28th Mechanized Brigade – Ukraine’s Counteroffensive, Units to Watch #2

The 28^th Mechanized Brigade was raised and based in the Black Sea port of Odesa. For most of the war it has fought in and around the cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson. Probably no other unit in the AFU has more experience on the ground, in the southern sector, where most analysts are predicting the Ukrainian counteroffensive will take place.

At the start of the war with Russia in 2022, the 28^th was already fairly combat-experienced formation, with many of its soldiers being veterans of bitter defensive battles in 2014-15 against the regular Russian army in Donbas. In late February 2022 the brigade was initially assigned to defend Odesa from a possible Russian amphibious assault but, the unexpected rapid advances by Kremlin forces out of Crimea, led to an AFU high command decision to throw the 28^th into Mykolaiv as a blocking force, where ultimately Ukrainian defenses held. The brigade commander was killed in fighting in July.

The brigade has served effectively as the western cornerstone of the Ukrainian army line on the southern front since then and it was a lead element in the Ukrainian liberation of Kherson in November.

Unofficial unit patch for 28^th Mechanized Brigade, published on social media

Russian pressure on the 28th has, relatively speaking, been light in recent months. According to open source reports much of the unit has been pulled back from the line to train for future operations.

It is a conventionally armed Ukrainian army unit with mostly Soviet-era equipment but, in the early months of the war, was beefed up with advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles provided by NATO states. The 28th Brigade is now refreshed, experienced and its soldiers probably know the southern sector’s terrain as well as any local.

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Possible missions for the 28th in any future offensive would be attacks to distract Russian defenses or assaults against prepared Russian positions in the main sector of attack, or less likely, participation in operations on the far side of the Dnipro River.

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Stefan Korshak

Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas and is a Yalie. He has worked in journalism in the former Soviet space for more than twenty years, and from 2015-2019 he led patrols in the Mariupol sector for the OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass. He has filed field reports from five wars and enjoys reporting on nature, wildlife and the outdoors. You can read his blog about the Russo-Ukraine war on Facebook, or on Substack at https://stefankorshak.substack.com, or on Medium at https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak