President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced the establishing of the Marine Corps in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The announcement was made during the celebrations of Ukrainian Marines Day.

“Today I have the honor to announce that it was decided to significantly increase the potential of the Ukrainian marines – to create the Marine Corps,” Zelensky said.

He said that the Marine Corps would be created on the basis of the current units, and subsequently new Marine brigades would be formed in its structure.

Currently, the Marine Corps structure contains as follows:

• 35th Marine Brigade named after Rear Admiral Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi;
• 36th Marine Brigade named after Rear Admiral Mykhailo Bilynsky;
• 503rd Separate Marine Battalion;
• 406th Artillery Brigade named after Khorunzhoy General Oleksii Almazov;
• 32nd Artillery Regiment;
• 140th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion.

The newly launched 37th and 38th Marine Brigades have also been deployed.

In fact, in terms of the number and acquired capabilities, Ukrainian marine units have already reached the size of the Corps, so now it only takes the reformation of management into a single “organism” for the MC to be fully formed.

So far, neither Zelensky nor military commanders have provided further details on plans to reorganize the Marines. However, the overall vector of reforms should improve the quality of management and combat potential of the Ukrainian marines. In the case of the creation of the Corps, the marines units will receive a single command, under the leadership of which operations on the battlefield will be carried out. At present, in order to perform combat missions, Marine units are temporarily subordinate to other commands at the local level.

Plans for reformation into a single Corps

Back in 2018, Militarnyi, citing its own sources in the General Staff, reported on plans to form the Marine Corps. The new structure was to unite all units of marines and coastal artillery units under a single command body subordinate to the command of the Naval Forces.

Then the General Staff planned to optimize the control of troops and bring the structure of the Ukrainian Navy both to NATO standards and to the challenges that the Navy had today.

The MC was supposed to include units of the coastal and territorial defense troops of the Ukrainian Navy. New combat and logistics support units were also to be deployed. The Marine Corps command was planned to be stationed in Mykolaiv.

The main tasks of the Marine Corps are to conduct naval and amphibious operations, offensive combat on the sea coast, as well as the defense of important coastal facilities and sections of the coast.

For operations, MC units undergo specialized training. They are also furnished with the equipment adapted to perform tasks in specific conditions, for example, amphibious combat vehicles.