在俄罗斯入侵初期，当一位乌克兰农业大亨建立了一个30人的志愿单位时，他并不确定自己能否活下来，但他做到了，他创建的武装力量也壮大了起来。该组织表示，目前已拥有一支4万人的军团，被广泛视为乌克兰正规国防军中最有效的战斗编队之一。
“乌克兰需要一支有效的现代化军队。这是我们国家安全的头号保障，”科热米亚科说。他的军团迅速扩张，反映了乌克兰军事的更广泛转型。这波新部队包括第三突击旅和亚速军团，正在打破长期受士兵诟病的苏联时代惯例。
随着和平协议谈判陷入停滞，全球注意力转向中东，乌克兰继续寻求盟友（尤其是美国）的坚定安全保证。但对乌克兰的许多人来说，战争强化了另一个结论：国家最强大的保证最终可能是其自身的军队。
苏联遗产与新模式
苏联解体后，乌克兰继承了庞大的军事力量和武库。但到2014年，克里米亚危机和乌东冲突暴露了其因投资不足、腐败和缺乏明确战略而导致的弱点，促使志愿者涌入和长期的军事改革。这些变化帮助乌克兰抵御了2022年的全面入侵。但随着战争拖延，一些深层问题——僵化的自上而下领导、过度官僚主义和因担心受罚而隐瞒坏消息的文化——开始重新抬头。新成立的“哈尔蒂亚”等单位正通过引入现代化管理流程，试图根除这些陈疴。
KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — When a Ukrainian agricultural tycoon founded a volunteer unit of 30 people in the early days of Russia’s invasion, he had no certainty he would live to see what came next — but he did, and so did the force he created.The group says it now has a 40,000-strong corps, and it is widely seen as one of Ukraine’s most effective fighting formations within official defense forces. “Ukraine needs to have an effective modern army. And this is our number one guarantee of the country’s security,” said Vsevolod Kozhemyako, owner of a large agricultural conglomerate and now an adviser to the Commander of the Khartiia Corps.Its rapid expansion reflects a broader transformation of Ukraine’s military, part of a new wave of formations, alongside the Third Army and Azov Corps, breaking with Soviet-era practices long criticized by soldiers.
As talks on a potential peace settlement stall and global attention shifts to the Middle East, Ukraine continues to seek firm security guarantees from its allies, particularly the United States.But for many in Ukraine, the war has reinforced a different conclusion: the country’s strongest guarantee may ultimately be its own army.“We have kids, we have grandkids, and we will stay on this territory,” Kozhemyako said. “The future of this country depends on us.”
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Soviet legacy vs. new modelAfter the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine inherited a large military and arsenal. But by 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and armed conflict in eastern Ukraine exposed weaknesses from underinvestment, corruption and a lack of clear strategy, prompting an influx of volunteers and long-overdue military reforms.Those changes helped Ukraine withstand the 2022 invasion, but as the war dragged on, some of its deepest problems — rigid top-down leadership, excessive bureaucracy and a culture where bad news is often hidden out of fear of punishment — began to reassert themselves, with consequences on the battlefield.
From the outset, Kozhemyako said his unit would have to take a different path. He said he understood the shortcomings of the regular army as an active military member since 2014 who was surrounded by veterans.
“They didn’t want to join the post-Soviet army, but they wanted to fight,” Kozhemyako recalled.Many of them were civilians with a background in business, he said. They brought their own leadership mindset and sought to build a structure that valued initiative.It began with studying and applying U.S. Army planning methods, combining them with battlefield experience and adapting as the war evolved. The unit introduced Western protocols such as Troop Leading Procedures (TLP) and After Action Reviews (AAR), relying on in-house experts to refine them.TLP allow lower-level units to plan operations faster, which is critical for exploiting narrow windows of opportunity on the battlefield. AAR push soldiers to identify what happened, why and how to improv
