Post-283: Ukraine Civil War — The Azov Battalion

The Ukrainian Army is considered to be incompetent (see post-280). It is full of draftees (40% of its personnel were conscripts before the 2014 crisis; draft notices have a 70% ignore rate), and its leadership is considered poor.

It has just allowed 5,000 of its soldiers to be encircled by the pro-Russian rebels at a place called Debaltseve. The Ukraine government denies the encirclement, but informed observers are saying it’s true.

Looking at hasty ongoing Ukrainian efforts at this very moment, it seems not impossible that [the Ukraine Army] will be able to breach the de facto pocket [at Debaltseve], which holds since 15 hours [Feb 10], in the coming hours. However if it does so, using all its reserves in the area, it will only be a question of hours or days, before even stronger Russian army reinforcements will push back the Ukrainian army forces and re-close the pocket. […][Up to] 5,000 [Ukrainian] troops are besieged and the outlook is gloomy. [Source]

The Ukrainian Regular Army has bitter experience with encirclement in this war. Last August, it allowed over 1,000 of its troops to be encircled at a place called Ilovaisk (due east of Donetsk City), with the shocking one-time loss of over 1,000 personnel killed and captured (some of these 1,000 were allegedly killed by rebels while under the white flag), and with only 97 escaping the encirclement alive and uncaptured, according to a government spokesman. This humiliating defeat may be about to be repeated on a larger scale at Debaltseve…

Military Situation map published by the Ukraine government, February 2nd, 2015. [See larger version, 1.0mb, here]

I am following the developments at several places, which include translations from original Russian language sources:

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(1) Defence.pk : Civil War in Ukraine — forum, including many pro-Russian contributors.
(2) DefenceTalk.com : Ukraine Crisis — forum, including many translations of Russian sources; tending to professional-level analysis.
(3) ConflictReport.info Up-to-date news and commentary from a pro-Ukraine / pro-NATO perspective by a German conflict intelligence analyst. (This person does some professional-level “geolocating”, i.e. comparing actual locations in the vast amount of video footage released daily by both sides to Google Maps to confirm actual locations of the two sides, thereby slicing past disinformation by both sides about who controls what — he apparently “called” the fall of the Donetsk airport many days before the Kiev government admitted it, using this technique).
(4) Kyiv Post — English-language newspaper and very pro-Ukraine.

A disproportionate share of what military successes Ukraine has had are — this is amazing to me — due to the Azov Battalion (also called the Azov Regiment), a non-professional volunteer formation.

Azov is composed totally of non-(current-)military volunteers, including foreigners (Croatians, Finns, Norwegians, British, French, Italians are active in it). It grew up around Right Sector’s (see #197) armed political paramilitary group that existed before the war (see the screenshot in #197 #197)), dozens of whose members were killed in the February 2014 Kiev (see post-197), dozens of whose members were killed in the February 2014 Kiev streetfighting in February 2014 in Kiev that brought down the conniving pro-Russian government at the time., dozen, sostreetfighting that brought down the conniving pro-Russian government at the time.You can see some of these men pre-war in the screenshot in #197197#197. The video itself has been purged from Youtub

Battalion Azov, Ukraine

Azov insignia patch

New recruits mustered into Battalion Azov / Jan. 2015, Kiev / [from an Azov website]

Its numbers are secret, but the Ukrainian government “approved” bringing this formation to 12,000 volunteers last year.

After a few weeks of steady losses for the Ukrainian side, here is what the Azov Battalion has done in the past 36 hours as of this writing:

[On February 10th, 2015,] Regiment Azov surprised virtually the whole world when it […] started a counteroffensive east and north east of Mariupol mostly along the coastline of the Azov Sea.

Within hours, it had pierced the thin Russian [i.e., “Novorossia” secessionist forces’] line of defense some 2-5 km east of the city and retook important towns like Pavlopil, Shyronkyne, and Kominternove.

At the same time, it took the smaller settlements of Lebedynske and Berdyanske, which over the last month were more than once the launching pads for Russian tank, mortar and artillery attacks on the Ukrainian front east of Mariupol. [Source]

This means the pressure on the major regional city of Mariupol (pre-war population over 500,000), which in recent weeks looked like it would fall to the rebels, has been relieved — A major victory for Ukraine (which is why the report I quoted above from a pro-Ukraine German intelligence analyst was titled “A Glimmer of Hope“). Azov has announced the retaking of Novoazovsk as its goal.

The effectiveness of the Azov Battalion proves that morale and feeling of righteous purpose matter a lot, not just towards military effectiveness in a war, but probably towards any endeavor, any job, anything.

Battalion Azov training, near Mariupol (Kyiv Post, Jan. 28th)