An extraordinary Ukrainian brigade is offering a model for others in the fight for survival against Moscow’s invaders. Khartiia, or the 13th National Guard Brigade, was founded as a volunteer battalion after Russia’s full-scale invasion by Vsevolod Kozhemyako, one of Ukraine’s richest men – writes Askold Krushelnycky.
Khartiia and the Ukrainian Millionaire
The billionaire, who made his fortune from agriculture, even donned a uniform himself to defend his native Kharkiv. From the start he wanted the brigade to be a model for a “new Ukrainian army,” compensating for Russia’s superior numbers and weapons supplies by harnessing innovative technologies and emulating NATO standards and attitudes to warfare.
Kozhemyako is convinced the key to success is “radical” reform of Ukraine’s military to root out the rigid hierarchical Soviet-era mindset that still lingers decades after the USSR’s collapse. With the war now at a dangerous moment, only a complete reconfiguration of the Ukrainian military can equip Ukraine for what he believes will be a long haul. That means training a new generation of officers and NCOs using NATO standards and Western attitudes.
“The war will continue, it will become bigger and more savage,” he said. And even if a peace deal is agreed, “we know this peace may not last long. For the next 50 years, even longer, we Ukrainians will live with the constant threat of another Russian invasion.” Western military training since 2014 has already helped Ukraine’s armed forces embrace individual initiative and flexibility, making them nimbler and more creative than Russia’s, which still rely on unquestioning obedience and that grind to a halt without orders from above.
Putin argues that the war is necessary
“An effective, intelligent, motivated army should not only change the situation on the battlefield and create a position for negotiations, it should also be the strongest guarantee for our future security,” he said. Despite suffering horrific casualties, Russian forces have steadily advanced, leading some, even among Kyiv’s staunchest supporters, to suggest Ukraine is on a losing trajectory and should consider ceding territory and making concessions as part of peace negotiations.
Kozhemyako is skeptical that the new US President Donald Trump’s chances of brokering a peace agreement because the Kremlin has weathered economic sanctions and Putin has persuaded most of his people that the war is necessary. “Trump’s administration doesn’t have any really strong arguments to persuade the Russian Federation to sit around a negotiating table with conditions that would be even remotely acceptable for Ukraine,” he said.
Ukraine must not depend on others and should make itself as self-reliant as possible, Kozhemyako says. “We must always remember that in this world we are the ones most concerned about the existence of a Ukrainian nation,” he said. “The rest of the world owes us nothing.”
Khartiia in NATO standards
Many Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting since the spring of 2022 and their physical and psychological weariness is obvious. They all crave peace, but fighters and civilians interviewed for this article overwhelmingly opposed surrendering any of their country for a truce that amounted to surrender to Putin’s demands. Atrocities in areas Russia temporarily occupied have shown the fate that awaits Ukrainians if Putin succeeds. In places like Bucha and Izium, thousands of servicemen, civic leaders and those defending Ukraine’s heritage were rounded up, tortured, executed or disappeared.
The Khartiia brigade’s chief of staff, Colonel Maksym Holubok, served as head of reconnaissance in the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions and in the long and bloody battle for Bakhmut, so he knows better than most what the Russians can do. He shares Kozhemyako’s vision for change.
“I was invited to join Khartiia and agreed because the concept appealed to me very much,” said Holubok, who has been a professional soldier for more than 20 years. “It was close to my soul and my vision for the future of our military.”
The brigade, which he refers to as a “big family,” values those who can apply experience from non-military careers to improving its fighting abilities and morale, he said. It includes people with expertise in business, industry, history, politics, music, IT, logistics, medicine and psychology.
Many of its commanders have experience as senior executives or managers, he added. In December, a professor from the Kyiv School of Economics led a three-day training course on project management for brigade members selected to form a new battalion. Holubok said many in the brigade have received instruction from Western allies — ranging from basic fighting skills to officer training — and it has incorporated American and British methods into its complex and meticulous battle planning.
This “data-based warfare” draws on the diverse experience of its members, using new technological and military developments, wargaming and studies of large-scale models. Attacks are rehearsed with weapons and vehicles on terrain similar to the battlefield.
“All our young officers, starting from sergeants up to battalion commanders, are told not to be frightened of using their initiative and making decisions,” Holubok said. “Under the Soviet system, everyone waited for the senior officer to give orders. We instill the opposite. They come to their commanders with ideas of their own.”
And all officers spend time in the lower ranks before taking up their command. “They get a number. No name, no rank, and they live that way for a month,” Holubok said. “After that they understand what they can demand of soldiers because they have been ordinary soldiers themselves.” Officers also spend time at the staff HQ “so they understand the bigger picture,” he added.
End of Sovietism in the Ukrainian army
The brigade’s commitment to using technology in fresh ways was demonstrated when it used ground and air drones in the first entirely robotic assault on Russian positions in November. The surprise attack, 20 miles north of Kharkiv, caused large Russian casualties without any Ukrainians hurt.
Airborne drones were used for surveillance and bombing while small ground vehicles, tracked or wheeled, were equipped with remote-controlled large-caliber machine guns or mines. Other drones broadcast calls for the Russians to surrender as part of the operation’s use of psychology and deception. For half an hour the confused enemy believed they were facing an attack by full-sized armored vehicles and human soldiers, officers said.
Khartiia and women
The brigade’s members undergo constant training and, alongside military skills, “commanders should have knowledge of such things as rhetoric, patriotic history, and psychology so they can be leaders in the full meaning of the term,” Holubok said. Some formidable figures, well-known in Ukrainian society — and all now trained soldiers — oversee projects related to the brigade’s training, ideology and communications.
One is Oksana Seroyid, a university professor, lawyer and former deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, who says the old Soviet culture must be “squeezed out” of the army. She volunteered for the military after the full-scale invasion and joined Khartiya last summer.
“The new culture is actually critical thinking and respect for human dignity,” she said. “This may sound very natural to people brought up in a democracy, but it’s not normal for Ukraine, which was a Soviet colony for so many years. We in Khartiia are experimenting on ourselves, finding ways to boost this critical thinking and amplify it.”
Askold Krushelnycky is a freelance journalist who has written about Russia’s war on Ukraine for The Independent, The Sunday Times, The Times, Foreign Policy and other publications. He is the author of An Orange Revolution.
