Ukraine prepared around a dozen army, air-assault, marine and national guard brigades specifically for its 2023 counteroffensive, which kicked off on several sectors in southern and eastern Ukraine on June 4.
Ukraine’s NATO allies helped with at least nine of those brigades—arming them with Western-made armored vehicles and training their troops to NATO standards at NATO facilities.
Ten weeks into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainian regional commands have committed nearly all of the brigades. Just how long Ukraine can sustain its slow advance might depend on how many more fresh brigades Kyiv still has in reserve.
It seems there are just five uncommitted brigades plus a few loose independent battalions. Two of the five brigades are national guard or territorial units.
One active brigade, the 44th Mechanized, is in Poland training on Polish-made Wolverine fighting vehicles—and may already have deployed at least a battalion to northeastern Ukraine, where the Russian army has launched a countercounteroffensive.
Of the other three so-far-uncommitted active brigades, the 61st might be the most ready. The brigade formed in 2015 as a reserve light infantry formation and, since then, steadily has grown heavier. Most recently, it reequipped with powerful, Czech-made rocket-launchers: weapons Kyiv surely wouldn’t waste on a brigade it plans permanently to sideline.
The 61st Brigade stood up in 2015 in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. The Ukrainian army frantically was mobilizing: forming new brigades and arming them with ex-Soviet weaponry.
To form the 61st, the Ukrainian general staff reassigned three infantry battalions belonging to the territorial force, roughly the Ukrainian equivalent of the U.S. Army National Guard. The brigade with its roughly 2,000 former territorials initially fell under the army’s reserve command, and encamped in Chernihiv Oblast just north of Kyiv.
It wasn’t much to look at, at first. But in time, the 61st Brigade gained heavier equipment and, in 2019, transferred from the reserves to the active army and shifted its headquarters to Zhytomyr Oblast in northern Ukraine. At the same time, it got a new name: the 61st Jaeger Brigade.
In Ukrainian military custom, a jaeger brigade is a forest and mountain formation with lightweight vehicles and special training for operations on rough terrain. The 61st equipped with the ex-Soviet BRM-1 reconnaissance vehicle: a version of the 15-ton BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle, but with extra communications gear for its 11 crew and passengers.
As a jaeger brigade, the 61st fought on the southern front of Ukraine’s fall 2022 counteroffensive. While heavier mechanized brigades cleared depleted Russian regiments from Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, lighter formations including the 61st barrelled toward Russian-occupied Kherson on the mouth of Dnipro River in southern Ukraine.
In one of the iconic moments of the Kherson operation, 61st Brigade spotters cued a pair of Ukrainian air force Sukhoi Su-24 bombers on a low-level bombing run that knocked out a Russian tank.
After Kherson’s liberation, the 61st redeployed east, to Donbas. Apparently while the brigade was out east, its designation changed again—to a mechanized brigade. In December, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenksy presented the unit with a battle flag in recognition of its sacrifice in the defense of Ukraine.
It’s apparent why the 61st suddenly qualified as a mechanized brigade. While it had kept its lightweight BRM-1s, it also had gained RM-70 rocket-launchers from the Czech Republic.
The RM-70 is a 37-ton heavy truck with a 40-round launcher for 122-millimeter rockets ranging as far as 32 miles. The RM-70’s main advantage over the smaller BM-21 launcher is that it packs a second pallet of 40 rockets for rapid reloading. In short order, an RM-70 can pepper an area greater than seven acres with 80 rockets.
The 61st is an experienced unit with reliable equipment and an abundance of long-range firepower. Unlike, say, the mutinous 115th Mechanized Brigade, the 61st can be counted on to fight—and fight hard.
So where is it? The two most recent releases from the brigade’s media officers, depicting live-fire training somewhere presumably far behind the line of contact, are dated April and June.
With the uncommitted 115th Brigade likely in timeout and the new 44th Brigade already beginning to deploy battalions from their training grounds in Poland, it’s possible the 61st Brigade—wherever it currently is—will be the last uncommitted active unit to join Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Follow me onTwitter.Check outmywebsiteorsome of my other workhere.Send me a securetip.
