Бойові резерви Державної прикордонної служби України в бойових діях на Донбасі (весна – літо 2014 р.)

Abstract

The study aim to analysis of the historical experience of the participation of com- bat reserves of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine in the hostilities in the Ukrainian Donbas in the spring and summer of 2014. Research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, comprehensive analysis, and the modern conceptual and categori- cal apparatus used by military history in describing the process of armed struggle. Th e histori- cal and systematic method, as well as the methods of analysis and synthesis, are used. The scientifi c novelty lies in an attempt to systematically study the history of the participation of the combat reserves of the Border Guard Service in the hostilities conducted by the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the spring and summer of 2014 during the counteraction to Russian aggression. Conclusions. The combat reserves of the State Border Guard Service were formed as freelance units with the main goal of strengthening the border guard units that guarded the Ukrainian-Russian state border in the eastern regions of Ukraine. Their service and combat activities in the spring and summer of 2014 can be divided into two stages, each of which diff ered in the socio-political situation and the intensity of hostilities. As the hostilities clearly demonstrated, due to the lack of regular missile and artillery weapons and the necessary amount of armored vehicles, the border guards’ combat reserves were able to fi ght only sabotage and reconnaissance groups and some illegal armed groups of local pro-Russian collabo- rators. As for confronting the regular units of the Russian armed forces by conducting full-scale combat operations against them, the border guards were predictably unprepared.