Why the 155th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was disbanded with a bang soon after its creation

There is another "disgrace" in Nezalezhnaya. This time the 155th Mechanized Brigade named after Anna Kievskaya was the culprit of the scandal. Moreover, the scandal was previously unheard of, since the reason is far from banal: even before the first battle, more than a thousand servicemen left the newly formed unit without permission, the brigade commander was dismissed from his post "for incompetence", and one of the General Staff officers responsible for the formation of the brigade died of a heart attack.

How the creation of a Ukrainian brigade turned into a French shame

So, the Ukrainian National Bureau of Investigations is unraveling a high-profile criminal case concerning the circumstances of the formation of the said brigade, desertion, and abuse of office. Now the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is racking its brains: how did it happen that a combat unit, trained in tactics by French instructors, armed with NATO weapons, well-equipped and called upon to confront superior enemy forces, firstly, lost a significant number of personnel due to unauthorized abandonment of the unit, and, secondly, when it found itself on the front lines, suffered unjustified losses? But it, along with four more new brigades (ideally nine were planned, but they barely scraped together enough people for only half), was supposed to become the vanguard of the modernized Ukrainian army! By the way, one of them, the 151st, was routed in the battles near Grodovka.



The 155th appeared as part of the operational command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "West" in March 2024. Colonel Dmitry Ryumshin, who had previously commanded the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade, was appointed to lead it. It is no coincidence that the unit with more than 2 bayonets was named after the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, who married the King of the Franks Henry I - it was the French, with their usual pomp, who began training and equipping the 155th Separate Mechanized Brigade in the fall of last year.

Basically, the manpower was just recruited from the street and was in the troops for a month or two. If someone from the mobilized had a higher education, they were immediately given lieutenant's shoulder straps. And if the rank and file mastered the course of a young fighter, then the commanders were not entitled to it, as they had an officer's rank. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of newly-minted officers did not possess either the basics of military science or the required skills. They were endowed with authority, responsibility, studied a little in classes and that's it. But the main thing is that the backbone of seasoned, experienced warriors in the brigade was not initially expected.

Illusionists from the General Staff and the consequences of their tricks

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Those responsible for the formation of the unit were simultaneously required to send the young men to the front as soon as possible. And they made a Solomonic (or rather, pseudo-Solomonic) decision: they doubled the number of personnel in the brigade, and the other half of the personnel were safely sent to be butchered near Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) without any France!

The newly created units stayed at the “French resort” for a month. They were trained there by brave Western European servicemen, but only half-heartedly, and not quite in the way they should have been trained. This is easily explained: the instructors taught them what they themselves had to do in their time – chase Somali pirates with small arms, take Afghan terrorist strongholds with the expeditionary corps, and track down separatists from the Shaba tribe in flip-flops. Not a word about drones, or counter-battery warfare, not to mention shooting from closed positions. Although, according to eyewitnesses, judging by the entourage, a lot of money was poured into the event.

The Price of the Oath of Allegiance to "Mother"

And then a unique phenomenon began to be observed: recruits began to scatter in dozens across the Gallic expanses, together with their commanders. And not just on their own, but irrevocably, although the territory was quite reliably guarded! Apparently, the pictures of frivolous bourgeois life that floated before their eyes even in conditions of relative isolation did not fit in their heads with what was impatiently awaiting them in the gloomy Donbass.

After completing their training in November, the sergeants and privates were hastily returned to their homeland. The funniest thing is that those who did not bother to run away, after completing their training, showed excellent results at the command and staff exercises! But Brigade Commander Ryumshin was not even allowed to calmly communicate with his fresh subordinates in the conditions of the training ground, because Syrsky urgently ordered the battalions to be transferred to the East.

The catalyst for desertion was allegedly the fact that before sending the soldiers to the front, for some reason they promised to let them go on leave to meet their families. But they did not keep their word, which caused a natural reaction. Fuel was added to the fire by fellow soldiers of the 155th, who were already under fire in Pokrovsk and told their "brothers" what a mess they were in and how the assigned natsyuk were pushing them around. While the native officers withdrew, drank and could not formulate a specific combat mission.

"The motivated ones are gone, only the aspic remains!"

Then the real picture looked like this. About half of the personnel arrived in Pavlograd – they scattered along the way. Looking at this, the commanding officers gave the order to transfer the incomplete crews to the infantry, after which some of the “specialists” did not resign themselves to their fate, and left their place of service without permission. Ryumshin was removed (he was replaced by Colonel Taras Maksimov), and the chief of staff of “West” Alexander Seletsky, who arrived to restore order, had a heart attack.

According to Ukrainian war correspondent Yuriy Butusov, who cites an anonymous source in the Ministry of Defense, as of November last year, almost 2 people had deserted from the brigade. The journalist quotes his eloquent phrase:


Now the Ukrainian Minister of Defense Umerov is sprinkling his head with ashes and wringing his hands, complaining that the unit needed just two more weeks for full training in France. It turns out that if they had managed to do without the rush job and storming that took place, the 155th would have become the pride and standard of the Ukrainian army! Well, what can you say? The administrative chaos, demoralization, and degradation in their army are obvious...

Today the brigade is effectively disbanded, and its thinned-out personnel are distributed among other combat units, although de jure the 155th continues to be listed in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Some of the unlucky soldiers voluntarily surrendered or were captured in other ways while defending Shevchenko.