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The reform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine according to the NATO troop employment doctrine did not anticipate waging war on a broad front, which the Ukrainian Defense Forces faced with the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (2021–2024), stated this in his article “On the Organisation of Command and Control in the Armed Forces of Ukraine” published on Militarnyi.
The point is that most operations under NATO doctrine are expeditionary in nature and require a collective component. Therefore, managing such operations differs significantly from managing full-scale war.
Under NATO doctrine, operations are categorised as follows:
Each level defines the employment of forces — for example, at the strategic level, this refers to the level at which armed forces are employed within a political framework as part of a collective strategy to achieve alliance-wide objectives.
At the operational level, campaigns and major operations are planned, conducted, and sustained to accomplish strategic aims in a theatre or operational area.
The lowest level — the tactical level — is responsible for employing force to execute military tasks and achieve objectives that, in turn, support success at the operational and strategic levels.
NATO doctrine envisions that operations are conducted through a joint or combined headquarters, where the personnel are not permanent and come from different countries. This approach is not particularly effective in the case of large-scale warfare.
“The unprecedented scale of the armed invasion required a significant increase in the number of command and control bodies and posts. First and foremost, this was due to the expanded geographic scope of combat zones and the number of troops involved,” Valerii Zaluzhnyi noted.
In the summer of 2022, the command and control system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the strategic level was managed by the General Staff, while at the operational and operational-tactical levels, there were 24 different command bodies. Considering that, according to NATO principles and standards, at the start of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian Armed Forces had essentially one strategic-level command body and five operational-level ones, it is evident that the number increased fourfold within just a few months.
“Due to time constraints, temporary command bodies were often staffed using personnel from as many as 10 or more different military units,” Zaluzhnyi wrote.
Given the need for training, gaining experience, and the rapidly changing operational environment, such command bodies were ineffective executors.
