Ukrainian Army

Гай-Нижник П. Військова розвідка і контррозвідка УНР та УД: створення, завдання, діяльність (1918 р.) // Національна спецслужба в українському державотворенні: збірник статей і матеріалів з нагоди 29-ї річниці утворення СБУ. – К.: Прометей, 2021. – С.77–102.

The annexation of Crimea by Russia and the first weeks of the war in the Donbas revealed what Ukraine’s armed forces were in reality – a petrified structure, incapable of any effective action in the face of minimal enemy engagement. A considerable section of the armed forces’ personnel gradually became aware of whom they were representing only in the course of the conflict and it was not rare that from the perspective of service in one of post-Soviet military districts they sided with Russia.

The war in the Donbas shaped the Ukrainian army. It helped its soldiers gain awareness and motivation. It also forced the administration of the Ukrainian ministry of defence and the government to adapt the structure – for the first time since it was formed – to the real operational needs and to incur the costs of preventing a collapse in the area of training and equipment, at least to the level which makes it possible to engage in a war on a level playing field with the pro-Russian separatists.

В этом очерке не раскрывается весь многогранный и динамичный феномен новых добровольческих частей 2014 года. Вместо этого, я сфокусируюсь лишь на предыстории и некоторых аспектах возникновения одного особого и несколько девиантного примера общего феномена добровольцев6, а именно на раннюю историю одного из самых знаменитых из этих подразделений – полка «Азов». Более того, история этой структуры здесь рассматривается лишь с точки зрения политических, а не военных наук, т.е. как разновидность негражданского общества, а не вооруженных сил Украины. Иными словами, я сконцентрируюсь здесь на определенных особенностях создания «Азова», а не на боевых действиях, заслугах или возможных промахах этого подразделения. Последние представляют собой ещё более трудно исследуемые сюжеты, которые я не в состоянии обоснованно и компетентно оценить. Не столько сама известность, сколько причина западного медийного внимания к «Азову» – а именно, эксцентричные политические взгляды создателей подразделения – стали и для меня поводом для краткого рассмотрения специфики его предыстории, идеологии, руководства и создания. Неонацистские, как будет показано ниже, тенденции в этой теперь уже сравнительно большой военной части представляют собой проблему сразу в нескольких отношениях. Некогда явно фашистские взгляды главных командиров полка ставят под вопрос как его сегодняшнюю, в других отношениях, возможно, заслуживающую уважение боевую деятельность, так и послевоенное будущее «Азова».

Шляхи становлення Національного музею історії України: від першовитоків до сьогодення: Тематичний збірник наукових праць. / Редкол.: Н.Г. Ковтанюк (відповідальний редактор) та ін. — К.: Національний музей історії України, 1994. - ISBN 5-7707-6601-8.

До століття від дня заснування Національного музею історії України передбачено підготувати серію тематичних збірників наукових праць, де автори висвітлюватимуть шляхи становлення закладу, розповідатимуть про його фундаторів, розглядатимуть окремі колекції, історію їх формування та джерела поповнення фондового зібрання новими матеріалами.
Це видання започатковує заплановану серію, чим і зумовлено його тематику. Розраховане воно на працівників музеїв, студентів, а також спеціалістів, що займаються вивченням історії, теорії і практики музейної справи.

For the Ukrainian army, mobiles provided a convenient battlefield tool due to outdated communications systems available in 2014. Soldiers were asking volunteers to supply them, among other essentials, with used mobile phones. They soon discovered mobiles were a mixed blessing: easily wiretapped, a handy artillery target, and a distraction under fire with calls from kin that not only brought home to the frontline but also plunged the families in the immediate trauma of war.

What do I mean by "military" and "social" structure in my short presentation? By "military" structure I mean main forces and units which were deployed in Ukraine on both sides. In a way this is synonymous to "the order of battle". By "social" structure I mean selected non-military social characteristics of the military personnel on both sides. In particular gender, ethnicity, level of education, social status. We must understand that currently we are at active stage of war, so detailed data about forces which are involved in combat are classified and may be available for social researchers only after a long period of time. So now we have to use public sources, which allows us to build the general picture of the subject, but not quantitatively analyze with the use of exact numbers. At the same time if we have the experience of analyzing armed forces quantitative data, we can assess which publicly available pieces of data is probably correct and which is not. So, that's how I proceeded with my exploration. I used the following public information sources: ✔ Daily operational update about the Russian invasion from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (https://www.zsu.gov.ua/en) ✔ Ministry of Deference of Ukraine prewar statistical data extrapolated to the current situation. ✔ UK Ministry of Defence Intelligence daily updates on the situation in Ukraine (https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ) ✔ Daily Russian offensive campaign assessments by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW, https://www.understandingwar.org/) ✔ Other mass media messages for particular examples (photo and video evidences). For cross-confirmation I used my contacts with MoD officers. On the basis of anonymity they provided me their opinion about the credibility of particular messages and some publicly non-available data, which I will not share here, but which influenced my conclusions. On the 4th slide I list Ukrainian defense forces and units which I consider the most important to understand the peculiarities of this war. First, of course, is the Armed Forces of Ukraine itself, the professional military itself. The Territorial Defense Forces are its component, but have their important differences from the all-army staff. The National Guard of Ukraine is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but was actively involved in combat and have enough heavy weapons.

The Ukrainian state needs to achieve at least some modicum of security, as a political entity and as an investment destination. This security will only be achieved when Russia’s leadership and wider elite circles are made fully and publicly aware of the whole battery of serious challenges that their own country would face in the case of another escalation in Ukraine. The West and other friends of Ukraine need to start thinking beyond the confines of supporting Ukrainian domestic reforms and advocating for elusive  NATO membership. Only, a Ukrainian state equipped with high-tech defensive weapons, supported by the US and the UK on the basis of the Budapest Memorandum, embedded in an East European security structure, and in alliance with an EU ready to impose far more substantive sanctions against Russia will have a real chance to become a successful countermodel to the Putin System.

Contemporary warfare is characterised by hyperconnectivity and omnipresence of portable communication devices in combat situations. In the spirit of actor-network theory (Latour 2006), the paper will trace a difficult history of mobile phone on the frontline, where, in spite of being formally banned, it became an indispensable component of the military, its informal communication system, combat tool and entertainment station. The study will highlight, primarily by way of in-depth interviews with Ukrainians soldiers who were deployed on the frontline in 2014-2020 as well as some of their family members, how the connectivity and war forged a specific “media amalgamation” (Jansson 2014) and a set of affordances at a certain price, not only allowing the soldier to take their home to the frontline but simultaneously bringing war to the soldier’s home as well.

The article focuses on the Ukrainian geopolitical presence in the Black Sea littoral tracing its development since the beginning of the twentieth century. An attempt is made to predict the future regional policies of Ukraine taking into account ongoing irreversible processes: the recent Ukrainian democratic revolution, early presidential elections of 2014, growing Russian confrontation with the Western states, ongoing insurgency in the Eastern Ukraine, promising cooperation with Turkey and others. Apart from this, the outlines are drafted for Ukraine to fully benefit from the available political and economic options in the current discourse. Finally, the article includes arguments for the EU, U.S. and NATO to revise their modus operandi in the Black Sea littoral and make a stake on Ukraine as on the champion of the liberal values and democracy.

The essay "A Military Theory of The Ukrainian Arm" is a historical overview of the political and military roots of the various Ukrainian armed forces up to the present time. From an understanding of the past Ukrainian military forces beginning in the early 20th century, one can trace a miliary theory of the essence of the poltical and military ambitions or aspirations of the Ukrainian Ground Forces.  Luis Lazaro Tijerina

on the project "Social factors of predominance of pro-European and pro-Russian geopolitical orientations in the regions of Ukraine". The data and results from these two research (see slide 3 of the presentation) periods are the main driven factors of the current analysis I want to present to you. So it's broader than just the linguistic context of hybrid warfare in Ukraine and actually not related to military education. What I want to argue is that in the prewar period (before 2014) regional principle of the troops' deployment in Ukraine was one of the factors of how they conducted in the early stages of the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, especially in Crimea. To refresh your knowledge about Russo-Ukrainian military conflict let me remind you some facts about it. As a result of the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine, president Yanukovych was overthrown and sought protection in Russia. The change of Ukrainian authorities extremely reduced the chances of Kremlin to gain control over it via political means. This crisis became a trigger for Russia to act more openly in order to realize its geopolitical aspirations. During March and April 2014 in the Eastern and Southern regions, several propaganda campaigns were organized to separate these regions from Ukraine. After informational preparation, military Special Forces without identification marks later known as "little green men" took their turn. They succeeded in rapid annexation of Crimea, but failed in the Donbas region, which resulted in protracted and a slaughterous military crisis. The conflict in SouthEast Ukraine represents a new form of "hybrid warfare"-a combination of open military actions with undercover special operations, organization and support of separatists, pro-Russian paramilitary groups, combined with an aggressive use of propaganda and disinformation carefully calculated to avoid crossing established thresholds for military response.

Since the USSR's collapse Black Sea region, in which Ukraine is one of the central powers, has become in many ways important for European security. Today the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are the only state army that openly takes part in combat in Europe. After the war in the Donbas region broke out the AFU transformed both quantitatively and qualitatively: it increased to almost 300 thousand active personnel and changes its marginal status in Ukrainian society. That is why we cannot but consider the social problems of AFU and their possible implications on its ability to ensure security in the region. The author summarizes his 3.5 years' experience of leading an applied sociological studies laboratory at the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine. Key organizational, methodological problems, and findings of sociological studies of socioeconomic , gender, deviance, religion, and ideological issues in the AFU are presented. The main causes of de facto termination of systematic sociological studies in AFU are considered. Brief personal statement My acquaintance with military sociology was quite accidental. When I was a PhD student and searched for a job, preferably in academia, an official from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine was searching through universities for a qualified male (that was exactly the requirement of that time) professional sociologist and came to our dean who recommended me. I had no experience in the Military field whatsoever, never served in any military alike organization like police or so. But at the same time, I had experience in conducting sociological studies on all Ukraine level (including work in the public opinion research sector of the Presidential Administration) and was quite strong in survey research methodology. In addition, other officers and civil servants at the sociological division (and later in the sociological laboratory) of the Center for Humanitarian problems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were trained mainly in history and philosophy. So I was the only professional sociologist who had official access to the military personnel and had a duty to provide systematic sociological studies results for the Ministry of Defense. So all current methodological base for the research of the officers and non-commissioned officers was developed by me. The problem was that I simply extrapolated my civil research experience to the military. Why I tell all these details about my personal experience is because the current situation is quite similar to what we had in the pre-2011 period. Who is doing military sociology research in Ukraine?

The military confrontation in South-Eastern Ukraine is an example of "hybrid warfare," in which one of the primary aspects is "war for minds." Differences in geopolitical predispositions among Ukrainians are frequently explained by their place of residence, ethnic identity, and native language. To test the effects The results of regression modeling demonstrate that regional structure is more potent than integration intentions in explaining general attitudes toward Russia. The level of lingual-ethnic heterogeneity was found to be partially responsible for regional variances. In general, it appears that linguistic context has a greater impact than ethnicity. Religious affiliation is still quite strong and influential.of attitude types, changing political situations, and social environments in the regions, the author used an excessive amount of data (2005-2015 period surveys with a total sample of 378,733 cases) and several combinations of dependent variables. The results of regression modeling demonstrate that regional structure is more potent than integration intentions inThe results of regression modeling demonstrate that regional structure is more potent than integration intentions in explaining general attitudes toward Russia. The level of lingual-ethnic heterogeneity was found to be partially responsible for regional variances. In general, it appears that linguistic context has a greater impact than ethnicity. Religious affiliation is still quite strong and influential. explaining general attitudes toward Russia. The level of lingual-ethnic heterogeneity was found to be partially responsible for regional variances. In general, it appears that linguistic context has a greater impact than ethnicity. Religious affiliation is still quite strong In addition to all Ukraine surveys the author analyzes regional differences among Armed Forces of Ukraine servants in terms of their religious affiliation and attitudes towards military-patriotic education in pre-war (2011-2013) period.and influential (Ivanov, 2015).
In addition to all Ukraine surveys the author analyzes regional differences among Armed Forces of Ukraine servants in terms of their religious affiliation (Іванов, 2013) and attitudes towards military-patriotic education in pre-war (2011-2013) period.

Гай-Нижник П. П. Українська морська піхота: історія створення і бойовий шлях (1918–1921 рр.) // Воєнно-історична робота в Військово-Морських Силах. Сучасний стан та перспективи. Матеріали ІІІ Всеукраїнської науково-практичної конференції, 12 листопада 2020 року. – Одеса: Інститут Військово-Морських Сил Національного університету “Одеська морська академія”, 2020. – C.57–70.