Ukraine War Update: The Ukrainian military is setting up eight “storm brigades” of 40,000 troops each to lead the way in the upcoming counteroffensive.
According to recent reports, the Ukrainian General Staff is standing up these elite units to push back Russian forces as far out of Ukraine as possible.
Storm Brigades for Ukraine
The Ukrainian military intends to mix the storm brigades with more experienced units in the upcoming counteroffensive.
To attract more recruits, the Ukrainian military has given flashy names to the new units, including Hurricane, Spartan, Chervona Kalyna, Frontier, Rage, Azov and Kara Dag, and Border of Steel.
Key to the creation of these units is Western training and support. The United States and the United Kingdom, in particular, have provided key, continued support to the Ukrainian military.
“We are putting all of these pieces together to provide full, lasting, combat-credible capabilities covering all of the steps from the donation, to the training, to the maintenance and sustainment.
The substantial resources the United States has committed to Ukraine reflects the American interests and values that are at stake,” a senior U.S. defense official stated recently during a press briefing at the Pentagon.
Eight storm brigades of 40,000 men each would amount to 320,000 troops. That is no small number. More than 13 months in to the war, the Ukrainian military has suffered heavy casualties. Western intelligence estimates put the number of total Ukrainian casualties to more than 100,000, though more of them are wounded than dead.
Despite the existential threat posed by the Russian invasion, Ukraine is still using a volunteer military. Kyiv is pushing hard to recruit more troops to make up for the losses it’s taking on the ground. There is, justifiably, a lot of talk about the high Russian casualties (between 180,000 and 220,000, according to the latest estimates), but there isn’t a lot of information about the Ukrainian losses.
Kyiv has shrewdly masked the actual number of losses it has suffered in the war so far. But Western intelligence estimates assess that they are on par—maybe on the lower end—with the Russian losses. The biggest difference between the two militaries is that the Ukrainian military have suffered more wounded than killed compared to the Russian forces.
The Stormtrooper Concept
It looks like the Ukrainian military is trying to replicate the sturmtruppen concept that the German military introduced in the final months of World War One.
Then, in an attempt to break the stalemate on the Western Front, the German military established specialized assault units to spearhead the last big push of the war in the spring of 2018. German stormtroopers carried the best that the German military industry could offer. The concept was highly effective.
In just a few weeks, the German military broke through several layers of Allied defenses, even threatening the cohesion of the British and French line. In the end, however, the German forces ran out of reserves and stamina, and the attack lost its steam. The Allies were able to quickly recapture the lost territory. And yet, the stormtrooper concept was successful.
It remains to be seen whether the Ukrainian version of the stormtroopers will be as effective more than a century later.
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Expert Biography:
A 19FortyFive Defense and National Security Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
