forming new brigades like the 140th, 150th, and even 160th from scratch, without proper command staff, technical specialists, weapons, or drones. This is indeed a crime—but not the crime of soldiers and officers. It is the crime of the leadership of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s Staff, the Ministry of Defence, and the General Staff, who continue to waste lives and state resources on new projects instead of strengthening experienced and battle-ready brigades. They are now attempting to absolve themselves of responsibility by shifting the blame onto officers trapped in an impossible situation, forced to take responsibility for a poorly organized political project by the higher leadership.
……….
Most of the soldiers of the 155th Mechanized Brigade at the front strive to fulfill their duties with integrity. However, due to this criminal neglect of soldiers’ lives, the 155th Brigade suffered significant losses from the very first days. There are battalion commanders who lead assaults because there is no one else, and soldiers who fight to the last for every position, performing true acts of heroism from the very beginning—I witnessed this personally near Pokrovsk. People are learning to function as a military unit at the cost of heavy losses. A significant portion of those who have not yet developed a sense of unity with the team continue to go AWOL.
Alongside the 155th, there are experienced units—the 1st “Da Vinci” Assault Battalion, the 25th Airborne Brigade, and the 68th Jaeger Brigade—that face acute infantry shortages and cannot hold a wide front line, however, they have seasoned UAV units, headquarters, and command staff capable of rapidly training and preparing mobilized personnel for combat. Yet, these experienced and combat-ready brigades are not being reinforced with personnel and they are not allowed to stabilize the front. Instead, manpower is allocated to political projects, such as the 155th Brigade, and other newly formed brigades in 2024—the same 14 brigades President Zelenskyy mentioned.
The soldiers of the 155th Brigade have become hostages of Zelenskyy’s PR project, which the government has actually treated ineptly and irresponsibly. We should also mention the military command, which is now trying to hide the truth and use the SBI case to relieve itself of responsibility.
When they were sent to the front, the OC “West” and the CGF initially gave the brigade an “unsatisfactory” rating in the Brigade Capability Assessment Act. But someone put pressure on the top of the Armed Forces leadership, and the generals signed everything and pushed an incapable brigade to the front, giving it a “satisfactory” rating. Colonel Halymskyi of the OC “West”, without the consent of the brigade command, drove people to the front, not allowing them to pack their belongings, partly without weapons, which greatly confused the normal organization of the unit’s deployment.
Attempts by the command of the OC “West” and the Ground Forces Command to present positive reports to the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the Ministry of Defense (MoD), and the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief resulted in falsification of reality. Following the dismissal of Brigade Commander Riumshyn, the AFU Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi sought to enhance the combat effectiveness of the 155th Brigade by dispatching a commission to Pokrovsk. The commission consisted of the commander of OC “West,” Shvediuk, and the Chief of Staff of OC “West,” Seletskyi, who were responsible for the brigade’s training. Everything was tense and filled with shouting, as such chaos is the price of the disorder created by our leadership.
On December 30, Colonel Seletskyi died of a heart attack while performing his duties. He cared deeply about the mission, therefore, if we want to save lives and investigate the case of the 155th Brigade to ensure such incidents never happen again, we must not question the dead, the dismissed, or the deceased. Instead, we need to hold accountable those who are alive and well—those who issued such orders and set such unreasonable demands:
– President Zelenskyy, who made unrealistic promises to Macron and did not control the realism of his instructions at all;
– Defence Minister Umierov, who did not pay any attention to how such an important combat brigade was being trained and equipped;
– Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Syrskyi, who sets tasks manually and is unable to organize a planned process of organising, training and using reserves;
– The Commander of the Army, Pavliuk, and the Commander of OC West, Shvediuk, who knew what was happening but blindly followed an inadequate order to send a combat-ineffective unit to the front;
– Minister of Strategic Industry Smetanin, who continues to shamelessly and with impunity supply faulty mines to the front and use budget funds on the blood of Ukrainian soldiers whom Smetanin deprives of ammunition.
There are also many leaders of the OC and CGF who know and see all this, but sign the papers that are required of them, and then soldiers, patriotic and motivated citizens, the best of the best, who see this mess but do their best despite all these difficulties and protect us all, have to pay for these fake reports and acts of capability with their blood.
As a result, people, money, and time were spent to form a brigade that, due to its low combat capability, cannot be employed as a brigade. The 155th fights as an attached unit to specific subunits within the line of other combat-ready units, meaning that money was spent on the brigade, but it is being used as mere marching reinforcement, which any combat-ready brigade would have trained far better and deployed much more effectively.
So why was it formed if it cannot be used as intended? For PR and reports? For a meeting with Macron? And is it worth it, Messrs. Zelenskyy, Umierov, and Syrskyi, the lives of dozens of people dying near Pokrovsk as part of the 155th, due to basic disorder and poor preparation that stemmed from your mistakes in task setting, planning, and organization?
Will you testify to the SBI investigators about how you led the 155th Brigade to such a state, how you squandered significant funds from our allies and Ukrainian citizens, how, instead of strengthening the front, you disrupted the organization and training of reserves, and undermined the defense of Pokrovsk? I hope the day will come when you, the true culprits of this situation, will be the first to face justice.
I appeal to civil society: please help spread this story to pressure the authorities into banning the formation of new brigades that lack proper equipment, ending harmful PR-driven projects in the military, and directing all our resources toward reinforcing combat-ready and experienced brigades and battalions.
To find out how the 155th soldiers fight in such conditions, watch the interview with the commander. The 155th Brigade needs maximum help to save lives.
https://amp.censor.net/en/resonance/3528007/sbi-opens-case-on-formation-of-155th-brigade
Comment: This is just the intro paragraph and the conclusion of Yurii Butusov’s article from censor.net. The full article is quite detailed and worth a read. The linked interview with the 155th Brigade commander by Butusov is also worth viewing. It’s in Ukrainian, but fiddling with the settings can produce English subtitles. Butusov is a widely read reporter and editor in Ukraine covering the war, problems in the Ukrainian military and has been especially critical of the military leadership. He’s also had no problem being critical of Zelenskiy since at least 2021. And he’s still widely published in Ukraine.
The sad situation with the 155th and Butusov’s reporting prompted the Kyiv government to launch a criminal investigation. Since the subject of this investigation is the government and military leadership, we’ll have to see if it leads to something more than a white wash.
The idea of raising new brigades from scratch rather than reinforcing existing brigades which have established a track record of success is, in my opinion, a massive and deadly mistake. The alternative of feeding individual replacements into existing units with experienced leadership should be a no brainer. The established units not only have experienced leadership up to the brigade level, but also have established and well integrated support units like drone and EW units. These newly created brigades lack all that.
Beyond the fiasco of these newly created brigades, Army leadership has a bad habit of taking battalions out of brigades and deploying them piecemeal across the front. Really it’s a wonder that Ukraine has been able to defend as well as she has given these serious organizational and leadership deficiencies in the higher echelons.
TTG
TTG – got the italics wrong! May I correct?
TTG – on this – “The idea of raising new brigades from scratch rather than reinforcing existing brigades which have established a track record of success is, in my opinion, a massive and deadly mistake.” – we saw some of that in England. Our army instructors were expected to train up green civilians in how to fight in only a few weeks. Elementary weapons training was about all that could be achieved, that and teaching them the basics of small unit work.
In press reports some of the instructors related how they’d attempted to keep in touch with their trainees after they’d got back to Ukraine. Many of the trainees they could not contact, presumed dead or missing. We did the Ukrainians no service, sending them into battle trained only to that level.
Some time ago Borrell pointed out a related problem. In the years preceding the Russian invasion we had only trained the Ukrainian army in small unit fighting. We had not trained or equipped them for full combined arms warfare.
This was because we had expected a quick Russian victory followed by a gruelling partisan war. The arms and training we had give the Ukrainians before the SMO were only suitable for that. It’s a tribute to the fighting spirit and determination of the Ukrainian regulars that, given such inadequate preparation, they remained a formidable fighting force for as long as they did.
Had the war gone the way we expected then we’d have given the Russians a hard time. The well-prepared fortifications in the Donbass would have been most difficult to reduce. A partisan war with large numbers of determined guerrillas well armed for guerrilla warfare, supported by Western supplies and with the benefit of Western ISR, could have kept going indefinitely, certainly as long as the similar war in Ukraine in the ’40’s and ’50’s.
This was to be “Russia’s Afghanistan” and that term was used freely at the start of the SMO. That against the background of what were expected to be crippling sanctions.
That was how we hoped to defeat Russia. With a failing or at least damaged Russian economy, with the Russians having to suppress several hundred thousand determined guerrilla fighters well supported by the West, it would have been considerably more difficult for the Russians in Ukraine even than it was for the American and other forces in Afghanistan.
There must have been consternation in the Western capitals when the sanctions failed. Rather than succeeding the sanctions led to a re-invigoration of the Russian economy: it’s over-heating right now rather than sinking into recession. There must have been further consternation when the expected partisan war scenario did not develop.
It’s not putting it too strongly to say that, speaking figuratively, this conflict was won by Elvira Nabiullina and Anton Siluanov. When we lost the sanctions war we lost all. But Mr Gerasimov and Mr Shoigu certainly helped by avoiding the “Afghanistan trap” we had prepared for them.
The forces the Russians had at their disposal at the start of the invasion were entirely inadequate for occupying a large country such as Ukraine and suppressing well-supported and determined resistance. Those hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian regulars, let alone the territorials, would have been a challenge for the Russians, a casualty heavy challenge at that, given that right up until the present day the Russians have been compelled to hold the bulk of their forces back in case of a direct attack from NATO.
But the Russians declined battle on our terms. Instead of occupying the Kiev-controlled areas and spending their forces in suppressing resistance they allowed the Kiev forces to come to them to be destroyed. The first few weeks of the SMO apart – and there is still no understanding in the West of what those first few weeks were all about – that is what Gerasimov and his staff have been doing since.
At first defensive attrition, as long as the Kiev forces were wishing to attack. Now offensive attrition, now that it’s necessary to bring the Kiev forces to battle. In either case this has been a war of attrition, wearing down the equipment and manpower the West can bring against them until that equipment and manpower is exhausted.
Presumably, when attrition has done its work, we’ll find out how the Russians intend to complete the operation. But that’s still, for us, a matter of speculation. Me, I’m fairly sure that the monuments scattered all over Ukraine will come down one way or another. If they don’t, I don’t give much for Vladimir Putin’s chances of remaining in power, nor his administration.
https://forward.com/series/nazi-collaborator-monuments-around-the-world/
Brian Berletic, I believe ex-US Armed Forces, has been examining the conflict for some time and here confirms what you say about the unwisdom of training men for battle in the way we did.
rumble.com/v66390m-ukraines-exhausted-army-crumbles-as-west-considers-intervention.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
EO: “The arms and training we had give the Ukrainians before the SMO were only suitable for that. It’s a tribute to the fighting spirit and determination of the Ukrainian regulars that, given such inadequate preparation, they remained a formidable fighting force for as long as they did.”
The alternative PoV is that the Kremlin were well aware that the Ukrainian forces were being set up for partisan warfare in the wake of a Russian Thunder Run victory over them.
So, well, let’s not do that, heh?
Instead launch an initial lightning incursion into Ukraine to see if terms could be negotiated (in which case, of course, the Kiev regime remains in place, though cowered) and if that doesn’t work – thanks a heap, Boris!!! – then settle down for a slow and relentless grinding down of the Ukrainian armed forces.
After all, that’s not what the West is expecting, so, yeah, let’s do that.
For the US, just a single Soldier takes well over a year from start to finish. Operating an advanced weapons system and being proficient even longer.
The Pentagon knew this would happen eventually. They war game this stuff many many times. Ukraine was put on a suicide mission. They inflicted a lot of damage, really weakened Russia globally so in that sense it was a success but that was the only real success. Everything else a failure.
The chatter now is Ukraine will be broken up among NATO members. Something like 8 regions. Still Ukraine but each region with a specific skillset. Things will simmer down for a while but eventually kick start again.
The sad part is Western Europe had the right plan before the war which was a more long term approach. That wasn’t going to work for Sullivan and his cartel. Nuland even discussed this in the leaked audio. The confrontation was going to go down. It went down alright. In flames.
Thanks babelthuap,
your last paragraph surprised me. If you have Minsk in mind, that is. I agree; unfortunately, did the French-German duo ever have a chance against powerful US of A having the Ukrainian back?
Nuland, Oct 2015:
Victoria Nuland’s Statement Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Testimony on Ukraine, at length about the Minsk agreement.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, members of this committee, America’s investment in Ukraine is about far more than protecting the choice of a single European country.
It’s about protecting the rules-based system across Europe and around the world. It’s about saying no to borders changed by force, to big countries intimidating their neighbors or demanding a sphere of influence.
https://ua.usembassy.gov/victoria-nulands-statement-senate-foreign-relations-committee-testimony-ukraine/
…
I may not have been a fan of her ever, feeling more and more uncomfortable during the run up to the war, but I actually agree that Ukrainians should be able to decide, at least to the extent that is possible at all. 😉
The chatter now is …
As was in Iraq & Syria? Where did you encounter it?
It also worth mentioning that Ukrainian experienced brigades are facing equipment shortages and several of them have been converted from mechanized to jaeger (light infantry), so it’s not like Ukrainian army is expanding and thus needs to form new brigades.
This is just the latest in what has been continuous criminal incompetence of the Ukrainian command. We are 3 years into this war and 2.5 years into a largely static, attritional war, so excuses about training, guerilla warfare, etc. don’t hold water anymore. Excuses about Soviet training also sound hollow to me, Russian army has the same Soviet heritage and is not suffering from the same organizational issues, it has been adapting its tactics and organization as the war progressed.
Not about the fighting, but an example of the consequences of the sanctions:
“German economy ‘acutely’ at risk
after Europe burns through gas reserves”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/06/german-economy-acutely-at-risk-after-europe-burns-gas/
“Europe is burning through its gas reserves at the fastest pace in seven years,
leaving Germany “acutely” exposed as cold weather sweeps the Continent.
Stockpiles have dropped more quickly than at any point since 2018, falling 25pc from their peak,
according to Gas Infrastructure Europe data compiled by Bloomberg.”
For me this is another reason why plans are only plans and seldom survive intact when faced with reality. It also shows that theories and just theories. Regarding the Russian economy, if it was working well, there would not be any need for 25% interest rates. The reality is that sanctions are working, but slower than intended and even focusing on war material production is not going well enough to keep up with losses. In the meantime, the rest of the economy is shrinking and at some point the negativity will start to cascade, as is common in these circumstances.gas
It has been said many times that Ukraine’s main military problem is senior leadership following their Soviet training. It is actually amazing that they have done as well as they have, including invading Russian territory. In addition, they have now caused some of the corporate powers behind Trump to have a stake in the outcome as Ukraine has switched to importing gas from the US instead of Russia and they have Trump’s ear.
As they say: Money talks. And even more so in the near future.
Lars – Ukraine’s “main military problem” has been apparent from day 1 of the SMO. They have fewer men than the RF and of those men some don’t want to fight.
We’ve been bamboozled by our propagandists into believing the poor devils were ever in with a chance. They weren’t. The Americans, the only serious military power in the West, knew this from the start. That’s why soon after the start of the Russian invasion the American politicians were saying the aim was to kill as many Russians as possible at as little cost as possible.
That was the best we in the West were ever going to do once it was clear the sanctions war had failed. No one ever really believed that a nation of some 40 million and poorly run at that would defeat a nation of some 150 million. Now it’s down to some 2o million the contest becomes even more uneven.
Other disadvantages. It turned out that around a billion of us in the West couldn’t produce, beg or borrow as much in the way of weaponry and ammunition as that nation of 150 million could. That came as a surprise to most of us in the general population but I refuse to believe that the American and other Western military analysts couldn’t do exactly the same sums that Berletic or Vershinin did. Or is reckoning up surge capacity a lost art for our militaries?
In fact the Western countries barely tried to catch up with Russian production. Why bother? When the sanctions war failed and after what I termed above the “Afghanistan trap” didn’t come off there was no point. This was a lost war as soon as those two facts were understood.
As for blaming the Ukrainian Generals, we forget that from 2014 on this war was fought under Western direction. Our Generals aren’t as good as the Russian Generals and in fact were scarily irresponsible. Zaluzhnyi and now Syrski knew our plans were no good – suicidal in truth for the unfortunate Ukrainian PBI – but had to go along with them because we were running the show.
The Russians had some dud Generals too. All armies do. But they shifted theirs out of the way. We let ours carry on in spite of terrible failures all along. We’d better hope we don’t get into a direct conventional war with the Russians. On the showing of such as Milley, Cavoli and Radakin, and before them such as Breedlove, the only military gear that would be of any use to our armies would be a plentiful supply of white flags. Our top Commanders really were that incompetent.
………………………….
I don’t usually submit comments as direct as that. I’ve been infuriated by the fact that the Western propagandists are shifting the blame for this debacle on to the Ukrainians. That’s unacceptable. It was us who let the Ukrainians down, not the other way round. We pushed the Ukrainians into this unwinnable war and should not now be blaming them for losing it.
This practice of creating new units is not new and not particular to Ukraine. In the American civil war only one state (Wisconsin) organized and operated a recruiting system for keeping their regiments up to strength. The political benfits of new regiments (new contracts to let; officers to appoint) are much greater than those for recruiting and providing replacements to units already in the field.
“The political benefits”
… in this case are/were what? Keeping France engaged? A European example other Europeans will want to c0py? Even now?
What about military benefits?
Wisconsin who only kept its ‘regiments up to strenght’, did not stand out particularly in the ACW?
Ukrainian men know the score. Poland tried to recruit Ukrainian for basic training in a “Ukrainian Legion” program that would be able to train up multiple brigades worth of Ukrainian men from the 800,000+ military aged Ukrainian males scattered around Europe. After 7 months they have scraped together enough men to produce a light brigade. Support among Ukrainians for the war and the war effort is waning and many do not want to fight. Presumably they view it as a hopeless or a death sentence, or both.
Baltic Nazis, Poles and Romanians can pick up the slack and slide in the meat grinder if the wish. But Ukraine is done. A few more months and this depopulated territory has no biological future…
Regulus,
Ukraine very much has a biological future. Western European men are going to marry Ukrainian women and have lots of kids, pulling Ukraine (a partitioned western Ukraine at least) firmly into the European cultural/political sphere and out of the Russian cultural/political sphere.
This was the plan from the beginning. Everybody wins except for Russia and the Ukrainian men.
James
After all the dust has settled, Russia will have added close to 10 million new christian, Slav citizens to the pool along with some real estate. It’s a win win situation.
This problem of how to get manpower mobilized has been there forever. As a student of the US civil war it has been an ongoing debate. It appears that creating new regiments was politically easier than sending new troops into existing regiments. I think the CW has been that the new regiments didn’t perform well, but there has been some recent scholarship on this that may alter perceptions.
US Army in the early 20th c. had debates on whether the regular army should be kept intact as an elite force, or used as cadre units to bring mobilized troops up to speed. The cadre system won out, generally referred to as the “Upton system” that gave rise to the “Organized Militia” and then “National Guard” under the Palmer Plan laid out in “Report on the Organization of the Land Forces of the United States” and NDA 1916 and NDA 1920.
The sad thing is that would have been completely unnecessary had NATO continued to march East after the collapse of the USSR. It is apparent with this change in narrative that this war is rapidly coming to an end. Too bad the elites that drove it will retire with pensions and reputations intact.
NATO’s brain dead according to Macron, Fred, and he should know. All it is in practice is a tripwire plus the American nuclear umbrella.
Not much of a tripwire. I doubt any American President would go nuclear for Riga or Warsaw. Or Paris or Berlin for that matter. And who are the Americans proposing to defend Europe against? Do they ever ask that question in Washington?
Against Russia? Why would the Russians want Europe? What is there there for them? Doesn’t Washington know that Europe’s on the skids?
About time the people in Washington opened their eyes and saw that the Russians are wanting to get clear of Europe just as fast as they can. If Trump has any sense he’ll do the same. Wish we Brits could too!
EO,
One a bright note Trump has unified Europe. To defend against Trump/Musk. See the conversations on the UK’s failures to protect little girls in Rotherham and elsewhere.
Yes. Everyone’s frightfully put out. We spend a ton of money sweeping it all under the carpet and Musk breezes in and points out a few home truths.
But Elon Musk, like most Americans, exhibits distressing ignorance of the British Constitution. The job of His Majesty’s Government is not to look after the country. They don’t even like the place, most of ’em. HMG’s job is to deliver the leadership that the world turns to Great Britain to actually provide.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-munich-security-conference
If Musk spent a little more time reading Turcopolier instead of littering up the exosphere with his space toys he’d have known that already. I believe I’ve submitted that link to HMG’s mission statement before.
Hmm, seems you found your humor again? Where is our dear friend F&L, I miss him.
Concerning this bit:
Not much of a tripwire. I doubt any American President would go nuclear… And who are the Americans proposing to defend Europe against? Do they ever ask that question in Washington?
Are we experiencing some kind of EO paradigm shift? I seemed the other way round for a long time now. Those horrible Europeans, mind you, mainly the Continentals, are trying to lure the poor Americans into their third big war adventure in Europe. Wasn’t it? Kind of tail Barbarossa trying to wag the Big Dog?
And that the apparatchiks that stage-managed it all will go through the revolving-door to ThinkTankLand while they wait out the Trump administration.
Rinse. Repeat.
The east expansion of NATO was demanded by the populations in the former Warsaw Pact countries as the Soviet Union collapsed. After Russia attacked Ukraine, even Sweden and Finland gave up their longstanding neutrality. So the Russians only have themselves to blame for that expansion, with their imperial ambitions. Now we will find out whether Trump will add losing Ukraine to his losing Afghanistan record.
Lars,
When did Ukraine become a possession of the US?
The Russians seem monumentally unconcerned about the late inclusion of Sweden and Finland into NATO. It could not be more obvious that they don’t give a s**t about it.
Compare and contrast with their hysterics over Ukraine joining NATO.
I’m going to suggest that one reason for this lack of concern is that the Kremlin has game-planned this out in some great detail, and all their analysis tells them that NATO is going to collapse both under its own weight and via the self-destablization that has been going on since the SMO was launched.
So they simply don’t care, since they view this as the last-gasp expansion of NATO before the inevitable death-rattle grips the entire thing.
The history is a bit different. There was a large section of Ukraine that was part and parcel to the Holocaust and fought against the Russians, for the Nazis, in WW2. Historical figures that fought for the Nazis in WW2 still have statues in Ukraine that are celebrated yearly, to this day.
Neither the Swedes nor the Fins participated in the Holocaust nor fought for the Nazis.
Stefan,
The Finns fought the Soviets during the Winter War and allied with the Germans to continue fighting the Soviets during WWII.
Not that it matters much anymore, TTG. 😉 BUT:
The Finns were never as entangled as Ukrainians diverse nationalists were with the Nazis. The Finns managed to keep the Germans at arm’s length.
Neither were they entangled as closely with Russia territorially and historically as Ukraine is. Whose Anna of Kyiv?
Greater Ukraine? NYT 1938
https://www.nytimes.com/1938/12/25/archives/greater-ukraine-urged-groups-here-favor-unity-of-countrymen-in.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Map_of_Ukraine_for_Paris_Peace_Conference.jpg
******
Did you watch Lex Fridman’s Zelenskyy podcast?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u321m25rKXc&t=238s
LeaNder,
True, the Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany was based purely on Soviet aggression. The alliance was purely military. Finland declared independence from the Russian Empire in 1919. Mannerheim, leading the White Finns fought the Red Finns and Russian troops during the Finnish Civil War.
Anna of Kyiv was the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, ruler of the Kievan Rus. Anna became Queen of France by marriage with Henry I. The French connection of Anna was the reason this brigade was so named.
I’ve only seen bits of that interview.
Of course…..but there is not the history there that there is between Russia and the Ukrainians. Finns do not still celebrate fascists every year (if they ever did), have statues of them, celebrating those that aided and abetted in the Holocaust. There was not an ideological kindredship between the Nazi Germans and the Finns. The relationship was utilitarian in nature. Like the Soviets and the US/UK. There was a sizeable portion of the Ukrainian population that were diehard fascists and fought to the death for this political ideology. They also were part and parcel of the death machine that brought about the Holocaust. The Finns did not recently have an entire military unit comprised of Nazis that had foreign fighters from around the world as a part of it. We can argue when the nature of that unit changed, but it was a unit in the Ukrainian military comprised of die hard fascists. You cant gloss over that fact. The fact that the Ukrainian government allowed such a thing, post independence, will be an enduring shame on the Ukrainian government and military. Never mind the propaganda tool that the Russians have made out of that fact despite their own issues with ultra nationalists.
LeaNder –
Yaroslav made many such alliances in Europe via diplomatic marriages. His daughter Elisiv of Kiev married King Harald Hadrada and became Queen of Norway. His daughter Anastasia of Kiev married King Andrew I to become Queen of Hungary. One of his granddaughters Euphraxia of Kiev married the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV of Germany and took the name Empress Adelaide. His son Vsevolod I Yaroslavich married a Byzantine princess.
By the way, a hundred years later Yaroslav’s great grandson Yuri Dolgorukiy fortified a small, muddy fishing village on the Moskva River that centuries later grew and became known as Moscow.
The Ukrainians are trying to transition from the Soviet/Russian military model to the western one, so perhaps the thinking was to create new, completely non-Russian system, brigades. There’s always friction when trying to teach old dogs new tricks.
That these new, purely Western units would be very light on experienced officers and NCOs? A problem they probably wish had not been dismissed, at least for the 155th. Seldom is the training comprehensive for any war. All wars are different and the training is usually for the previous one, and at the end of all training what you are left with is a bunch of greenhorns.
I’d like to make two comments on this:
1) I suspect very much that using Joe Biden’s money and material to set up new brigades rather than to reinvigorate existing brigades provided more opportunity for graft.
As in: it’s easier to syphon off the money to line their own pockets is easier when you are starting from scratch. So that’s double-plus-good as far as Zelensky and his gang are concerned.
2) There are rumors going around that Zelensky is under real, sustained pressure to arrange new elections in Ukraine to (re)legitimize his government.
Which is all well and good, but what does he do if Zaluzhnyi or Syrskyi decide to throw their hat into the ring?
Well, heck, let’s launch an investigation into the military echelon. What better way to gain some leverage over some very likely political opponents.
Sure, it’s a cynical view. But “politics” in Ukraine isn’t for the faint-hearted, and nobody there is lilly-white.
TTG – I’ve just come across this article by “Big Serge” (Courtesy of “b” himself in the comment section of Moon of Alabama.)
Part way down the writer summarises the problems the Ukrainians are experiencing in recruitment and training and arrives at the came conclusions set out in your article above.
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/total-kievan-debellation
I believe WAPO comes to the conclusion that in these circumstances any peace deal arrived at by Trump would entail an unacceptable loss of prestige and influence for the West. Therefore best let the conflict grind on to the last. Hope that’s not how it ends up.
A few comments:
1] Less than 2000 of the 5800 man 155th went to Europe for training. Just a hair over 33%
2] About 2500 troopers of the brigade were taken away to replenish other units long before that 2000 went to Europe for training.
3] Before a portion of the brigade was sent to Europe for training, >900 in Ukraine had already deserted or gone AWOL.
4] Another 700 deserted in Ukraine while their leadership was in France.
5] While most of the 2000 trainees in Europe went to France, the brigade’s tank battalion was trained in Poland.
6] The only training the brigade received in France and Poland was on familiarization and operation of the CAESAR howitzers, the AMX-10 AFVs, the VAB APCs and the Leopard tanks.
7] My understanding is the 155th was never deployed in combat as a unit and was sent in piecemeal to the 25th Airborne Brigade and the 68th Jaeger Brigade defending Pokrovsk. So was Butusov’s article lying or misinformed? Or was it a timing issue?
8] There was no onboard anti-drone EW mounted on the brigades tanks, AFVs and APCS and SPHs. That’s something every other Ukrainian unit had after learning hard lessons. Shame on Ukraine’s OC West. And maybe on France and Poland also?
9] They acted too fast removing brigade commander Ryumshin. Butusov himself says: “Brigade Commander Riumshyn, who had just managed to create some minimal controllability in this chaos and tried to save the situation, was removed from his post, several staff officers and one of the battalion commanders were also removed, and new commanders were appointed who had no understanding of the state of affairs in the brigade.”
10] OC West Commander General Shvediuk should be court marshalled. And General should get his knuckles rapped for sending Shvediuk to improve the brigade’s combat effectiveness, when it’s obvious that Svediuk was the root of the problem.
Bring back General Zaluzhnyi I say.
#10 last sentence should have read as:
General ‘Syrskyi’ should get his knuckles rapped for sending Shvediuk to improve the brigade’s combat effectiveness, when it’s obvious that Shvediuk was the root of the problem.
Maybe not Zaluzhnyi.
Very much a political General. Played to Western public opinion, particularly US public opinion. More interested in putting up a good showing than in true military objectives. Did that particularly when there was a vote coming along in Congress.
In that sense this was a PR war start to finish, not just for Zaluzhnyi. Zelensky said recently when he visited Sumy that the point of the Kursk offensive was to impress Western public opinion to keep the aid coming. Not so entirely. The Kursk offensive was planned by us for various reasons so Syrski was merely following our instructions. There was an article in the Times that said as much. But untrue or not, Zelensky’s statement at Sumi was in line with how the Ukrainian forces were deployed throughout, Krynki a prime example. Good troops were thrown away merely to give the Western politicians something to hang their PR on.
That’s down to such as Radakin rather than Zaluzhnyi but a principled officer would have refused to follow such instructions. Take the “Summer Offensive”. Zaluzhnyi knew in advance that was a non-starter and would lead to great losses of men and equipment – but still agreed to implement the plans! What are we to think of a General who followed such instructions knowing they were faulty?
He kept his troops too long in exposed positions. The Russians used “open cauldrons” at times. That is, they often did not attempt to close an encirclement but used it for attritional purposes. The Ukrainian troops so caught should have been permitted to retreat in good time. Instead they were kept in the salient, exposed to fire from both sides and with supply roads interdicted, and when they finally did get out did were exposed to withering artillery fire and drone attack, often through fields because the roads were cut. That happened too often for it to be the occasional error. It was standard for the troops to be kept in place too long and the resulting casualties were higher than they need have been.
Similarly with the counter-attacks. The Russians would often give ground in order to draw the Ukrainians in. A counter attack would proceed, often accompanied by much celebratory publicity, and would then be caught by artillery pre-registered on known ground. Again that happened too often to be the occasional error. And we knew it was happening. Not long back Kujat spoke of it and described how it was done. Kujat’s retired but will have kept up contacts so I don’t believe the Western military were unaware of it. These were attacks for transient PR victories, not for any true military purpose.
Besides, Zaluzhnyi’s Black Sun. He cosseted the Azov units, made sure they had first go at equipment – but then kept them out of the thick of the fighting. That made him a popular General admittedly, at least among some units. It didn’t make him a good one.
There was gossip we were going to install him to replace Zelensky. Hope it stays gossip.
Engish –
Zaluzhnyi was definitely not a political. That is evidenced by his firing simply for telling the truth at the time that the war was in a stalemate, which contradicted Zelensky’s pollyannaish press briefings. But Zaluzhnyi was never a doomsayer, he claimed in his stalemate-speech that the deadlock could be broken by western a/c like the F-16, electronic warfare advances & other technology, and using long range drones to destroy Russian infrastructure. All of that came to be after he left by those that believed in his strategic savvy. The general had some damned good foresight. The rumors that he intended to run against Zelensky were pure horsepucky. And perhaps those rumors were either initiated or later magnified by Putin’s Active Measures?
Zaluzhnyi never cosseted the Azov units. When the Azov Brigade was cleansed of neo-Nazi influence inducted into the National Guard in 2014, Zaluzhnyi was fighting in the Donbas in a regular Ukrainian Army brigade against invading Russian troops. He had nothing to do with Azov. Later, during the 2.5 years he commanded all Ukrainian Armed Forces he supported and cherished (i.e. your cosseted) all Ukrainian servicemen.
You are also mistaken about the Black Sun. That Nazi symbol is used in Russia by Russki neo-Nazis like the Atomwaffen Division and others. It’s also used in the your British Isles by the Sonnenkrieg Division. Zaluzhnyi never wore it and never promoted it. Your comment about it stinks a bit of that godawful Russian pickled herring that has to be choked down with vodka.