By 26 February 2022, two days into Russia’s full-scale invasion, about 50,000 Ukrainians had signed up for the Territorial Defence Forces. By May the figure stood at 110,000. A reserve branch that existed mostly on paper a year earlier had become one of the main reasons Russian columns failed to take key cities.
The shift started with a law. President Zelenskyy signed “On the fundamentals of national resistance” in July 2021, and the text, as the Jamestown Foundation described it, set out three elements of national resistance: territorial defense, a resistance movement, and a system for preparing citizens to resist invasion or occupation. Territorial defense itself was split into military, military-civil and civil parts.
A branch built in a hurry
The structure was ambitious. Ukraine drew up 25 territorial defense zones covering the unoccupied regions and Kyiv, each with its own brigade. Cities above 900,000 people could get dedicated brigades from 2022, which would push the total to 28. Every rayon was to host a separate battalion drawn from its oblast brigade.
The staffing was thin. In November 2021 the brigades were cadre units, with only 20-25 full-time headquarters officers each; the rest were reservists called in for specific training. Parliament raised the number of full-time TDF posts from 580 to 10,000. The government set aside 2.5 billion hryvna, roughly $95 million, for 2022.
The rush showed. Zelenskyy himself said that “Some provisions of the Law do not fully comply with the Constitution of Ukraine.” The Rada had to vote by mid-July so that financing could begin in 2022 rather than 2023, and the Jamestown analysis flagged unclear legal status for members of a new volunteer formation, the Voluntary Formations of Territorial Communities, meant to give any adult citizen an easier way into territorial defense. From 2022 the TDF was to operate as its own service branch, like the Special Operations Forces, answering directly to the Commander-in-Chief, after remaining under Ground Forces Command through 2021.
What the war exposed
The RUSI analysis, published on 11 May 2023, says the design called for roughly 130,000 personnel in 25 brigades, anchored by a professional peacetime core of 10,000. Russia arrived before that was finished.
Simplified recruitment did the rest. According to the RUSI author, “the deployment of the TDF in the first month of all-out war made it possible to implement mass national resistance and inflict maximum losses.” Units fought in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol, gathered intelligence and disrupted Russian logistics.
Then the war changed shape. From mid-April 2022 Russia leaned on artillery and both sides dug in, and a force armed mainly with anti-tank guided missiles and grenade launchers struggled. RUSI lists an “acute deficit of communications equipment, means of individual protection and vehicles.” Air defense systems, artillery and mortars on the official equipment list largely never arrived. Troops trained while fighting.
TDF command improvised. It opened training centers, including a “School of Captains” for officers, and relied on private donations to fill equipment gaps.
An argument over the future
Some officials want the TDF folded into the Land Forces. The RUSI author opposes that and favors keeping an independent branch with a professional cadre and reservists on an annual 120-hour training cycle. He puts the model’s ceiling at up to 200,000 people mobilized for national resistance, and argues that mass decentralised resistance matters as much as technological superiority, which Ukraine will find very difficult to achieve.
Sources
- Ukraine's Territorial Defence Forces: The War So Far and Future Prospects (RUSI)
- The Territorial Defense System of Ukraine: New Innovations but Incomplete Approach (Jamestown Foundation)
