One reason why the Ukrainians are so desperate for a ceasefire is that they want to finish their army reforms in peace.
They have been working on introducing a corps system to improve organization, command & control for their brigades. The first such corps has now been officially formed... Before expanding it to the AFU, they're trying with their National Guard units.
Thus, the 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine now exists. It's called "Azov", because it was based on the 12th National Guard brigade (Azov), which, in turn, grew out of the original Azov Battalion.
Several other units have been integrated into the Azov corps:
▶️ 1st Presidential Operational Brigade
▶️ 14th Operational Brigade "Chervona Kalyna"
▶️ 15th Operational Brigade "Kara-Dag"
▶️ 20th Operational Brigade "Liubart"
The 1st Presidential Brigade was originally a riot police unit. It was militarized in 2014 and used as enforcers between Donbass rotations - they killed several protestors outside the Ukrainian parliament in 2015.
The 14th and 15th Operational Brigades were both originally SWAT-type units, also militarized into National Guard regiments during the Donbass War, then expanded into brigades within the so-called "Offensive Guard" (you remember? when they mass-recruited cops, border patrol, prison guards etc. for Le Zapo Counter-Offensive).
"Liubart" was formed in 2022 as a tacticool special forces battalion within the Territorial Defence structures of Western Ukraine, then integrated into the 12th Azov Regiment.
The 12th Azov Brigade, of course, was destroyed in Mariupol back when it was the 12th Azov Regiment, and then taken prisoner along with its command staff, including commanding officer Denis Prokopenko. The commanders of the 12th Regiment were released from Russian captivity as a result of a deal between Russia and Ukraine, brokered via Turkey, where Turkey guaranteed that the Azov leaders would be interned in Turkey until the end of the war. Erdogan, naturally, released them, and they went back to Ukraine and re-joined the army, and went to work rebuilding the 12th Regiment from the ground up. It was also expanded into a brigade for the 'Offensive Guard'.
That was not an easy task, because there is actually a second Azov Brigade - the so-called 3rd Assault Brigade. The 3rd Assault Brigade was formed out of various "Azov" Territorial Defence units in Kiev, Kharkov and elsewhere; these were made up of Azov veterans and ideologically aligned volunteers from the "National Corps", Azov's political arm, the "Azov Civil Corps", the "Youth Corps", "Centuria" and other such organizations. They were widely used as barrier troops ("motivational troops" as they called themselves), spread out behind regular AFU units.
In any case, Prokopenko is now back, the 12th Brigade has, presumably, been built back up, and Prokopenko has been assigned as commander of the new Azov Corps.
