The Ukrainian army is standing up new mechanized brigades. It’s a sign Ukraine’s leaders don’t expect Russia’s wider war on Ukraine to end anytime soon. It could be months before the first of the new 2,000-person brigades has filled all its billets—and months longer before the brigades are ready for combat.
Militaryland, which closely tracks Ukrainian military force structure, obtained photos purporting to depict trainees belonging to the new 160th Mechanized Brigade. According to Militaryland, the new mechanized brigades—all of them with designations in the 160s—will train in foreign countries and draw many of their recruits from Ukrainians living in those same countries.
The 160th Mechanized Brigade is reportedly training in Poland.
The creation of new brigades is contingent on two things: the successful mobilization of perhaps 10,000 or more new recruits and continuing foreign support for Ukraine’s war effort. The mobilization is the source of the new brigades’ manpower; foreign allies will probably provide the bulk of their heavy weaponry.
The formation of the 160s-series brigades comes three months after the previous army expansion wrapped up. Starting last fall, the Ukrainian army formed 10 new brigades: four mechanized brigades, five infantry brigades and a jaeger brigade.
The infantry brigades are the lightest—they mostly ride in trucks. The jaeger brigade is a middleweight force with a mix of trucks and light armored vehicles. The mechanized brigades are the heaviest: they ride in tracked and wheeled armored vehicles and usually travel with a company of at least a dozen tanks.
It’s unclear how many 160-series brigades the army is currently forming and what kinds of brigades they’ll be. If the previous round of army expansion is any indication, there could be 10.
On paper, 10 brigades need 20,000 troops. Ukraine’s controversial mobilization law, which entered into force in May, aims to bring another half million people into the million-person armed forces by lowering the draft age from 27 to 25, adding penalties for draft evasion and offering more incentives to volunteers.
The various ground forces—the army, marine corps, territorials, national guard and special units of the border service—oversee around 100 combat brigades and account for the majority of military personnel. The ground forces have also suffered the majority of Ukraine’s combat losses, including potentially 60,000 fatalities through the spring, if The Washington Post’s reporting is accurate.
Ukraine must mobilize enough troops to make good losses across the armed forces while also adding troops for the new brigades and any support units they require. That’s easier said than done in a country of just 38 million that’s already supporting a million-person military.
It’s not for no reason the Ukrainian defense ministry reportedly plans to draw recruits from the large pool of Ukrainians living abroad. Around 768,000 Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 64 had been granted temporary protection in European Union countries as of late last year, according to EU figures obtained by the Associated Press.
Sourcing armored vehicles might be equally difficult—and it’s not clear Ukraine could do it without enduring foreign support. A mechanized brigade needs several hundred vehicles including tanks, fighting vehicles, howitzers, rocket launchers, air-defense systems, engineering vehicles and trucks.
Ten brigades would need thousands of vehicles. To put that into perspective, in the first 29 months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Ukraine’s allies have pledged around 12,000 vehicles to the war effort. Not all of those vehicles are available for new units: they’re replacing the approximately 6,400 vehicles Ukraine has lost in those 29 months.
If the formation of the 150-series brigades is any indication, it could be six months or longer before the 160-series brigades are ready for action. In other words, these are 2025 brigades—the units that might fight in the fourth year of the wider war.
Sources:
1. Militaryland:
new-mechanized-brigades-begin-the-process-of-formation/
2. The Washington Post:
com/world/2024/04/30/russia-troops-ukraine-toll-casualties/
3. Associated Press:
russia-ukraine-war-mobilization-kharkiv-599753d08518b46e22bf38d1360cce86
4. Oryx: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/answering-call-heavy-weaponry-supplied.html; https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html
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