Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov, in his latest publication, raised the urgent issue of military strategy and command responsibility in the context of war with Russia. Known for his deep analyses and high expertise in military affairs, Butusov draws attention to a number of problems that complicate the conduct of war and require proper responsibility from the general command.
Why is Ukraine the only army in the world in the 19th and 21st centuries that does not fight in divisions and corps, and why do generals evade responsibility?
The main problem of war is determining the responsibility of commanders at all levels for the result, that is, for destroying the enemy, preserving their people, and maintaining advantageous positions.
There is a lot of criticism at the front against the generals, that the headquarters of the OTU and OSUV control and punish brigade commanders and battalion commanders exclusively for stripes and points on the map, for holding positions, without paying attention to the state of the troops, the tactical situation, the problems of destroying the enemy and preserving one's own forces. The dramatic gap between strategic tasks and tactical capabilities led and leads to the constant repetition of the same mistakes, where planning is flawed from the very beginning, since it is tied to erroneous tactical decisions.
This contradiction is inherent in the very organizational structure of our defense forces, and has no precedent in world history during mass mobilization wars.
How is our government run?
In Ukraine, the highest organizational form at the front is a formation – a brigade. The brigade commander is responsible for the defense zone, the combat capability of the brigade, the task of defeating the enemy and preserving his own personnel and equipment, that is, he is responsible for everything. Our brigade defense zones are from 4 to 20 km, depending on the direction and conditions – the total front of active operations is currently approximately 800 km. If we count open sources, we have more than 100 brigades of all types of ground forces deployed, plus hundreds of individual units, battalions, companies, and detachments. Therefore, it would be logical to expect that such a large number of control objects, such a large front, require the formations to be increased to the size of divisions and the creation of formations – corps or armies. But this is not happening.
To control the troops, we have created operational-tactical commands - OTU, which are divided into areas that correspond to corps areas, and operational-strategic commands of troops - OSUV, the area of responsibility of the army.
But they are not responsible for the troops. Our troops are administratively part of the structure of separate operational commands – OK. OK temporarily subordinate their forces to front-line OTUs and OSUVs, which are directly responsible for the war.
Therefore, the OK and brigades are responsible for the combat capability of the brigades and the safety of people. And the OTU and OSUV are responsible for the stripes and points on the map, and they are responsible for achieving results in combat operations. And all these are different headquarters, different generals.
That's why there is a gap. It's a gap in responsibility at the general level. Points on the map cannot exist in isolation from the awareness of combat readiness, from personnel, from planning and organizing the destruction of the enemy.
Generals are not comprehensively responsible for the result – only brigade commanders are responsible, and that's it, then responsibility is dispersed.
In the history of world wars of the 19th and 21st centuries, there were no examples of mass mobilized armies or such a strange state of affairs.
In all other armies, evolutionarily, they came to a single logic - the higher the coordination and responsibility, the higher the combat capability, the better the controllability.
And what is the controllability of our OTUs? How can the OTU headquarters effectively manage if we have an OTU that at certain periods simultaneously had more than 20 brigades and more than 20 battalions of only heterogeneous infantry, plus an even larger number of units of other branches of the armed forces? Can you imagine if management can be effective if you have 100 subordinate commanders at the same time, and each one constantly requires planning and decisions? Nonsense.
And how can the OK restore the combat capability of brigades and battalions if they practically do not see their units and, being detached from their deployment, cannot assess the problems? No way.
What is the reason?
I have been writing about this problem since 2014, when the management of the fighting in Donbas was transferred to temporary structures - sectors, and then - to temporary operational directorates. Let me remind you that the structure of army corps in Ukraine existed until 2014, but in 2011-13, President Yanukovych carried out a systematic destruction of Ukraine's defense capabilities and disbanded the army corps. The last 8th army corps was liquidated in June 2014.
The then new Chief of the General Staff V. Muzhenko wanted to remake the entire structure of the army administration at his discretion. Therefore, the story with the disbandment of corps, with the creation of temporary headquarters, sectors, OTU, was convenient for manual control by the army, for the quick removal and appointment to positions of any general, and therefore it was preserved then, and is preserved to this day. That is, the absence of divisions and corps at the front - political reasons that had nothing to do with the combat capability of the army.
After Muzhenko was replaced, this temporary structure was maintained, as it proved convenient for his successors. But for the war, this solution worked terribly in both 2014 and 2024.
We need a reorganization of the troops - the creation of divisions and corps of permanent composition, because all the experience and logic of war requires this. We need generals to be personally responsible not for conducting selectors and marking points on the map, but for them, like combat troops and brigade commanders, to be jointly responsible for the permanent stable set of troops subordinate to them, and jointly responsible for the result - for the destruction of the enemy, for the preservation of their own, for maintaining the defense lines.
Yuri Butusov
