Author:  Yurii Butusov

Why is Ukraine only army in world in XIX-XXI centuries that does not fight in divisions and corps, and why do generals evade responsibility?

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The main problem of war is to determine the responsibility of commanders at all levels for the result, i.e. for destroying the enemy, saving their people, and holding favorable positions.

At the front, there is a lot of criticism against generals that the OTG and OSGT headquarters control and punish brigade commanders and battalion commanders solely for lines and dots on the map, for holding positions, without paying attention to the state of the troops, the tactical situation, the problems of destroying the enemy and preserving their forces. The dramatic gap between strategic objectives and tactical capabilities led to and continues to lead to a constant repetition of the same mistakes, where planning is inherently flawed because it is tied to wrong tactical decisions.

This contradiction is inherent in the very organizational structure of our defense forces and has no examples in world history during mass mobilization wars.

What is our management like?

In Ukraine, the highest organizational form at the front is the brigade. The brigade commander is responsible for the defense line, the combat capability of the brigade, the task of defeating the enemy and the safety of his own personnel and equipment, in other words, he is responsible for everything. Our brigades' defense lanes range from 4 to 20 kilometers, depending on the direction and conditions - the total frontline of active operations is currently about 800 kilometers. According to open sources, we have more than 100 ground force brigades of all types deployed, plus hundreds of individual units, battalions, companies, and detachments. Therefore, it would be logical to expect that such a large number of control objects and such a large front would require an increase in the size of formations to the size of divisions and the creation of large units - corps or armies. But this is not happening.

To manage the troops, we have created operational and tactical groups - OTG, which are assigned areas corresponding to corps districts, and operational and strategic group of troops - OSGT, the army's area of responsibility.

But they are not responsible for the troops. Our troops are administratively part of the structure of separate operational commands - OCs. The OCs temporarily subordinate their forces to the frontline OTGs and OSGTs, which are directly responsible for the war.

Therefore, the OC and the brigades are responsible for the combat capability of the brigades and the safety of the people. And the OTGs and OSGTs are responsible for the lines and dots on the map, and they are responsible for achieving results in combat operations. And all these are different headquarters, different generals.

That is why there is a gap. This is a gap of responsibility at the level of generals. The points on the map cannot exist in isolation from the awareness of combat capability, from the personnel, from the planning and organization of the destruction of the enemy.

Generals are not comprehensively responsible for the result - only brigade commanders are responsible, and that's it, the responsibility is then diffused.

In the history of the world wars of the ХІХ-ХХІ centuries, there have been no examples of such a strange state of affairs in mass-mobilized armies.

All other armies have evolutionarily come to the same logic: the higher the coherence and responsibility, the higher the combat capability, the better the controllability.

What is the manageability of our OTGs? How can the OTGs headquarters manage effectively if we have OTGs that at certain periods were subordinated to more than 20 brigades and more than 20 battalions of diversified infantry, plus an even larger number of units of other branches of the military? Can you imagine how effective management can be if you have 100 subordinate commanders at the same time, and each of them constantly needs planning and decisions? It's nonsense.

And how can the OC restore the combat capability of brigades and battalions if they practically do not see their units, and are isolated from their use, cannot assess the problems? They can't.

What is the reason?

I have been writing about this problem since 2014 when the control of hostilities in Donbas was transferred to temporary structures - sectors, and then to temporary operational departments. Let me remind you that the structure of the Army Corps in Ukraine existed before 2014, but in 2011-13, President Yanukovych systematically destroyed Ukraine's defense capabilities and discontinued the Army Corps. The last 8th Army Corps was liquidated in June 2014.

The then-new Chief of the General Staff, Viktor Muzhenko, wanted to reorganize the entire structure of the army command at his own discretion. Therefore, the story of the discontinuance of the corps, the creation of temporary headquarters, sectors, and OTGs was convenient for manual control of the army, for the quick dismissal and appointment of any general, and so it was preserved then and is still preserved today. In other words, the absence of divisions and corps at the front was due to political reasons that had nothing to do with the army's combat capability.

After Muzhenko's replacement, this temporary structure was maintained, as it proved convenient for his successors. But this solution worked terribly for the war, both in 2014 and in 2024. We need to reorganize the troops - to create divisions and corps of permanent personnel - because all the experience and logic of war demands it. We need generals to be personally responsible not for conducting selectors and drawing dots on the map, but for them, as battalion commanders and brigade commanders, to be jointly responsible for the permanent, stable set of troops subordinated to them, and jointly responsible for the result - for the destruction of the enemy, for the preservation of their own soldiers, for the maintenance of defense lines.

Yurii Butusov, Censor. NET