You're reading: Ukraine’s National Guard to get special task brigade

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said he has signed a decree on the formation in the National Guard of a special-task brigade "named after the Heavenly Hundred.'

“The brigade will consist of the best specialists of the National Guard and those who will respond to this professional call. It will be a fully equipped brigade ready for counterterrorist actions in any part of the country, both against an aggressor and against sabotage groups,” he said at the ceremony for handing over new armored vehicles to the National Guard in the village of Novi Petrivtsi, Kyiv Oblast, on July 22.

Avakov said the special task brigade will be stationed in Hostomel, Kyiv Oblast.

Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov, for his part, said mobile special task groups are being formed in the structure of the National Guard.

“These mobile groups now undergo serious drills, they have gone through fighting in a war and they know what death is,” he said at the ceremony for handing over new armored vehicles to the National Guard in the village of Novi Petrivtsi, Kyiv Oblast, on July 22.

Turchynov said the tasks of the mobile special force will be to neutralize and, if need be, destroy bandit, terrorist and sabotage groups, and also “defend Ukraine from the internal enemy.”