Specialized Unit Kraken – Ukraine’s Counteroffensive, Units to Watch #6

The Ukrainian military’s high command has worked mightily over 14 months of war to hammer the country’s patriotic but sometimes widely different army units, brigades, battalions and other formations into a coherent regular army with proper chains of command, uniform supply, and consistent doctrine.

The Kraken Specialized Unit has managed to buck that trend. It is now one of the few remaining combat formations associated with the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) that matches no official army template, and at the same time is an established outfit with an outstanding fighting reputation.

Kraken was originally formed in Kharkiv in late February 2022. It comprises special forces and military intelligence retirees, football fans, patriotic activists and local citizens angry that the Russians had invaded. Bands of volunteer Kraken fighters helped stymie Russian army advances towards and at times inside Ukraine’s second-largest city with ambushes and knowledge of local terrain.

Backed financially by a supportive civil society and powerful local businessmen, Kraken developed into a light infantry unit of hand-picked men specializing in infiltration, sabotage, unconventional assaults, and is characterized by excellent staff planning and tactics.

Troops from the volunteer unit Kraken pose next to a destroyed Russian truck in April 2022, following attacks capturing the border village Rus’ka Lozova.

In the October counteroffensive, Russian defenses collapsed, in some cases in panic, because Kraken patrols had penetrated deep behind Russian lines at night. They then attacked after Kraken power engineers switched off electricity to Russian positions.

ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 27, 2024

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

By most accounts, the best-equipped and most intensively trained volunteer soldiers in all the Ukrainian military serve in Kraken. According to unit public statements, of every 150 applicants, only “around 20” volunteers are selected to serve with Kraken, and 75 percent of unit members hold a higher education qualification.

The army has now issued them tanks and artillery, and training for assault tasks, but the unit remains technically outside the conventional army because it is manned, trained and configured for special tasks assigned by army intelligence.

Kraken is based in the north-eastern Kharkiv sector but has substantial combat experience in the Donbas and southern sectors as well.

Further information about Kraken is available via their website, their Facebook page and the Unit Promo video.

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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