Ukraine’s Best Tank Brigade Has Won The Battle For Chernihiv

When a Russian tank army swept southwest from the Russia-Belarus border region into northern Ukraine on the morning of Feb. 24, a single Ukrainian tank brigade stood between it and the eastern suburbs of Kyiv.

The Ukrainian army’s 1st Tank Brigade was outnumbered—not only by the 10 or so battalion tactical groups belonging to the Russian 41st Combined Arms Army, but also adjacent Russian formations.

Incredibly, the 1st Tank Brigade not only halted the larger Russian force in the first few days of Russia’s wider war in Ukraine, it swiftly transitioned to an active defense and, for the next five weeks, protected the city of Chernihiv, 60 miles northeast of Kyiv.

The Russians surrounded and cut off Chernihiv, but the 1st Tank Brigade and an assortment of reserve and territorial units held out. On Thursday, the Ukrainians retook the first of several main roads connecting Kyiv and Chernihiv, lifting a month-long siege and shifting the momentum along this front toward the Ukrainians for the first time since the Russians attacked.

The 1st Tank Brigade is one of the best of Ukraine’s 20 active brigades. It includes three tank battalions with the latest locally-produced T-64BM tanks as well as a mechanized infantry battalion with BMP fighting vehicles. Each battalion on paper includes 40 or 50 vehicles and around 400 troops.

The brigade’s supporting troops include three artillery battalions—one each with 2S1 and 2S3 self-propelled howitzers and BM-21 rocket-launchers—plus air-defense troops with Strela-10 and Tunguska tracked missile-launchers and guns.

Other units, including nearby air-defense and artillery brigades, provide additional firepower, including heavier rockets and howitzers and longer-range air-defense systems.

The 1st Tank Brigade, like many Ukrainian formations, once was part of the Soviet army—and fell into disarray following the Soviet collapse in 1991. The Ukrainian army reconstituted the brigade in September 2014, seven months after Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequently threw its support behind separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Around January 2015, elements of the 1st Tank Brigade attempted to break through to the embattled defenders of Donetsk Airport. The Ukrainians lost two dozen tanks.

After the Donetsk Airport debacle, the 1st Tank Brigade took turns fighting along trenches in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The brigade was in Donbas as recently as April last year. As the Russians began massing troops along Ukraine’s borders that spring, the 1st Tank Brigade moved back to its permanent garrison inside the Mizhrichynskyi nature reserve, just outside Kyiv.

But the brigade wasn’t in Mizhrichynskyi the night Russia invaded. Like most Ukrainian units, it had dispersed, rendering ineffective Russia’s initial barrage of artillery, rockets and air strikes.

The 1st Tank Brigade concentrated its forces in time to intercept the 41st CAA barreling toward Chernihiv, a city of 290,000 and a key strong point for Kyiv’s outer defense. On the first full day of major ground combat, the 1st Tank Brigade halted the 41st CAA’s advance. “It is unlikely Russia has achieved its day-one military objectives,” the U.K. defense ministry concluded on Feb. 24.

The Ukrainian brigade fought hard, slowing but not halting the 41st CAA’s gradual encirclement of Chernihiv and keeping open at least one road to Kyiv. But after two weeks of fighting, the Russians were on the verge of cutting off Chernihiv and its defenders. “Wouldn’t be surprised if Chernihiv gets completely cut off today,” Tom Cooper, an expert on the Russian military, wrote on March 6.

Soon the 1st Tank Brigade and its associated reservists and territorials were alone in Chernihiv. For the next three weeks, they defeated every Russian attempt to capture the city and clear a wider path toward Kyiv.

The 41st CAA piled up around Chernihiv. Senior Russian officers, desperate to get the army moving, repeatedly exposed themselves to Ukrainian fire. Ukrainian sources claimed Gen. Vitaliy Gerasimov, a deputy commander of the 41st CAA, died on March 7 near Kharkiv, east of Chernihiv. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st CAA, reportedly was fatally shot by a Ukrainian sniper a few days earlier.

The Russians bombarded Chernihiv from the ground and air. Air-defenders with the 1st Tank Brigade or nearby units shot down at least one Russian warplane, an Su-34 on March 5. One of the two crew died. The Ukrainians captured the other.

Incredibly, the 1st Tank Brigade appears to have preserved many of its T-64s through the weeks of siege warfare. The brigade is one of the few users of the latest T-64BM with its uprated engine and armor. Analysts have confirmed the destruction of just two T-64BMs, both apparently belonging to the Ukrainian army’s tank school in Kharkiv.

That doesn’t meant the 1st Tank Brigade hasn’t lost any tanks. But it does imply that the brigade hasn’t lost so many tanks that photographic evidence is easy to find.

After suffering 10,000 or more troops killed, wounded or captured and also writing off thousands of vehicles to Ukrainian drones and missileers, the Russians signaled a retreat from northern Ukraine starting the last week of March.

The survivors of the 41st CAA fled north to Belarus, where analysts expect them to regroup for possible redeployment toward Kharkiv and Donbas, where bitter fighting continues. The Ukrainians swept behind the retreating Russians, liberating towns and reopening roads.

What’s next for the 1st Tank Brigade is unclear. Kyiv undoubtedly will shift forces east in an effort to relieve Kharkiv, reinforce the front line through Donbas and, hopefully, lift the brutal siege of Mariupol along the Sea of Azov coast.

What role the 1st Tank Brigade plays in this next phase of the war probably depends on how much time the brigade needs to rest exhausted battalions, repair battered tanks and intake replacement troops and vehicles.