Today has been announced that the 100th TDF Brigade of the Volyn Oblast has been reformed as the 100th Mechanized Brigade, under the Ground Forces.
Let’s note that the 100th TDF Brigade was by far among the most capable brigades in the TDF; since April 2023 it has been fighting in the area of the Serebrianka Forest, specifically near Dibrova. In addition, it’s one of the quite few territorial defense brigades whose battalions are overwhelmingly concentrated in the same sector, holding a section of the front line as a stand-alone unit, which means it’s large enough to do that and likewise has a decent sized HQ staff.
In February I had written, in addition to going through the history and the characteristics of the TDF, that there was a lot of talk on Ukrainian social media about a future reform of the branch and whether the best brigades could be reformed as brigades of the Ground Forces.
The decision to reform it as a mechanized brigade and not as an infantry brigade is very interesting, as it means having to equip the unit with some heavy armament such as tanks, IFVs/APCs and howitzers. A few days ago a 155mm Bohdana 2S22 had been in seen in service with the 100th TDF Brigade, and it would have been the only territorial defense brigade fielding howitzers, since the heavy fire support in these brigades is provided by 60/81/82mm mortars in the fire support companies of the battalions, with several brigades managing to acquire 120mm mortars during 2023 thanks to the “Long Hands of TDF” project.
So far, only several battalions had been created under the Ground Forces from existing territorial defense battalions: the 225th Separate Assault Battalion (formerly the 225th Battalion of the 127th TDF Brigade, an Azov-Kharkiv unit) and the 48th Separate Assault Battalion, on the basis of the 251st Battalion of the 241st TDF Brigade, which also includes the “Norman Brigade”, a unit made up of foreign volunteers. In addition, the 98th Battalion of the 108th TDF Brigade (Azov-Dnipro) in early 2023 became the 1st Mech Battalion of the 3rd Assault Brigade; on the basis of DTFG “Khartiia” (which used to be part of the 127th TDF Brigade), the “Khartiia” Brigade of the Offensive Guard, under the National Guard, was raised. In addition, another Azov-Kharkiv unit, created on the basis of the 226th Battalion of the 127th TDF Brigade, became part of the Kraken Special Detachment of the HUR and was then reformed as the 97th Mech Battalion of the 60th Mechanized Brigade.
So, anyway, this is the first case of an entire territorial defense brigade being reformed. Most likely more will follow in the coming weeks or months. Let’s recall that the TDF in general has been slowly but steadily being dismantled for a long time now and the number of its soldiers has been steadily declining since the peak of the summer/autumn 2022: it’s based on volunteers on a territorial basis, practically receives little to no mobilized men; many of its servicemen were and are transferred to the Ground or Air Assault Forces, either on a voluntary basis (in the past - when many of its younger servicemen also joined the brigades of the Offensive Guard) or on a forcible one, as has been the case since late 2023. Probably the project of a complete reform of this branch accelerated with the appointment of Syrsky as Commander-in-Chief of the UAF (after all, he was the former commander of the Ground Forces and never a fan of the autonomy of the TDF); it’s possible that this is part of a potential large reform of the structure of the armed forces.
They recently became ten brigades with the creation of the “Pomsta” Brigade, based on the Luhansk Border Guards Detachment. They are all committed at the front, in sectors such as Orikhiv (“Spartan”, “Kara-Dag”, “Chervona Kalyna”), Bakhmut (“Pomsta”, “Lyut”), Siversk (“Rubizh”), and Kreminna (“Azov”, “Bureviy”, “Khartiia”), with elements of “Pomsta” in the Svatove sector and the “Stalevy Kordon” Brigade of the Border Guards guarding the state border in the area between the Siversky Donets and the Oskil.
They are generally good brigades and broadly comparable to those of the Ground Forces (even better in some cases), even though they are more lightly equipped (a tank company instead of a battalion, APCs/MRAPs/IMVs instead of IFVs, although they have heavy artillery), and they are also more capable than the other brigades/regiments of the National Guard, which are closer to the TDF in terms of equipment.
They are also among the brigades with the lowest average age of the servicemen, as they attracted many young people during the early 2023 recruitment campaign (and e.g. “Azov” gets the ideologically motivated youngsters). Except for “Lyut” (National Police) and the two brigades of the Border Guards, they all belong to the National Guard, and there is no plan to dismantle the latter: I’ve never seen any case of people being transferred from the NG to the UAF, and in both late 2023 and early 2024 there was also a small expansion of the NG.
It must be remarked that, as far as the TDF is concerned, we are still talking about units that are already committed to the front lines, so thinking about using them to solve the manpower issue risks being a zero-sum game, if it weren’t for the fact that elsewhere they might have better command and better equipment (but that’s not guaranteed).
I think that’s because the war has been increasingly seen as, at the very least, very important for the country and due to the morale boost given by the end of the losses of territory after Kherson and the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive to break though, afterwards. But I do think that the increase in financial incentives, which there has been, matters really a lot: not so much the salary itself, which has gone on average from 150k rubles a month to 200k (now getting as high as 225k), but also the bonuses in case of combat or advancement, family benefits, and especially the one-time bonus after the contract signing (generally paid in the first 3/4 weeks after signing up), which has gone from about 1/2 times the amount of the monthly salary to 3/5 today.
I generally agree with your point, but the casualty figures, according to Wagner sources, are worse than that: 15k dead and 25k wounded among the 49k convicts who joined Wagner through “Project K”; consequently, 7k dead and 15k wounded among the 29k “regular” servicemen of PMC Wagner. 15% KIA was the rate Prigozhin promised to inmates during the recruitment campaign in the jails, if I recall correctly.
The salaries of Ukrainian soldiers at the front are not bad (100k hryvnias per month), the problem is that there is hardly any possibility to increase it in order to attract more soldiers (barrring Zelensky recently proposing to increase it by 20k hryvnias for soldiers at the front for more than 2 years), and compared to Russia, the one-time bonus at the signing of the contract is lacking - or rather, some territorial entities, e.g. the Lviv municipality, have recently begun paying a bonus of 50k hryvnias to the residents who sign a contract with the Air Assault Forces or the Marine Corps, but that’s a very low amount compared to the Russian ones, due to the financial capacity of the local authorities being very limited.