Problems of dispersal of National Guard units at front

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the use of the NGU was as follows: individual battalions and companies were subordinated to other military units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This was a logical decision, as the NGU brigades did not have the necessary heavy weapons and could not take on the area of responsibility.

On the other hand, fighting as a temporarily assigned force means big problems in organisation, supply, low interaction and coherence. These terms in war always mean additional loss of life and poor results.

In 2023, the country's leadership decided to deploy "offensive brigades" in the NGU.

And the NGU brigades began to be deployed as ordinary equivalent infantry brigades. Again, the decision is logical: why deploy new units from scratch when you can rely on existing personnel and combine a significant number of separate NGU companies and battalions into single units? The NGU brigades have begun to receive more heavy weapons. This year, the National Guard even received the latest 155mm DITA self-propelled howitzers.

But the formation of "offensive brigades" was not brought to a logical conclusion. Now brigades are being used at the front simultaneously, and the practice of using separate battalions and companies remains, which continue to be attached to different units of the Armed Forces. This is extremely difficult to administer, difficult to work with personnel, to carry out rotations, to provide for. Such conditions are absolutely disadvantageous and worsen the performance of combat missions. And most importantly, it increases casualties. People in these separate, temporarily attached companies and battalions wear out and lose their combat capability much faster. Soldiers and commanders suffer, and the state loses and the enemy wins.

According to open sources, in the autumn of 2024, we may see the simultaneous deployment of 8 "offensive brigades" on the frontline and, at the same time, 8 separate battalions and 21 separate companies.

The "offensive brigades" are also torn into separate units.

This model of use is completely inappropriate for the situation. The enemy creates an advantage over our troops primarily through improved organisation, cohesion, and management. But instead of improving these components, we continue to organise and manage our troops in the same way as in early 2022.

Since the NGU brigades perform independent tasks in all key areas of the frontline, the obvious and logical solution would be to subordinate all the separate companies and battalions of the NGU units to the NGU brigades. Of course, they would have to increase the frontline and area of responsibility accordingly, but the brigades would have more strength, the soldiers would have more order, and the state would improve both their organisation and use. And this will allow us to achieve much better results at the front, to better defend our country.

All units and subunits of the NGU should be used exclusively as part of NGU formations. It seems like a simple logical solution, but we cannot push this through without some kind of publicity.

Yurii Butusov, Censor.NET