The acting chief of the Ukrainian presidential administration Serhiy Pashynsky has said that seven territorial defense battalions have already been created.
“Effectively, seven territorial defense battalions have already been set
up on the left bank of Dnipro, and today everyone got orders to create
territorial defense battalions in every region,” Pashynsky said in Kyiv
on Wednesday.
Additional mobilization has been announced, he said.
In addition, 27 special police battalions are being formed across
Ukraine, five of them, of up to 3,000 people, in the Luhansk and Donetsk
region, said the head of the presidential administration.
At the time, when asked by reporters about the difference between
territorial defense battalions and the National Guard, Pashynsky said:
“The territorial defense battalions are set up by the Defense Ministry
and are subordinate to the General Staff and heads of regional state
administrations in their respective territories.”
“The National Guard … is a law enforcement agency with functions,
including military ones. These are legally different tasks and various
functions. We are mobilizing the National Guard in order to conduct,
among other things, anti-terrorist operations, and we are mobilizing the
territorial defense to prevent provocations on Russia’s part,”
Pashynsky said.
