KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — When a Ukrainian agricultural tycoon founded a 30-man volunteer unit in the early days of Russia’s invasion, he had no certainty he would live to see what happened next — but he did, and so did the force he created.
The group is now a 40,000-strong corps widely viewed as one of Ukraine’s most effective combat formations within the official defense forces.
“Ukraine needs to have an effective modern army. And this is the number one guarantee of our country’s security,” said Vsevolod Kozemyakov, owner of a large agricultural group and now an adviser to the commander of the Khartiya Corps.
Its rapid expansion reflects a broader transformation of Ukraine’s military, with the Third Army and Azov Corps part of a new wave of formations, breaking with Soviet-era practices long criticized by soldiers.
As a potential peace deal stalls 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 guarantor may finally be its own army.
“We have children, we have grandchildren, and we will live in this area,” Kozemacko said. “The future of this country depends on us.”
Soviet Legacy vs New Model
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a large military and arsenal. But by 2014, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and armed conflict in eastern Ukraine exposed weaknesses of 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 for fear of punishment — began to reassert themselves, with consequences on the battlefield.
From the start, Kozemacko said his unit had to take a different path. He said that as an active member of the army since 2014, he understood the weaknesses of the regular army.
“They didn’t want to join the post-Soviet army, but they wanted to fight,” Kozemako recalled.
Many of them were civilians with business backgrounds, he said. They brought their own leadership mindset and sought to build a valuable structure for the initiative.
It began by studying and applying US Army planning methods, connecting them to battlefield experience and adapting them as the war evolved. The unit relied on in-house experts to refine Western protocols such as Troop Leading Procedures (TLP) and After Action Reviews (AAR).
TLP allows lower-level units to plan operations faster, which is critical for exploiting narrow windows of opportunity on the battlefield. AAR pushes Soldiers to identify what went wrong, why and how to improve, a process the Corps has applied with particular rigor to its rapidly-evolving use of technology.
Faith and technology are the new strategies
Khartia’s focus on rapidly evolving technologies has drawn attention beyond Ukraine’s borders. In an article published in Military Review, a US military professional journal, Major General Curtis Taylor pointed to the December 2024 drone attack on Khartia near Kharkiv as a historic moment – the first all-robot attack on Russian locations. For the US military, he argued, it was a call to rethink how its own armored formations should be adapted to survive on the modern battlefield.
That technology is now part of daily operations. When the 23-year-old platoon commander was transferred from a regular unit to Kharatia, he was put in charge of a ground robotic system routinely used for supply distribution and evacuation.
He and other soldiers quoted in this story spoke on condition of anonymity, in keeping with Ukrainian military protocol, although high-ranking officials can speak on the record.
The soldier recounted how he felt little emphasis on the strict formalities that had defined his previous unit – from strict dress codes to repetitive routines unrelated to combat.
“People understand why we’re here, and they don’t burden us with unnecessary work,” he said, pacing a military position in a pair of blue plush house slippers moments earlier.
He also noted a different relationship with commanders, in contrast to the rigid hierarchy he had previously experienced, where fear of punishment discouraged honest communication.
“When the officers look down on you, like in the rear units, they’re almost like your enemies,” he said. “On a mission, relationships are different. When you go on a mission, you trust the people you command.”
Business tools for battlefield results
The results are beginning to be seen on the battlefield. In December 2025, the Khartiya Corps led a counterattack in the Kupyansk direction, liberating several villages north of the city and pushing to the Oskil River. The Institute for the Study of War said capturing Kupyansk has been a Russian priority since mid-2025, but despite months of efforts, Russian forces have not made significant gains in the area.
The Charter Corps suffered no major setbacks, and did not share the number of wounded or killed troops, as was customary on both sides of the war.
A Washington-based think tank assessed in December that the operation showed Ukrainian forces “are capable of conducting successful counterattacks and achieving strategically significant gains, especially as Russian forces surge.”
Relying largely on its own recruitment and fundraising, the Corps has built a professional HR system and strong brand, actively using YouTube and social media, sharing with public figures and making it easy to donate online.
A Ukrainian military official involved in public access to a unit of the ground forces said that the Third Army Corps and then Khartia became trendsetters in this space, whose campaigns were actively studied by others while building their own. The two corps were among the first to build their own brands, which now play an important role for the Army as it faces a constant need to recruit.
“The approaches to working in the commercial sector translate perfectly here – only you’re competing not for profit, but for the attention of people, equipment and volunteers,” he said.
Expanding the model
Entering one of Khartia’s underground command posts, it feels more like a gaming room than a military hub. But instead of video games, large screens stack the wall-to-wall glow with real-time reconnaissance footage from the front lines in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. Overseeing it all is a former fitness coach who rose through the ranks from soldier to senior officer, clad in a paper hoodie with an energy drink by his keyboard.
“One of our secrets is that we don’t drop people during training – we train them continuously,” he said. “But in combat, it’s the other way around. People come first. We don’t save on drones or equipment at the expense of our people.”
This is a philosophy that Kharatia is trying to spread by forging direct alliances with structures that share a similar vision.
Khartia and the 3rd Army Corps recently launched a joint training initiative, sharing resources and expertise to build a common way of fighting.
For the commanders, who are also neighbors on the front lines, the motivation is practical: After months of exchanging strategies, both units identified the same critical risk to the broader military — a desperate need to overhaul basic combat training for soldiers, sergeants and junior officers.
Ihor Obolinsky, commander of the Khartia Corps, estimated that there are currently about 300,000 troops stationed on the front line, with the two corps accounting for about 80,000 — enough, he said, to make meaningful changes within the army, which is difficult to reform in what he describes as an entrenched system.
Commanders from other units have already reached out to the corps to learn from its model, suggesting a growing demand within the military for change.
However, it is not clear whether the senior command is ready to abandon its Soviet heritage.
“We want to give the General Staff a tool,” Andrei Biletsky, commander of the 3rd Army Corps, said at a joint briefing. “Whether they accept it or not – that’s their decision.”
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AP reporter Volodymyr Yurchuk contributed to this report.
