The 1st Operational Battalion named after the Hero of Ukraine Serhii Kulchytskyi is a volunteer battalion of the 1st Presidential Brigade, a part of the Offensive Guard of the National Guard of Ukraine. It is an all-volunteer battalion with its personnel being the former members of Maidan Defense and other paramilitary groups established by the Ukrainian opposition during the Revolution of Dignity. It was established in 2014 and is garrisoned at Novi Petrivtsi. It is a highly combat-effective formation and has seen heavy combat during both the War in Donbas and the full-scale war after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
History 2014 On 14 March 2014, about 500 volunteers from Maidan Self-Defense became reservists of the newly established National Guard of Ukraine, and went to Novi Petrivtsi and started training at the headquarters of the former Bars Regiment as the 1st Reserve Battalion. The training and coordination was directly managed by Major General Serhii Kulchytskyi, commander of the National Guard and Andriy Antonyshchak from the Maidan Defense Headquarters. It was a scary time. Crimea was destroyed, new cities were captured in Donetsk region every day. I came to Novi Petrovka every day and we solved some urgent issues, and there were many of them. To Kulchytskyi's credit, he was not only a good soldier, not only a good psychologist, but also a very good householder. Imagine for a moment. Several hundred Maidan residents come to the training ground, the vast majority of whom survived the events of February 18–20. They hate cops with every fiber of their soul. And here is the base of "Bars", which stood opposite us. And here the commanders are cops. ... There was something terrible in the first days. The commanders of "Bars" walked step by step and watched over theirs, and we watched over ours. The base is the same. Well, let them sleep in the barracks, and ours in tents. But there is only one toilet. Dining room - one. How do you divide it? It seemed that they were killing themselves. The people of Maidan shouted: "The cops are bad, we will tear you apart." They answered no less "gently": "You are the underdogs from Hrushevsky"! There were isolated incidents, which were immediately suppressed. And the merit of General Kulcytsky cannot be overestimated in this... This can now be taken more or less calmly. And then all the wounds were still open. We continued to bury our brothers, searched for the missing in forests, morgues and hospitals. But the problem was solved. Partly by persuasion, partly by delivering correct information In Novi Petrivtsi, the personnel were trained for hand-to-hand and street combat tactics in addition to training with automatic weapons, submachine guns, sniper rifles, hand machine guns and large-caliber machine guns, grenades and offensive and defensive maneuvers. The platoon commander of the 1st reserve battalion Oleksandr Wendyuk stated:The main thing is that we learned to act as one unit. We went through the battles on the Maidan and were united even then. And now, when we have learned the tactics, we feel that we are invincible. Three Lviv businessmen presented the battalion with a BRDM-2. On 5 April 2014, 300 reservists of the 1st reserve battalion took the oath of loyalty to Ukraine and became a part of the 27th Perchersk brigade. Then the Battalion went to Pavlograd and then to Izium to take part in the Siege of Sloviansk during which on 9 May 2024, a soldier of the brigade (Ihor Volodymyrovych Geisun) was killed in his vehicle by separatists.Гейсун Ігор Володимирович Soon, Andriy Parubiy called on "patriotic citizens" to join the second volunteer battalion of the NSU: The first battalion of the National Guard, formed from Maidan Self-Defense, is participating in the anti-terrorist operation in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Reserves are required. Recruitment for the second reservist battalion of the National Guard on a reservist contract or permanent basis has been announced. It is necessary to be 18-50 years old, without a criminal record or with an exonerated one, to pass a medical examination. By 16 May, 270 volunteers had arrived for the creation of the 2nd battalion under the coordinator Andriy Tiron, who completed their training and took oath and we to the ATO zone to take part in the Battle of Kramatorsk and Siege of Sloviansk. Popular Ukrainian media personality, Leonid Kanter mentioned about the Battalion as:Then gradually everything became clear, we figured out where everything is, got used to the "four after four" schedule - four hours you are "in the outfit", four hours you are free. Day and night mixed. In those four hours between outfits, you had to eat, wash, wash, sleep, and clean your weapons. You choose two or three tasks from this to do, the rest for the next four hours. Plus, during those four hours, there are combat alarms, during which you "blow up" and run no matter where and in what you are... . On 24 May 2014, during the Siege of Sloviansk, separatists launched an armed attack on the checkpoint of the National Guard on the eastern outskirts of Sloviansk, near the intersection of the roads to Krasny Liman and Kramatorsk, the engagement lasted 2 hours involving the use of mortars and grenade launchers in addition to small arms during the engagement a soldier of the battalion (Zinchyk Stanislav Mykhailovych) was killed and some personnel were wounded as well. The battalion also received high support from right-wing and ultranationalist parties with Ukrainian National Alliance stating:All of Ukraine is represented in our military unit. These are the people who stood the Maidan. Among them are many Volhynians, in particular from the "Volynska sich" hundred. And the chaplain of the battalion, Father Makariy, is from Lutsk. Apparently, it would be dishonest, even in front of oneself, to sit at home now and do everyday things. We went to fight, because it is our time Bohdan Balbuza, remarked about the battalion as:However, there is already a feeling that we are close to victory. Earlier "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!" sounded only in the nationalist environment, and now it can be heard from the President and members of the government, and from the smallest children and schoolchildren. Stepan Bandera dreamed that there would be a time when one would say "Glory to Ukraine" and a hundred thousand would continue "Glory to the heroes!". And his dream came true. Soon, General Kulchytsky also went to Siege of Sloviansk operating and monitoring the battalion before his death in an aircraft shoot down on 29 May on Mount Karachun after working alongside the battalion for over a month. On 31 May 2014, the 1st Reserve Battalion came back to its garrison for replenishment and rest. On 5 July 2014, Chief of Staff of the 2nd Reserve Battalion, Andriy Ivchenko, stated:I went almost to the center of the city with intelligence. We removed the Russian tricolor from the central barricade of Sloviansk and raised our Ukrainian flag with the inscription Second Battalion.