Ukraine’s military is trying to learn from the painful mistakes of the past — and also prepare more civilians to be ready to take up arms and fight at any minute.
This is why Kyiv and many other areas across the country have recently formed local territorial defense units.
Its soldiers are now considered to be in the military ranks and on standby if the nation needs them. They do their usual civilian jobs most of the time, but periodically assemble with their units for live-fire drills.
The territorial defense unit of Kyiv the 112th Brigade was out on Aug. 9 to exercise their skills in urban warfare. The mission was to help defend the streets of Ukraine’s capital from simulated enemy perpetrators capturing key government buildings.
This urban warfare was part of the arsenal used by Russian-led militants of Donbas to invade the eastern region in early 2014, by crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border and seizing the city of Slovyansk and others.
The territorial defense units drill hard to prevent such occurrences from happening in the future.
The soldiers had to seek and destroy the pockets of hostile resistance in close quarters — and then stand firm to repel a simulated enemy counterattack.
