[Koffee Company] KYIV, Ukraine — Should Russia invade, a national network of Ukrainian irregular military units is prepared to wage a protracted, guerrilla resistance campaign.Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces comprise about 100,000 reservists and civilian volunteers assigned to 25 brigades scattered across the country — at least one unit is assigned to each of Ukraine’s 24 regions, or oblasts. These unconventional forces fall under the Ukrainian military’s chain of command.
With the Russian military massing on its frontiers, Ukraine has activated the Territorial Defense Forces in its southern regions. According to Ukraine’s armed forces, those units conducted exercises along the Black Sea coastline and the border with Russian-occupied Crimea to resist an amphibious landing force and "to combat subversive-reconnaissance groups and other hostile forces and irregular armed formations."
Ukrainian Operational Command South — which includes the Vinnytsya, Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Odesa, and Kherson oblasts — controls five territorial defense brigades. Each of those units is tasked to defend its respective regional territory and impede the advance of a Russian invasion force so that regular Ukrainian units have more time to maneuver. In theory, the territorial defense brigades can mobilize for combat within one to two days.