This summer, Ukraine\u2019s high command gambled by redeploying the recently created 1st Azov Corps, a special forces unit comprising five brigades including the elite Azov Brigade, to the vicinity of the embattled city of Pokrovsk, just north of occupied Donetsk. There, Russian troops, grinding forward, had managed to partially break through Ukrainian defenses, advancing to a handful of miles short of the strategic Dobropillia-Kramatorsk highway.<\/p>\n
Over five weeks of fierce ground battle in August and September, the Azov Corps\u2014the first of 18 such corps formed as part of an armed forces-wide overhaul\u2014and regular Ukrainian army units turned back the Russian advance and recaptured six villages<\/a> and significant territory. \u201cUkraine\u2019s armed forces rely on Azov and its offshoots as an emergency force when things get really bad,\u201d Ukraine expert Andreas Umland said. \u201cThey have the reputation as being the best, the most well trained and well equipped.\u201d<\/p>\n This summer, Ukraine\u2019s high command gambled by redeploying the recently created 1st Azov Corps, a special forces unit comprising five brigades including the elite Azov Brigade, to the vicinity of the embattled city of Pokrovsk, just north of occupied Donetsk. There, Russian troops, grinding forward, had managed to partially break through Ukrainian defenses, advancing to a handful of miles short of the strategic Dobropillia-Kramatorsk highway.<\/p>\n Over five weeks of fierce ground battle in August and September, the Azov Corps\u2014the first of 18 such corps formed as part of an armed forces-wide overhaul\u2014and regular Ukrainian army units turned back the Russian advance and recaptured six villages<\/a> and significant territory. \u201cUkraine\u2019s armed forces rely on Azov and its offshoots as an emergency force when things get really bad,\u201d Ukraine expert Andreas Umland said. \u201cThey have the reputation as being the best, the most well trained and well equipped.\u201d<\/p>\n It was once burdened by a quite different reputation. The Azov unit was founded as a volunteer militia in 2014 by a smorgasbord of fringe right-wing radicals. Shortly afterward, it became part of the National Guard, a force within the Ministry of Internal Affairs.<\/p>\n Azov became widely identified with its early association<\/a> with far-right parties and figures dogged it, exacerbated by Russian propaganda charging that history as evidence that Ukraine is a country of neo-Nazis threatening Russian-speakers in Ukraine with \u201cgenocide<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The commanders of Azov\u2019s earliest iterations did hold \u201cmanifestly fascist views,\u201d according to a paper<\/a> Umland wrote in 2019. But by late 2016, said Vyacheslav Likhachev of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, the brigade had shed any vestiges of political extremism to become a \u201cnormal Ukrainian unit, just like any other, political only in the sense that it is committed to the constitution of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n Last summer, a U.S. congressional investigation found that the Azov Brigade was not responsible<\/a> for human rights violations or xenophobia\u2014enabling it, finally, to access U.S. military technology. Until then, it had raised its own funds, as it does again today in light of shifting U.S. policy.<\/p>\n Today, Azov\u2019s image and personnel are completely different, and the unit even boasts about its Jewish and Muslim fighters on its webpage, Umland said. Its members are best described as \u201cmilitant patriots,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The unit\u2019s reorganization according to NATO military standards\u2014conducted internally using downloaded manuals, not by foreign instructors\u2014and its heavy reliance on noncommissioned officers made it extremely battle-ready come the full-scale invasion, according to the Post<\/a>. \u201cOur commanders don\u2019t come straight from academies,\u201d an Azov officer told<\/a> journalist David Kirichenko in January. \u201cThey rise through the ranks on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n After bruising spring and early summer stretches on the battlefield this year, the high-profile success of the Azov Corps is positive testament to the Ukrainian military\u2019s long-anticipated and still-in-progress restructuring: from a sprawling military of about 100 brigades<\/a> to a more tightly packed corps system designed to optimize command and control of its forces. Military personnel and experts told the Kyiv Post<\/a> that \u201cthe current corps within the defense forces are a qualitatively new phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics had long charged that as Ukraine\u2019s armed forces ballooned in size, the military\u2019s diffuse organization was responsible for poor coordination\u2014and was costing Ukraine dearly. \u201cWhat we have now,\u201d Andriy Kharuk, a historian and lecturer at Ukraine\u2019s Land Forces Academy, told the Post in April, \u201cis a \u2018vinaigrette\u2019 of different brigades and so-called \u2018attached units\u2019 that are shuffled back and forth, often losing coordination. The corps is a holistic structure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe restructuring was absolutely evident in the [Pokrovsk and Dobropillia] operations,\u201d said officer of the 1st Azov Corps, who wished to remain anonymous. \u201cInteroperability became much higher, the level of operational capacity more clear.\u201d<\/p>\n The Azov forces were deemed best suited to kick off the reforms\u2014and to serve as a model<\/a>\u2014because of their competent \u201cnew school\u201d personnel and combat experience. The reforms have put the brigade\u2019s leadership, namely Col. Denys Prokopenko, in charge of the corps as a whole, whose members number 40,000 to 80,000<\/a>. Most of the brigade\u2019s officers are in the corps leadership, too.<\/p>\n The Azov Brigade advertises widely in Ukrainian cities to attract recruits and is the unit of choice for many highly educated young people. It even turns many applicants away. The brigade, which contains no conscripted troops, includes an international battalion\u2014Interbat\u2014with soldiers from the United States<\/a>, the United Kingdom, European Union countries, and elsewhere and a webpage in English<\/a> for prospective recruits. If applicants meet its requirements and are tapped, they can become members in two to six weeks.<\/p>\n In late spring, the Azov Brigade, a special forces unit of the National Guard, was selected as among the first brigades to participate in the military\u2019s makeover.<\/p>\n The brigade, formerly based in Mariupol in the coastal region of the Sea of Azov, boasts fabled status in Ukraine as a symbol of patriotic resilience and resistance. In 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, the company, at the time called the Azov Regiment, played a key role in Mariupol\u2019s liberation from Russian occupiers. And in 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Azov defended the city tenaciously while surrounded on all sides and more than 60 miles behind enemy lines.<\/p>\n In May 2022, during the Siege of Mariupol<\/a>\u2014a 86-day defense of the city\u2014Azov fighters and Ukrainian soldiers eventually surrendered the Azovstal steel plant, Ukraine\u2019s last stronghold in the city, under orders<\/a> from President Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia captured more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers and still today holds several hundred<\/a> of them. The region remains under Russian control.<\/p>\n Since then, the brigade has fought extensively in the Donbas region and participated in the protracted Battle of Bakhmut, as well as in operations in and around Zaporizhzhia, Kreminna, Terny, and Toretsk.<\/p>\n