Armed Forces of Ukraine


The Armed Forces of Ukraine are the military forces of Ukraine. All military and security forces, including the Armed Forces, are under the command of the president of Ukraine and subject to oversight by a permanent Verkhovna Rada parliamentary commission. They trace their lineage to 1917, while the modern armed forces were formed again in 1991. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are the fifth largest armed force in the world in terms of both active personnel as well as total number of personnel with the eighth largest defence budget in the world, and it also operates one of the largest and most diverse drone fleets in the world. Due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been described as "the most battle-hardened in Europe," but has suffered many casualties.
Ukraine's armed forces are composed of the Ground Forces, the Air Force, the Navy, the Air Assault Forces, the Marine Corps, the Special Operations Forces, the Unmanned Systems Forces, and the Territorial Defense Forces. Ukraine's navy includes its own Naval Aviation. The Sea Guard is the coast guard service of Ukraine, and it is organized as part of the Border Guard Service, not subordinate to the navy. The National Guard serves as a paramilitary reserve component of the Armed Forces.
Military units of other countries have participated regularly in multinational military exercises in Ukraine. Many of these exercises have been held under the NATO cooperation program Partnership for Peace. As of 2024, with over $120 billion in foreign military aid in addition to being one of the best-funded armed forces in the world, the Soviet era military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is quickly being replaced with vast amounts of NATO standard military equipment.

History

The formation of the national armed forces in the modern sense dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century and coincides with the formation of the modern Ukrainian nation. In official history, this period is referred to as the "Ukrainian War of Independence" or the "First Liberation Struggle." This process coincided with the end of the First World War and the subsequent collapse of great European empires from previous centuries. The forerunner event was the creation of national military formations in the Imperial and Royal Armies of Austria-Hungary, namely the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, on which Ukrainian paramilitary organizations in Galicia were based: Sich Sports and Fire Brigade, "Sokil" and the national scout organization "Plast".
After the upheavals of World War I and on the verge of the collapse of empires, the Ukrainians tried again to return to sovereign statehood. As part of the growing disintegration in the ranks of the Russian Imperial Army, national units began to form. After the Bolshevik coup, hybrid warfare broke with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the White Guard. During the undeclared war, the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic had already formed, but its formation was interrupted by the German administration. It continued in a limited form after the establishment of Hetman of Ukraine Pavlo Skoropadskyi's Ukrainian State, known as the Hetmanate. The national armed forces continued to develop. The Armed Forces of the Ukrainian state were planned in a more systematic way than in previous versions, although previous development was used in this process, and many mistakes were also made.
Uprisings against the Hetmanate's rule eventually resulted, and the reorientation of the Central Powers who lost in World War I against the Entente, which in turn supported the White Guard movement and the Russian Empire as its original ally.
Simultaneously with these events, after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, numerous military formations were formed on Ukrainian lands, including detachments of the Free Cossacks, Makhno's Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, and the Bolshevik Red Cossacks. The latter became the basis of the puppet armed forces of the UkrSSR, and after the occupation of the Ukrainian People's Republic were included in the Red Army. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Ukrainian Galician Army came to the defense of the Western Ukrainian People's Republic, based on the formation of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen of the former Austro-Hungarian Army.
During World War II, Ukrainians tried to regain independence and organized armed units and formations, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but all of them were destroyed by Soviet authorities within a few years after the war, and Ukrainians were again forced to serve in the Soviet Armed Forces.

Origins of the post-1992 Ukrainian Armed Forces

By 1992, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had been completely inherited from the Soviet Union, in which Ukraine had been a member state. Like other Soviet republics, it did not possess its own separate military command, as all military formations were uniformly subordinated to the central command of the Soviet Armed Forces. Administratively, the Ukrainian SSR was divided into three Soviet military districts. Three Soviet air commands and most of the Black Sea Fleet naval bases were located on the coast of Ukraine. Majority of the officers were educated in Soviet educational institutions, many of them which came under the AFU, what is now the Ivan Bohun High School was actually a Soviet-established institution.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the newly independent state of Ukraine inherited one of the most powerful force groupings in Europe. According to an associate of the Conflict Studies Research Centre, James Sherr: "This grouping, its inventory of equipment and its officer corps was designed for one purpose: to wage combined arms, coalition, offensive warfare against NATO on an external front". At that time, the former Soviet armed forces in the Ukrainian SSR included the 43rd Rocket Army, the 5th, 14th 17th and 24th Air Armies of the Soviet Air Forces, an air-defense army, three regular armies, two tank armies, the 32nd Army Corps, and the Black Sea Fleet. Altogether the Armed Forces of Ukraine included about 780,000 personnel, 6,500 battle tanks, about 7,000 armored vehicles, 1,500 combat aircraft, and more than 350 ships of the former Soviet Navy. Along with their equipment and personnel, Ukraine's armed forces inherited the battle honors and lineage of the Soviet military forces stationed in Ukraine, as well as Guards unit titles for many formations. However, due to the deterioration of Russian-Ukrainian relations and the continued stigma of being associated with the Soviet Union, in 2015 President Poroshenko ordered the removal of most of the citations awarded during the Soviet era to formations of the Armed Forces and other uniformed organizations.
In February 1991, a parliamentary Standing Commission for Questions of Security and Defense was established. On 24 August 1991, the Ukrainian parliament, in adopting the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, also enacted a short resolution "About military formations in Ukraine". This took jurisdiction over all formations of the armed forces of the Soviet Union stationed on Ukrainian soil and established one of the key agencies, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. On 3 September 1991, the Ministry of Defence commenced its duties. On 22 October 1991 units and formations of the Soviet Armed Forces on Ukrainian soil were nationalized. Subsequently, the Supreme Council of Ukraine adopted two Laws of Ukraine on 6 December 1991 regarding the creation of the Armed Forces, and Presidential Decree #4 "About Armed Forces of Ukraine" on 12 December 1991. The government of Ukraine surrendered any rights of succession to the Soviet Strategic Deterrence Forces that were staged on the territory of Ukraine. Recognizing the complications of a smooth transition and seeking a consensus with other former members of the Soviet Union in dividing up their Soviet military inheritance, Ukraine joined ongoing talks that started in December 1991 regarding a joint military command of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Inherent in the process of creating a domestic military were political decisions by the Ukrainian leadership regarding the country's non-nuclear and international status. Among these were the definition, agreement, and ratification of the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which not only established the maximum level of armament for each republic of the former USSR, but also a special ceiling for the so-called CFE "Flank Region" – included in this region were Ukraine's Mykolaiv, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Another key event in the development of the Ukrainian military was the 1992 Tashkent Treaty, which laid out aspirations for a Commonwealth of Independent States military. However, this collective military proved impossible to develop because the former republics of the USSR all wished to go their own way, ripping the intricate Soviet military machine into pieces.
Ukraine had observer status with the Non-Aligned Movement of nation-states from 1996. However, due to the 2014 Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada repealed this status in December 2014.

List of the Soviet military formations on territory of Ukraine in 1989–1991

  • Ground forces Military Districts 3/14: Kiev, Carpathian, Odessa
  • * Combined-arms armies : 1st Guards Army, 13th Army, 38th Army, 14th Guards Army
  • * Army corps : 32nd Army Corps, 64th Army Corps
  • ** Motor-Rifle divisions : 28th Guards MR division, 36th MR division, 46th MR division, 66th Guards Training MR division, 92nd Guards Training MR division, 180th MR division
  • ** Air-borne divisions : 98th Guards A/b division
  • * Artillery corps : 66th Artillery Corps
  • ** Artillery divisions : 26th A division, 55th A division, 81st A division
  • * Tank armies : 6th Guards Army, 8th Army
  • ** Tank divisions : 48th Guards Training T division, 117th Guards Training T division
  • Air Force armies : 5th Air Army, 14th Air Army, 17th Air Army, 24th Air Army of the Central Command Reserve, 46th Air Army of the Commander-in-Chief
  • ** Air Force divisions : 6th Guards Aviation Transport division, 7th Aviation Transport division, *201st Heavy Bomber Aviation division
  • Separate armies of the Air Defense Troops : 8th Army
  • * Air Defense corps : 28th Air Defense Corps, 49th Air Defense Corps, 60th Air Defense Corps
  • ** AD divisions
  • Rocket armies : 43rd Army
  • ** Rocket divisions
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  • * Railroad troops : 2nd Railroad Corps