Ukraine Army Commander Orders Investigation Into Unit That Ran Away

Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) General Oleksandr Syrsky in late-Monday comments to national media said that a scandalous recent retreat by a unit headquarters abandoning its weapons, equipment and internal documents to Russian forces was inexcusable, and that he had ordered an investigation into the incident

Speaking to the national 24TV news channel, Syrsky said that Russian soldiers advancing into the Zaporizhzhia town of Hulyaipole on Dec. 24-25 apparently surprised and put to flight army personnel manning a checkpoint and headquarters from a territorial defense battalion.

Syrsky identified the unit as a battalion forming part of the 102nd Territorial Defense Brigade, however, most Ukrainian media have identified the retreating unit as a sub-element of 106th Territorial Defense Brigade. Both are lightly armed, mostly infantry units without many heavy weapons, and depleted from years of combat. The 102nd was raised in western Ivano-Frankivsk region, and the 106th was raised in the western-central Khmelnitsky region.

According to Syrsky, AFU personnel at the checkpoint/HQ at the edge of the city had been under intermittent long-range fire for some time and had held their ground but did not attempt to fight back when hit by a Russian ground attack and left their positions.

Video published by Russian forces showed laptops, documents, maps, an unlocked smartphone, and other equipment left behind in the overrun headquarters – all usually sure signs of a hasty, unplanned retreat.

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The retreat allowed Russian troops to penetrate to the center of Hulyaipole city in a clear local victory. Since then, Ukrainian reserve troops have been deployed to the sector and, according to Ukrainian sources, Russian troops are slowly being pushed out of Hulyaipole.

Conversely and according to Russian sources, battles are going in Moscow’s favor, Hulyaipole is nearly completely under Russian control, and Ukrainian troops still left there are demoralized.

Syrsky said that the Russian troops approached to within two blocks of the Ukrainian positions before being detected, and accused the local Ukrainian commander of incompetence. 

“It would have been possible to command the battalion in a completely different way,” Syrsky said. “A legal assessment of the action, and the battalion commander’s decisions will be conducted... it will be determined why he chose not to follow orders from his brigade commander [to hold his ground].”

A Soviet-trained officer with a reputation for toughness, Syrsky is respected in some quarters of the AFU as a competent tactician and a commander with a cool head in a crisis, and criticized in others for a purported unwillingness to promote talented younger commanders with little formal military training but substantial field experience.

A common criticism of the AFU top leadership is a habit of deploying small, almost combat-incapable units side-by-side in a cordon defense, without much organizing their collective operations, and instead funneling limited resources of men and equipment to favored counterattack units commanded by soldiers loyal to Syrsky.