One Of Ukraine’s Best Brigades Defends One Of Its Most Vulnerable Cities

The Ukrainian government this month put into effect a new law creating a framework for everyday civilians to join territorial defense battalions. Army special forces soldiers will lead the volunteers. The government will supply and arm them.

In Kharkiv, a city of one million that lies just 25 miles from the border, interest in the local volunteer battalion is strong even though the unit is just a few days old. “To fight for the protection of your own house is a big motivation,” one local man told Al Jazeera.

But if Russia widens its war on Ukraine, as seems increasingly likely, a regular army brigade—not some ragtag bunch of volunteers—would be the first to fight for Kharkiv, which among other strategic assets includes an important tank factory.

The 92nd Mechanized Brigade, billeted just south of the city, is one of the best-trained and best-equipped units in Ukraine’s 145,000-person active army.

It’s not for no reason that, when NATO invited the Ukrainian army to train at the alliance’s exercise range in Hohenfels, Germany last year, Kiev sent part of the 92nd Mechanized Brigade.

The brigade boasts two T-64 tank battalions and three battalions of infantry in BTR-4 wheeled fighting vehicles plus attached artillery, engineers, air-defenders and support troops. Each battalion fields around 40 armored vehicles and around 400 troops.

The tanks are some of the most modern in Ukrainian service. The brigade got upgraded T-64BVs in 2014, shortly after Russian troops invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequently backed anti-government separatists in the country Donbas region.

Seven years later the 92nd was the first Ukrainian army formation to get the latest T-64 model, the T-64BM2, a uniquely Ukrainian version of the classic tank with an uprated 1,000-horsepower engine and improved fire-control including modern night-vision sights.

The BTR-4s the infantry ride might not have the best mobility on muddy fields—although there are plenty of photos of the brigade’s BTRs trailing behind the T-64s in typically sloppy Ukrainian conditions. But they do offer elevated protection from anti-tank rockets thanks to the cage armor on their gun turrets.

The 92nd’s engineer, artillery and anti-tank tables of organization and equipment are standard. BREM-4 recovery vehicles. 2S1 and 2S3 tracked howitzers. BM-21 rocket-launchers. MT-12 anti-tank guns. The theater-level regional task force that oversees the brigade provides additional artillery and rockets.

The 92nd’s impressive kit belies just how unprepared the brigade was when the Russians first attacked back in 2014. Like much of the Ukrainian army, the 92nd was under-manned, under-equipped and starved for funds.

As the army mobilized in the months following the invasions of Crimea and Donbas, the 92nd remained a brigade in name only. “The 92nd Separate Mechanized Brigade did not manage to form a single operational unit,” analysts for the Ukrainian government pointed out in a 2020 study.

The 92nd eventually was able to cobble together a single company with a few vehicles and around 300 soldiers. That company soon rolled into disaster.

In late 2014, the campaign for Donbas gradually turned in Kiev’s favor as more and more Ukrainian army units and volunteer battalions reached the front. The battle for Ilovaisk, in August, was a turning point. The Ukrainians captured the city, hoping to cut supply lines between the separatist “republics” in Luhansk and Donetsk.

That’s when Moscow sent in its own regular battalions. A powerful Russian force surrounded the Ukrainians in Ilovaisk. Desperate to relieve the encircled troops, Kiev ordered the 92nd Mechanized Brigade to attack.

It was no match for the Russians besieging Ilovaisk. “On the crossroads near the village of Pobeda … my vehicle was hit and burned out,” 92nd trooper Andriy Mykytenko recalled. “I was thrown out of the car and suffered concussion.”

The survivors of the 92nd’s task group retreated, leaving behind many of their vehicles.

The calamities continued. After Ilovaisk, the 92nd continued reforming and eventually took its turn fighting in the trenches in Donbas. In 2018, enemy shelling ignited a brigade ammunition dump in Stara Mykolaivka, one in a series of strikes on Ukrainian ammo stashes that wiped out around 40 percent of the army’s munitions.

Today the 92nd appears to be fully manned and equipped, thanks in part to foreign assistance and training courtesy of British advisors. One brigade alone can’t stop a Russian invasion force that might include scores of brigades overseeing a hundred or more battalions task groups, plus huge quantities of supporting artillery.

But it doesn’t have to. The Ukrainian army fields 20 active brigades plus another four brigades in reserve. And then there are all those volunteers.