Ukraine's once nimble army is mired in Soviet decision-making

Mint

2 days ago

SUMY, Ukraine — In the first year of Russia's all-out invasion, Ukraine's defenders repeatedly outmaneuvered a lumbering Russian army, relying on improvisation and the judgment of men in the field.
Three years on, Ukraine's military has slipped back into a more rigid, top-down mode of fighting with roots in the Soviet era, creating mounting frustration about unnecessary casualties while hurting civilian morale and army recruitment. Without overhauls, the Soviet-style habits could undermine Ukraine's ability to sustain its defense against Russia, which shows no sign of relenting in its quest to conquer the country.
Ukrainian officers and infantrymen complain of a centralized command culture that often punishes initiative and wastes men's lives. Generals order repetitive frontal assaults that have little hope of success, and deny requests from beleaguered units to carry out tactical retreats and save their men. Casualties accumulate on operations with little strategic value.
'Our army is holding mainly thanks to the initiative of people up to the level of battalion commander," said Maj. Oleksiy Pasternak, a veteran officer who argues the higher echelons need urgent change.
It isn't holding everywhere. In recent days, small groups of Russian troops have pierced Ukrainian lines at a critical spot in the eastern Donetsk region, taking advantage of Ukraine's infantry shortage. Kyiv is scrambling to stanch the advance.
Russia's military suffers from far greater problems of an iron-fisted hierarchy that treats men as disposable. Its inefficiency helps explain why Russia has struggled to turn its advantages in numbers into a decisive breakthrough so far, instead inching forwards at great cost for the past two years.
But the issue is more critical for Ukraine, which can't replace its losses as easily as Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made that central to his strategy. Moscow is aiming to eventually force Ukraine's capitulation by wearing out its army and outlasting its Western support.
A cease-fire remains a long shot, despite this Friday's summit in Alaska between Putin and President Trump, because Putin is demanding that Ukraine retreat from strategically vital territory—a demand Kyiv and its European allies flatly reject.
A wounded Ukrainian soldier is transported at a stabilization point in the Donetsk region.
Privately, many Ukrainian soldiers repeat a bitter refrain: 'Big Soviet army beats little Soviet army."
Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, a battalion commander in Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade, took his frustrations public. In May he denounced the army's top brass on Facebook. Railing against 'stupid" orders and losses, he spoke of pervasive fear in the army of generals who are 'only capable of reprimands, investigations, imposing penalties." Addressing the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces, he said: 'I hope your children will also be in the infantry and will carry out your tasks."
He told the Journal he was driven to speak out after his battalion was repeatedly ordered by senior commanders to launch assaults that were unrealistic for the unit's limited means.
The final straw, said Shyrshyn, was an order for his men to go back into Kursk—a Russian region that Ukrainian forces had partly captured a year ago but ultimately had to withdraw from. The direction of the ordered attack was predictable and the Russians were prepared for it, he said. Wave after wave of Russian infantry counterattacks forced a retreat. Many men were killed, said Shyrshyn, including fresh, well-trained recruits, who are hard to come by. 'They were young and motivated. I had hopes for them. Instead we just lost them."
'We need to change our methods from quantity to quality," Shyrshyn said. 'We can't beat Russia with our resources. They are bigger—we need to be better."
Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, a battalion commander in Ukraine's 47th Mechanized Brigade, has taken his frustrations public.
After the Facebook post, the army leadership reprimanded Shyrshyn for indiscipline. The military's overall chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, brushed him off as an attention-seeker. But many fellow soldiers supported his criticisms.
Syrskiy's headquarters, the General Staff of the Ukrainian military, acknowledged some problems in a statement to the Journal but said improvements were being made, including an overhaul of training and the transition to a U.S.-style command approach that delegates more decisions. It said strict top-down control is sometimes needed when units aren't performing, and that brigade commanders are replaced if they're losing too many men.
'A full-scale war has revealed both strengths and vulnerabilities at all levels," the General Staff statement said.
In a sign of a continuing clash of cultures, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatiy—a 42-year-old seen as one of Ukraine's most talented generals from a younger, post-Soviet generation—resigned as head of ground forces in June.
Drapatiy said he was taking responsibility for a Russian missile strike on a training base that killed 12. But he also spoke of his struggle to change an institutional culture based on 'an atmosphere of fear, lack of initiative, closedness to feedback" and 'a deep gap between the headquarters and the units." He said he had kick-started reforms but more were needed.
Up and down the 750-mile front line, many Ukrainian troops tell stories similar to Shyrshyn's. One common experience: senior commanders have on a number of occasions refused to authorize a timely tactical retreat, leaving men in danger of encirclement and destruction. Front-line officers say such refusals show a wasteful attitude to men's lives by senior ranks who don't want to take the blame for losing ground.
Late last year, Lt. Col. Serhiy Kostyshyn wanted to withdraw his battalion of Ukraine's Presidential Brigade from a badly exposed position in the southern part of the Donetsk region. He had intercepted Russian plans to surround the battalion, but staff headquarters kept telling him to stay put, even as larger Russian forces were outflanking the unit, he said. So Kostyshyn made his own decision.
Lt. Col. Serhiy Kostyshyn, above, made his own decision last year to conduct a fighting withdrawal from a badly exposed position in the Donetsk region, despite being told to stay put.Members of the battalion commanded by Kostyshyn near the front line.
Over three rain-sodden days, he conducted a fighting withdrawal. Most of the battalion escaped from the trap, but a platoon that stayed behind to cover the retreat was nearly wiped out.
For months afterward, Kostyshyn was investigated by military police and the SBU, Ukraine's counterespionage service, for abandoning a position. Eventually the interrogations petered out, he said.
'If you're dumb and obedient, they leave you alone," Kostyshyn said. 'It's the Soviet tradition."
Kostyshyn later won a promotion to deputy brigade commander. 'Somebody high up probably saw the logic of my actions," he said.
The SBU declined to comment. The General Staff said initiative on the battlefield is encouraged so long as it doesn't violate orders or lead to the unauthorized abandonment of positions.
The tensions in the Ukrainian army reflect the country's larger struggle to move away from its authoritarian past toward a more Westernized, democratic society. The country's dramatic changes since independence in 1991 have often stemmed from spontaneous initiatives by its civil society, including two mass revolts against governments. But many of Ukraine's institutions still bear the legacy of the Soviet past, including bureaucratic instincts of control.
Early in the war, soldiers headed into forests alongside veterans and civilians, armed with a mix of Western, Soviet-era and homemade weaponry. Their ingenuity—such as pioneering the use of commercial drones to spot the advancing Russian columns—led to a series of successes in 2022. Defying expectations in both Moscow and Western capitals of a rapid Russian conquest, Ukraine's defenders took back half of the territory that the invaders had captured.
Soon, however, a more old-school command structure emerged. It made a controversial decision that had a lasting impact on morale: to defend the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine for nine months, feeding many experienced army brigades into a meat grinder. The battle for Bakhmut continued for long after it was clear that Ukrainian forces would have to withdraw from the shattered city, which they finally did in May 2023. It remains the deadliest battle of the war.
Wounded Ukrainian soldiers arrive at a field hospital on the Bakhmut front line, summer 2022.Ukrainian soldiers coming back from the front line at the eastern part of Bakhmut, December 2022.Ukrainian soldiers deployed at the front lines near Bakhmut, March 2023.
Gen. Syrskiy, then the head of ground forces, directed the grim attritional slugfest, earning him the nickname 'the butcher" from the rank and file. Bakhmut began a worrying pattern for Ukraine's army: It was choosing battles its limited manpower couldn't afford, even though it was killing more Russians.
The 60-year-old Syrskiy, who became chief commander of the military in 2024, remains widely unpopular with Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom see him as the epitome of the Soviet syndrome: a Moscow-trained career officer who micromanages units on the ground, delaying retreats or ordering assaults that lead to morale-sapping casualties for tree lines or other objectives with little strategic value.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, right, on a visit to the front line in 2024.
The General Staff said preserving soldiers' lives and health is a key priority for the military's leadership. Syrskiy has been enacting measures since 2024 to save lives through better training, use of drone technology and learning from combat experience, the statement said.
But many Ukrainian officers say the problems run deeper than Syrskiy. Staff headquarters still include many officers who trained in a Soviet-style military many years before the war. Because of the rapid expansion of the army, many were pulled out of retirement and don't understand the fast-evolving, high-tech drone war on the ground, say veterans of the fighting since 2022.
Some officers say the situation is now improving as men with front-line experience rise to senior positions. 'The change is not gigantic, but it's happening," said Lt. Col. Yehor Derevianko, who is commanding a battalion of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, another battle-hardened unit fighting on the eastern front.
For years before Russia's full-scale invasion, countries from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization arranged training for Ukrainian officers to help modernize the country's military.
In 2022, Pasternak attended a course in the U.K. to study NATO concepts such as mission command, an approach to warfare where senior commanders set a goal but subordinates on the ground figure out how best to achieve it. It's the antithesis of the top-down Soviet tradition.
Maj. Oleksiy Pasternak, who resigned in frustration earlier this year from the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade, photographed in June in Dnipro. He is now training with the new Third Army Corps, which operates with more independence.
Pasternak resigned earlier this year from the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade in frustration at commanders' failure to follow the Western military methods.
'The NATO doctrine of mission command is absent from the whole army, except maybe for a few brigades," he said. 'They're using the Soviet principles. They don't trust the people under them."
During Ukraine's failed 2023 counteroffensive in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, generals from higher-level headquarters were shouting over the radio at brigade commanders, and even at sergeants on the battlefield, to attack again and again, even as units' casualties were making them incapable of combat, Pasternak said.
He recalled a battle last year in which 14 Ukrainian infantrymen, supported by artillery and drone units in their rear, were defending buildings in the Zaporizhzhia region against attack by several hundred Russians with armor and drones. Senior commanders insisted that the position be held, he said.
Lt. Col. Yehor Derevianko, commander of a battalion of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, in the basement where his unit has established a headquarters in the Donetsk region.Kostyantynivka railway station, destroyed by shelling and drones.
What they didn't realize was that another brigade had lost the area on their right flank, but hadn't told anyone. The Russians came in from the side and killed all 14 infantrymen, he said.
Fear of being sacked often leads to brigade commanders not reporting that they've lost a position, said Pasternak and other officers.
Pasternak is now training with the new Third Army Corps, being built around an elite brigade that's known for breaking with Soviet traditions: It relies on nimble decision-making at lower levels and tries to preserve its men through rigorous training and constantly analyzing and refining tactics.
Meanwhile he's under investigation by his old unit for going AWOL.
Ukrainian forces have suffered around 400,000 total casualties, including up to 100,000 killed, according to a recent estimate by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Russian total casualties are approaching one million, up to 250,000 of them killed, according to the CSIS estimate. But Russia's total population is nearly four times bigger.
In a country where everyone has a friend or relative who is fighting, stories of conscripts thrown into the fray after barely any training are hampering Ukraine's recruitment efforts. After the initial wave of patriotic enthusiasm in 2022, volunteers have become a trickle. Some soldiers say they warn friends against enlisting.
Comrades and relatives of Yuri Kazakov, an army sergeant killed in June, attend his funeral at a cemetery in Kharkiv.
One 50-year-old man from Kyiv said he volunteered for the army early this year and soon regretted it. Training consisted of collecting firewood. 'I didn't even see a gun." When he joined, he said he was promised a job as a driver in a drone unit, but he was sent to join the front-line infantry near Pokrovsk, another main target of Russia's offensive. He drove back to Kyiv, joining tens of thousands of men who have gone AWOL or deserted.
'I'm happy to serve," he said. 'But I didn't want to head to the front with no knowledge, not even having fired a gun."
The General Staff said training has been improved since last year and all soldiers are taught basic skills including shooting.
For many soldiers, Kyiv's incursion into Kursk was emblematic of how lingering Soviet habits are costing lives. The foray began well. Some of Ukraine's best assault troops stormed over the border last summer, catching the Russians by surprise and seizing more than 400 square miles of territory. Ukraine's government hoped the land could be a bargaining chip in peace negotiations. Carrying the fight to Russia was supposed to change the world's perceptions and boost morale at home.
But Kursk soon turned into another attritional battle. Russia brought in reinforcements, including its best drone units and some 10,000 North Korean troops.
'They started to cut off our logistics," said Shyrshyn, whose 47th Mechanized Brigade took part in the incursion. 'By winter we couldn't continue the operation effectively." He said he wrote reports describing the problems and proposing solutions, but commanders didn't want to make hard decisions. 'We needed to either change the situation on the battlefield, or withdraw. But we just waited, until everything started falling apart."
Fear of making decisions led to a growing paralysis. Two men from the 41st Mechanized Brigade said their unit spotted a group of Russian soldiers out in the open and asked a commander for a mortar strike. But he refused until he had permission from higher up.
A Ukrainian soldier wounded at the front is transported inside a stabilization point in the Donetsk region.Staff cares for a wounded Ukrainian soldier at the medical stabilization point in the Donetsk region.
'If it doesn't work, I'll get blamed," the commander said. By the time he got approval, the Russians had disappeared. The commander's comment became a punchline among his men.
On another occasion, a corporal from the 41st said he and five other soldiers were hunkered down in a trench that was getting pummeled by Russian drones and artillery. Their overhead cover had been destroyed. They asked for permission to retreat a few hundred yards to another tree line.
'Is the square holding?" a commander responded, referring to a colored square on the army's grid map. Since the answer, for the moment, was yes, he denied permission to withdraw.
Only after hours of artillery strikes were they allowed to retreat, carrying two men who couldn't walk.
'On the map it's green squares—looks tidy," the soldier said. 'But decisions need to be made based on what's happening on the ground."
When the Ukrainians finally retreated from Kursk, it was often desperate and chaotic. Units abandoned their vehicles. Men walked long distances on foot. The main road back to Ukraine, by now under intense Russian fire, was strewn with the smoldering corpses of Ukrainian soldiers and stricken vehicles with more dead servicemen inside, according to troops who retreated.
A member of the Bulava drone group of Ukraine's Presidential Brigade leaves a bunker near the eastern front where his unit develops and builds drones.
Some platoon commanders who withdrew without permission to save their men's lives were investigated. Other men found themselves abandoned in Kursk without orders.
A drone operator with the 17th Tank Brigade, known by his call sign Barsik, said his team was encircled by Russians after earlier being told to stay in place. He and three other men managed to escape.
Barsik abandoned his brigade and joined the Da Vinci Wolves, a battalion fighting in the Donetsk region. The battalion, which relies on volunteers and private donations, has an unusual degree of independence and is known for taking care of its men. Other soldiers from the Da Vinci Wolves say they're recruiting a growing number of men who've gone AWOL from their old units.
'People were dying without understanding why. Commanders didn't care about the personnel," said Barsik.
Write to Marcus Walker at [e-mail] and Ian Lovett at [e-mail]