Assault regiments ordered to suspend intake of personnel – UP
Mykhailo Drapatyi, Ukraine's newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, has issued orders to the assault regiments of the Ground Forces to suspend the intake of additional personnel from 26 July.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda sources in three assault regiments
Quote from source 1: "We can no longer take people from the reserve battalions or people who have been newly conscripted."
Quote from source 2: "We received a message stating that, by decision of the commander-in-chief, the allocation of personnel to assault military units (sub-units) of the Ground Forces would be suspended from 00:00 on 26 July.
The transfer of military personnel from other units [i.e. transfers into assault regiments – UP] has also been suspended.
The only remaining option is for those who went absent without leave before 12 June to return through Army+ [a Ukrainian mobile app that soldiers can use to send electronic reports to their commanders – ed.]. Two people were in the process of transferring to my unit through the return-from-AWOL procedure, and now I haven't a bloody clue what's happening. They had already left their unit and were waiting to transfer to us [to one of the assault regiments – UP], and now I don't know what to do with them."
Details: This is the first decision by Ukraine's senior military command to restrict the assault regiments' ability to replenish their personnel.
Previously, at least two assault regiments – the 425th Skelia and the 225th – were known to UP to have had exclusive rights to a continuous flow of personnel and permission to expand.
Skelia, which in essence is a regiment and should have 3,000-4,000 personnel, was expanded to over 10,000 service members.
Meanwhile, other assault units, such as the 1st Separate Assault Regiment and the 475th Separate Assault Regiment, did not enjoy such privileges, even though UP sources in the defence forces say that they operate quite effectively and with advanced methods.
The 225th and 425th regiments are considered to have enjoyed the direct patronage of former Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, greater autonomy in their operations, and better provision compared with other Ground Forces units.
This is the first response from the senior command in the past two months, during which numerous investigations have entered the public domain concerning allegations of torture, beatings, and killings in the assault regiments and in the 155th Brigade, which is closely affiliated with Skelia.
As far as UP is aware, there is currently some degree of anxiety within the assault regiments about whether Drapatyi will disband them and what will generally become of them.
Background: The General Staff announced on 29 July that it had launched a review regarding the staffing of military units and the equitable distribution of personnel across Ukraine's Armed Forces. Whether the review concerns specific units or the Armed Forces as a whole was not specified.
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