Blood for the blood god

Formation of the assault forces: Syrsky's loyalist guard. Conflict in the army. Kursk. Right Sector, bandits, warhammer.

Ever since the failed counter-offensive of 2023, Ukrainian high command has struggled with two problems. First, the unwillingness of lower level commanders to obey suicidal commands to go on the offensive. Second, insufficient manpower to cover the entire front, forcing advanced units to exhaust themselves by trying to stem each new Russian advance.

Yesterday, we saw ex-head of the army Valery Zaluzhny warn about the short-sightedness of copying Russian infantry assault tactics. Today, we’ll take a look at how exactly new Ukrainian military reforms are aiming to do exactly that.

Back in early 2024, Zelensky replaced Zaluzhny with Oleksandr Syrsky. Syrsky is a great fan of going on the offense, and lacks Zaluzhny’s fear that bloody counter-offensives could be counter-productive in the long term.

Syrsky was nicknamed ‘the Butcher’ for his disregard for his subordinates’ lives during the Bakhmut campaign (2022-23). And in late 2024, he demonstrated that in practice with the doomed, large-scale incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.

Syrsky

Undeterred by the total collapse of the Kursk operation in the spring of 2025, Syrsky remains fixated on the need for new offensives.

Now, the head of the army has created his own personal guard, totally willing to implement all his orders - the assault forces. The western-funded nationalist press has attacked Syrsky’s new project as ‘catastrophic’, claiming that the units involved have taken massive losses in the urge to demonstrate their loyalty to the commander-in-chief.

For whatever reason, these highly critical articles on the assault forces from the likes of BBC Ukraine and texty.org haven’t been translated to English.

Google translate at work

Today we’ll take a look at what exactly these new assault forces are. It turns out that they are largely composed of units commanded by the fascist ‘Right Sector’. Syrsky chose these units because they unflinchingly took part in his Kursk adventure - in contrast to other commanders, who criticized Syrsky’s folly and were sacked as a result.

This also leads us to an interesting conflict in the Ukrainian army - that between the older, well-known airborne assault forces and the new assault forces. Syrsky always wanted to get rid of the airborne assault forces, especially when they dared to criticize his Kursk campaign, as I wrote here:

The units making up the assault forces publicly attack other commanders who criticize their dear Syrsky. The assault forces themselves have as their emblem Syrsky’s own battle alias - ‘snow leopard’. Hence their description by many as Syrsky’s personal guard, ready to follow any order.

Meanwhile, the assault forces are commanded by an extremely colorful former member of Right Sector, Valentin Manko — agro-bandit, plunderer of frontline civilians, formerly wanted by Interpol, and quite a great deal more. Loyalty and willingness to expend human life can be very good for one’s career, it seems.

We’ll take a look at the ‘extremely harsh’ methods of punishment used to discipline their forcibly mobilized troops, as well as the cult of Evgeny Prigozhin among assault-loving Ukrainian ‘landsknechts’.

And speaking of landsknechts, we’ll end by examining at what another landsknecht of the Ukrainian army has been saying, Sergey Korotkikh, alias ‘Bloodsucker’. Korotkikh, another leading figure in the assault forces, is constantly fighting on social media against nationalists pessimistic about the war. Like Manko, Korotkikh’s only military experience is a lifetime of struggle in criminalized neo-nazi paramilitary groups.

I wrote about Sergey Korotkikh here and here

For opportunists like Manko and Korotkikh, the war must continue as long as possible. The chaos god Khorne demands blood, as Korotkikh likes to put it.

Korotkikh’s military unit is named ‘Khorne’, in honour of the Warhammer chaos god of blood, war, and murder. I wrote about Khorne and Korotkikh more here.

Aims

To begin with, what are the assault forces?