How Kyiv Re-Built an Army the Soviets Couldn’t Imagine
Moving away from Russian warfighting doctrine
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 2021 to 2024, recently wrote a great op-ed for Militarnyi where he discussed command and control in the new Ukrainian armed forces.
His overall thesis is an exploration of how Ukraine fights modern wars. But I think it’s worth a deeper look at where Ukraine came from to truly appreciate how far they have come.
The Old Soviet Army in Ukrainian Camouflage
When Ukraine declared independence in 1991, it inherited a military monster. Nearly 800,000 troops, hundreds of divisions, and a nuclear arsenal that made it the third-largest in the world overnight.
It seemed impressive… a steel colossus capable of waging industrial war. In reality, it was a hollow giant, designed to fight NATO with massed formations and rigid doctrine that belonged to the 1940s, not the 1990s.
The problem was structural rot.
The Soviet model was built for quantity over quality. Division and army headquarters duplicated one another, commanders were bogged down in bureaucracy, and initiative was not just discouraged, it was punished.
Also, political officers lurked in every command post, ensuring loyalty to Moscow mattered more than tactical innovation. Ukraine didn’t get a national defense force in 1991; it got a massive machine that required Moscow’s fuel, Moscow’s spare parts, and Moscow’s political alignment to run.
Kyiv had none of those.
Worse, the economy of the newly independent state couldn’t support the beast it had inherited. Armored divisions sat rusting on parade grounds, pilots logged barely enough flight hours to stay current, and soldiers were sometimes paid in potatoes instead of cash.
Hell, the main reason Ukraine agreed to the Budapest Memorandum, which required the release of the Soviet nuclear stockpile to the new Russian Federation, was the big financial incentives the US and allies were offering.
Ukraine needed cash more than nukes.
The government thought the sheer size of the force was its strength, when in fact it was dead weight that kept real reform from taking root.
Even in peacetime, the absurdity showed through. Units would drill elaborate Soviet-style maneuvers on paper, while in practice, they lacked the fuel to move tanks out of their motor pools.
Sort of like playing a game of Warhammer 40K and calling it a military exercise.
Communications still relied on outdated wired systems and Soviet-era radios. Commanders were trained to wait for orders rather than solve problems on their own. By the early 2000s, Ukraine had all the outward trappings of a regional military power, but internally it was brittle… an army of faded Soviet banners in Ukrainian camouflage.
When Russia first pushed into Crimea in 2014, the cracks were impossible to hide.
Whole units dissolved, orders contradicted one another, and soldiers often had to buy their own basic kit. It was the wake-up call that proved Ukraine didn’t need more Soviet steel; it needed a new operating system entirely.
What Zaluzhnyi describes is the painful but necessary process of killing the ghost of the Red Army and building something leaner, smarter, and above all, Ukrainian.
The First Break with Moscow’s Shadow
Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s reflection makes clear that the turning point was not just NATO training rotations or international exercises. Although the US troop rotations into Ukraine between 2017 and 2022 shouldn’t be understated.
They actually helped modernize the Ukrainian fighting force tremendously.
Instead, the real turning point was the painful realization that Ukraine couldn’t fight with Moscow’s doctrinal playbook and win. Where Russia doubled down on corps-sized meat grinders in Chechnya and Georgia, Ukraine slowly shifted toward smaller, joint structures that emphasized combined arms and interoperability.
The landmark reform, says Zaluzhnyi, came in 2019 with Order №141, a wonky name for what was, in essence, the beginning of NATO-izing Ukraine’s command system.
For the first time, operational planning was tied to joint structures across land, sea, air, and cyber. Force generation was separated from force employment. Ministers stopped playing at being generals, and generals were told to focus on warfighting, not bureaucracy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a break from Moscow’s shadow, and when Russia came barreling across the border in February 2022, those early reforms bought Ukraine time to improvise, adapt, and survive.
The Corps Come Back from the Dead
For years, Ukrainian officers were told that corps headquarters were nothing more than dusty Soviet relics.
Too big, too hierarchical, too “old world” for a modern military supposedly built on NATO standards. But as the full-scale invasion wore on, reality had a way of silencing the PowerPoint reformers.
When your brigades are stretched across a thousand-kilometer front and your generals are trying to command fifteen to twenty subordinate units directly, you realize pretty quickly that some structures are not relics; they are necessities.
By the summer of 2022, Ukraine’s General Staff began the painful but urgent process of resurrecting corps-level commands. In the moment, it might have felt like nostalgia for the Red Army, but in reality, it was battlefield triage.
A corps headquarters provides what no brigade or division can manage on its own: the ability to coordinate large multi-division operations, integrate artillery on a massive scale, and plug in the growing menu of NATO-supplied systems. Without that layer, command collapsed into “manual control,” with senior generals micromanaging battalions by phone. The reintroduction of corps was like building the missing vertebrae in a spine that had been bent under the strain of war.
Unlike the lumbering Soviet-era corps that existed to push masses of armor across Central Europe, the new Ukrainian corps were born leaner and smarter.
They were designed to stitch together modern intelligence feeds, drone reconnaissance, and Western logistics pipelines into coherent operations. A corps commander could now integrate precision strikes, infantry maneuver, and electronic warfare in a way that wasn’t possible when brigades were left to improvise on their own.
The difference was night and day.
Of course, not everyone welcomed the revival. Some Western advisors worried that corps headquarters might reintroduce the very rigidity Ukraine was trying to escape.
But the Ukrainians were not copying and pasting from Soviet manuals. They were writing something new.
Something hybrid.
Their corps were less about layers of red tape and more about creating a command post agile enough to deal with Russia’s sheer scale.
In effect, Ukraine dragged the corps out of its coffin, stripped away the Soviet dust, and rewired it for twenty-first-century war.
And here is the irony: while NATO armies had spent decades preparing for expeditionary campaigns in Afghanistan or Mali, Ukraine was busy rediscovering what a real peer-on-peer war required. Why listen to the US when they had just spent 20 years fighting insurgents in the desert? Corps-level command was not an archaic leftover; it was the only way to prevent commanders from burning out and units from operating in silos.
Far from being a relic, the corps became the proof that Ukraine could learn faster than the enemy.
Ukraine’s Advantage Over Some NATO Militaries
These incredible force structure innovations gave Ukraine huge advantages over the invading Russian horde. By 2025, Ukraine’s military, forged in fire, has already surpassed some alliance members in combat relevance.
Many NATO armies talk about multi-domain operations. Ukraine does them daily, linking artillery, drones, cyber, and space-based reconnaissance in ways that make some NATO staff officers look like PowerPoint cosplayers.
Unlike peacetime NATO militaries, where “force generation” often means filling a symbolic battalion for a foreign mission, Ukraine’s commanders generate, train, and employ units in continuous rotation under fire.
The separation of generation from employment is doctrinally cleaner than some NATO systems still mired in Cold War stovepipes.
What’s more, no NATO country has integrated commercial drones, civilian satellite imagery, or battlefield apps as quickly or effectively as Ukraine. Systems like Kropyva were banned by bureaucrats in peacetime, then became indispensable in wartime.
That kind of battlefield innovation cycle is something NATO defense industries dream about, but rarely achieve.
Ukrainian command structures are lean by necessity.
Corps, divisions, and brigades have learned to operate semi-independently under constant missile fire. NATO countries still operate under the assumption that their command posts will be safe, rear-echelon sanctuaries. Ukraine has proven that even command and control has to be mobile, decentralized, and redundant.
Better Than the Sum of Its Parts
Zaluzhnyi hints at what comes next: more automation, more situational awareness, more creative commanders trained not just to follow doctrine but to think around it.
That’s where Ukraine now has an edge.
In many NATO states, officers have not fought a war at scale in decades. In Ukraine, a generation of officers is being blooded in the most brutal conflict Europe has seen since 1945.
Ukraine’s force structure is no longer a Soviet fossil. It is a hybrid beast, part NATO doctrine, part battlefield improvisation, and in some areas (drone warfare, integrated ISR, flexible corps-level command), it is ahead of NATO, not behind.
When the war ends, NATO will have much to teach Ukraine about procurement, standardization, and interoperability. But NATO will have much more to learn from Ukraine’s lessons in adaptation, resilience, and innovation that were written in blood across the steppes.
This is exactly why I say that when this war ends, Ukrainian veterans will be teaching classes at West Point.
The US hasn’t truly thought seriously about peer-to-peer war since 1989. That’s over three decades ago.
The American military leaders who once trained to fight the Soviets have long since retired. The newest generation of American warfighters is still geared to fight terrorists in the Middle East and Africa.
This is why Ukraine’s first-hand battlefield experience is invaluable. I just hope the United States military is humble enough to be the student for once, instead of the teacher.
Слава Україні!
Very interesting article. I would love to hear more about how Ukraine reformed itself before and during the war, how USA and NATO helped, and what USA and NATO can learn from Ukraine going forward.
Wes, fantastic article. I’ve been waiting for this. I would double down on your sentiment to say that Ukraine has been misperceived as a drag on the West when from a strategic perspective it is a top asset. We have so much to learn from their unbelievably nimble tactics and fierce determination. You said it: we should be grateful students. Thank you again for sharing your insights.