Ground Forces
The largest branch — mechanised, motorised and infantry brigades.
Broad area of activity
The full length of the front since 2022 — from the Kyiv defensive battles through the counteroffensives to the positional fighting around the Donbas hubs.
Notable history
Carried the weight of every phase of the war: the 2022 defence of Kyiv and the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives, the 2023 southern offensive, and the long defensive battles since. Absorbed the bulk of Western equipment deliveries while expanding from a peacetime core to a mobilised force of dozens of brigades — a transformation achieved under fire.
Strengths
Deep combat experience at every echelon; proven ability to integrate a dozen foreign equipment families at once; a domestic artillery and drone industry increasingly behind it.
Limitations
Infantry shortage is the binding constraint, publicly acknowledged since 2024; quality varies widely between veteran and newly formed brigades; dependent on Western ammunition and air-defence supply for high-intensity operations.
Subordinate & associated
- Operational Command North Formation
- Operational Command South Formation
- Operational Command East Formation
- Operational Command West Formation
- 3rd Army Corps Formation
- 24th Mechanized Brigade "King Danylo" Formation
- 47th Mechanized Brigade "Magura" Formation
- 53rd Mechanized Brigade Formation
- 60th Mechanized Brigade Formation
- 63rd Mechanized Brigade Formation
- 72nd Mechanized Brigade "Black Zaporozhians" Formation
- 92nd Assault Brigade Formation
- 93rd Mechanized Brigade "Kholodnyi Yar" Formation
- 125th Heavy Mechanized Brigade Formation
- 17th Tank Brigade Formation
- 43rd Heavy Artillery Brigade Formation
Documented equipment
Related organisations
- Unmanned Systems Forces Institutionally linked to · as of 2026-06 · moderate confidence
Drone units are attached across the force rather than held within the branch, which concentrates doctrine, procurement and the elite strike formations. The edge records that distribution pattern; it asserts no command relationship in either direction.
Defence in depth with the drone as the primary shaping weapon. Hold with as little infantry as the ground allows, make the approaches to the line lethal for anything that moves, and trade space deliberately where the exchange favours the defence.
Preferred operating methods
Defence in depth, with the drone rather than artillery as the primary shaping weapon. The force holds forward positions thinly and relies on a deep contested zone behind and in front of the line, in which reconnaissance and strike drones make vehicle movement and troop concentration prohibitively costly. Artillery is used against what the drones find rather than as the primary means of attrition, a reversal of the pre-war relationship forced by ammunition scarcity as much as by choice. Where a position becomes untenable, withdrawal to prepared ground behind it is preferred to holding at cost — a principle stated more consistently than it has been applied, since political considerations have repeatedly kept forces in places the method would have given up.
A broad generalisation about how this organisation operates, graded as an assessment — not a description of current tactics, and deliberately carrying no capability or effectiveness score.
Command style
More decentralised than its Soviet inheritance and less so than its partners' doctrine assumes. Brigade and battalion commanders exercise substantial latitude, and volunteer-origin formations retain distinct cultures. The persistent tension is between that latitude and a General Staff that has periodically centralised control of reserves and of withdrawal decisions, with the July 2026 command change the most recent episode in a recurring argument.
Where this generalisation breaks down
The generalisation fails in two ways that matter. First, the stated preference for trading space has repeatedly been overridden — Bakhmut and Avdiivka were both held well past the point the method implies, for reasons that were political and reputational as much as military, and the module records that as a real feature rather than as a deviation. Second, "defence in depth" describes the east; the northern border is a standing screening commitment against a possibility, and the southern line is shaped by an obstacle rather than by a method.
Observed adaptations
Institutionalisation of drone warfare as a separate branch rather than as a capability distributed across existing arms — the clearest structural expression of how the force decided to fight.
Abandonment of large combined-arms assault after the 2023 southern offensive, in favour of small-unit action supported by drones and artillery.
Corps-level command structures introduced to reduce the number of formations reporting directly to operational commands, an attempt to fix a span-of-control problem that grew with the force.
What remains unknown
- Ukrainian doctrinal publications are not public, so this record describes observed practice.
- Decisions to hold or withdraw from specific positions are debated publicly after the fact and the reasoning is rarely documented.
- Force structure below the level published here is not disclosed, and no claim is made about the state of any formation.
Key events
Ukraine appoints Mykhailo Drapatyi as commander-in-chief
President Zelensky dismissed Oleksandr Syrskyi and named Mykhailo Drapatyi Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on 21 July 2026; Major General Ihor Skybiuk was named chief of the General Staff the following day. The command change followed a wider government reshuffle — the dismissal of the prime minister and of reformist defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov — and six days of protests in Kyiv.
Assessed as of2026-06Last reviewed2026-06
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