Soldiers of the 2nd Khartiya National Guard Corps. Courtesy of the Khartiya Corps
By Ruslan Kovalchuk
Ukraine’s five elite combat units defending Kharkiv and Donetsk are increasingly relying on a private initiative that gives servicemen free access to legal services from some of the country’s best lawyers, unit commanders said.
The units, which include the 93rd Mechanized Brigade “Kholodnyi Yar” and the 79th Air Assault Brigade, stand out as some of Ukraine’s most strategically successful formations, which fundamentally shifted the scope and trajectory of the war.
“It’s really important for us to ensure the protection of the rights of our servicemen,” Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yevhen Maloyvan, head of the legal department for the National Guard’s Spartan Brigade, said at a recent conference in Kharkiv. “We hope the project will extend to all brigades.”
Roman Pisarenko, head of the communications department for the 79th Air Assault Brigade, shares this view. “Our head of the legal department is very satisfied with this project,” he said. “The applications of military personnel are processed extremely quickly, which is very important in our situation.”
The legal services are mostly aimed at helping with customs-free vehicle imports for active-duty service members, stronger social protection for veterans with disabilities, support for businesses involved in military rehabilitation and defense innovation, as well as international arbitration and mechanisms for pursuing frozen Russian assets to compensate for war-related damage.
The initiative, codenamed Advokat+, is spearheaded by the Ukrainian National Bar Association (UNBA). Andriy Yermak, a former head of the Office of the President who is now actively involved with UNBA, is the driving force behind the initiative.
Exact personnel numbers for these units, which also include the Spartan Brigade, Khartiya and 33rd Mechanized Brigade, are classified for security reasons, but each of these brigades typically maintains a nominal strength of 1,500 to 3,000 servicemen.
This brings the total number of servicemen covered by the initiative to between 10,000 and 15,000, who are currently served by 60 lawyers. UNBA is hiring more lawyers amid expectations that the number of combat units under the initiative will increase.
Although the initiative is private, it has enjoyed state support, as servicemen often require legal services that go beyond the scope of what military offices can provide.
“As a human rights institution and a state body in general, we support all initiatives aimed at protecting the rights of servicemen,” Oleksandr Pashinin, director of the Department of Legal Support of the Military Ombudsman’s Office, said. “There are issues that, unfortunately, are beyond the scope of [our] powers.” For example, “the military office has no powers to protect the rights of family members.”
The 93rd Mechanized Brigade “Kholodnyi Yar” is regarded as one of the most brutally effective front-line brigades in the Ukrainian military. It absorbed the main effort of Russia’s most elite divisions, changing the scope of the war by denying the blitzkrieg in Trostianets in 2022. The brigade single-handedly broke the northern advance, forced a mass Russian retreat from the Sumy and Chernihiv regions, and permanently altered Moscow’s initial goal of a swift regime change.
The 79th Air Assault Brigade became globally famous for dismantling massive, multidirectional Russian armored columns in the Kurakhove and Novomykhailivka sectors. Its ability to hold heavily bombed, flat-terrain positions forced Russia to rely on grueling, piecemeal infantry assaults rather than fast, sweeping armor penetrations.