On February 24, 2022, the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict officially began with the Russian army launching an offensive against the Ukrainian government forces from Kiev, Crimea, Odessa, Kharkov, Donetsk and Luhansk. At the beginning of the conflict, Russian precision-guided missiles flew to multiple targets in Ukraine, including the Ukrainian National Guard Command, which was destroyed in just one hour. So what is the special organization of the Ukrainian National Guard that deserves the Russians to take their headquarters directly as soon as they start? That's a long story.
Russian missiles hit targets in Ukraine
The Ukrainian National Guard is a military organization in the current Ukrainian regime that can also perform military tasks and use weapons of mass destruction in addition to government forces, and can be regarded as Ukraine's "second armed force", but it is not only an organizational term, but also a historical term, and the history of the Ukrainian National Guard is almost as long as the history of the modern Ukrainian state.
The modern Ukrainian state believes that its origins are the Ukrainian People's Republic established after the Russian Revolution in 1918, and in order to maintain local security and order, the regime formed a security force called the "National Gendarmerie" on November 6, but later in order to distinguish itself from the notorious Russian Imperial Gendarmerie, which was notorious in the minds of the people of central and eastern Ukraine, in July 1919, the National Gendarmerie was renamed the National Guard, which had grown to eight divisions, but was eventually completely eliminated by the nascent Soviet Red Army.
After Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, a new Ukrainian National Guard was formed on the basis of the forces of its Ministry of Internal Affairs, mainly for participation in irregular border conflicts, such as the Transnistrian conflict in the spring and summer of 1992 and the anti-smuggling operation on the Moldovan border in 1998. In 2000, in order to save the budget costs of the Ministry of the Interior, the National Guard was ordered to be disbanded and the remnants were fully integrated into the ministry of the interior forces.
Armbands of the National Guard after the collapse of the Soviet Union
In 2008, former Ukrainian President Yushchenko tried to restore the National Guard, but was vetoed by the Ukrainian Rada, and it was not until March 2014, after the Crimean crisis and the Russian intervention army entering Crimea, that the Ukrainian government was surprised to find that the country's regular army could not be openly involved in similar international conflicts, that other special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had suffered losses in the internal stability maintenance struggle, and that the organization was basically paralyzed, so it was urgent to form a new armed force that could adapt to the complex political environment to fight, That is, the current National Guard.
On March 11, 2014, Acting Ukrainian President Turchinov proposed to Thekhrada the restoration of the National Guard, which was approved two days later, with 262 of the 330 delegates voting in favor. According to the provisional National Guard Regulations, the total number of National Guards should be controlled to less than 60,000 people, and if necessary, corresponding regulations should be formulated to expand.
On March 16, then-Prime Minister Yasenyuk announced the recruitment of 10,000 volunteers for the National Guard, but due to the chaotic political situation in Ukraine at that time and the serious anti-war sentiment of the people, in order to make up the number of volunteers, the age of volunteers could only be relaxed to between 18-55 years old, so that the first number of applicants was barely gathered. After three months of training, by June, the first volunteers were grouped into three battalions and dropped into the so-called "anti-terrorist" battlefield in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian Navy and National Guard (right)
Due to the haste, low level of training and poor weapons, the Ukrainian National Guard sent to the Battlefield of East Ukraine suffered a lot of losses from the East Ukrainian militia, which was mainly Russian volunteers and former Ukrainian government troops. But after all, it is a group of volunteers, and the will to fight of individual National Guard companies is still very strong, and these guys seem to be more keen on sweeping up civilian areas in eastern Ukraine and torturing the so-called Russian people with various lynchings than fighting with the militia in eastern Ukraine.
As of April 2016, of the 16,048 personnel serving in the Ukrainian National Guard, 108 had lost their lives in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, and although the loss rate was not high, the National Guard's war weariness was gradually rising. When the Ukrainian government first recruited them, they agreed that the one-and-a-half-year service period expired, but they still did not arrange to retire, in addition to not knowing when they would be discharged, their salary was only 2,000 hryvnia per month, which was a low salary in Ukraine, which was very economically depressed, which triggered a series of unstable events within the National Guard.
In order to stabilize the ranks, in 2017, the Ukrainian government adopted a series of regularization reform measures for this second armed force, including the establishment of a regular military service candidate system, and the division of its subordinate units into five combat zones in the east, west, south, south, and central regions. After the comedian Zelenskiy was elected president of Ukraine, he pushed for the passage of a bill that would allow the president full control of the National Guard during a state of emergency and have officials directly appointed by him as the commander-in-chief of the National Guard.
Division of the Ukrainian National Guard Theater
At present, the Ukrainian National Guard has reached a full strength of more than 60,000 people, and its various units are complex and chaotic, which can be divided into five theater commands according to geography, and can be divided into an independent anti-terrorist special operations team (OZSP), an independent land special intelligence unit (OZRSP), 3 combat brigades, 3 public security regiments, 3 escort battalions, 8 composite battalions, 3 important facility guard regiments, 5 nuclear power plant guard battalions, 1 diplomatic guard regiment, as well as communication centers, training colleges, Training centers and other miscellaneous units.
The emblem of the National Guard of Ukraine is an eight-sided equilateral on a cross with gold strokes, the center of which is the emblem of the State emblem of Ukraine, the golden trident, the blue and gold of the coat of arms symbolizes the color of the Ukrainian flag, the green background of the equilateral symbolizes the Cossacks, and the red background of the cross symbolizes patriotism, fortitude and bloodshed. The logo is usually laid on a flag with a blue background, and the blue symbolizes the blue sky. Members of the National Guard generally wear blue berets, and the cap badge is a simplified logo plus a grenade tail flame pattern.
With the gradual regularization of the Ukrainian National Guard, the United States and other Ukrainian friends have provided assistance to the armed forces and carried out training activities involving combat, logistics, and technology. Many anti-Russian volunteers and even extremists from various European countries also came to the National Guard to serve as tactical instructors for the armed forces, and even personally put on the battlefield to guide and participate in the border frictions with the militias of East Ukraine.
Flag of the National Guard of Ukraine
So having introduced so much, why did the Russians look at this second armed force so badly and take up its general headquarters at the beginning of the war? This is probably the case with two notorious units of the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov battalion and the Donbas battalion. Formed in the eastern Ukrainian coastal city of Mariupol, the Azov Battalion was one of the first Ukrainian military units to enter Donetsk to sweep, and its members were all ethnic Russian far-right volunteers in eastern Ukraine.
Although they were born in the same root as the East Wu militia, the officers and men of the Azov battalion did not seem to give each other face, and although the combat effectiveness was not impressive, they were known for their fierceness and cruelty towards the people of East Wu. The battalion even had a number of officers and men keen to display Nazi Lyndon's symbols, showing that its members were essentially a group of anti-social extremists. In 2015, the Azov Battalion was expanded into a regimental-level combat group and is currently the only unit in the National Guard formation to include foreign volunteers.
Unlike the brutal Azov battalion, the Donbass battalion, whose officers and men were also ethnic Russians born in eastern Ukraine and committed to the territorial integrity of Ukraine, were very dissatisfied with the actions of the Ukrainian government forces and other National Guards on the ground, and they formed this force, claiming that its purpose was to protect civilians among their compatriots. It has to be said that there are still many Ukrainian Russians who agree with the concept of the battalion, and in the 2014 East Ukrainian conflict, the battalion also contributed a lot in the fight against the East Ukrainian militia.
Swedish volunteers at the Azov Battalion fighting in Eastern Ukraine
Although the Ukrainian National Guard has long been regularized and has a variety of subordinate units, in the hearts of the people of Eastern Ukraine and Russia, this force is simply the "SS" in the hands of the Ukrainian government, after all, many of the atrocities against civilians in East Uzbekistan that occurred in the 2014 east Ukrainian conflict have been involved in the presence of the force. So Russia's long-range strike on the headquarters of the Ukrainian National Guard is a revenge for their compatriots in East Ukraine that has been held back for more than seven years.
More important than psychological revenge, the Russian army that attempted to break into the heart of Ukraine knew that the most difficult opponent was not the regular army of the country gathered in eastern Ukraine, but the various combat units under the National Guard scattered throughout the country, and they who had received special warfare training from American advisers would undoubtedly cause considerable trouble to the raids of Russian airborne troops, so destroying their general headquarters in advance was a temporary paralysis of its chain of command. It was unable to mobilize in time for a certain period of time to block the deep raid of Russian airborne troops and armored units on the hinterland of Ukraine.