CLEARGLASS INTELLIGENCE // OPEN-SOURCE BASELINE // UNCLASSIFIED
THEATER INTELLIGENCE BRIEF // 27 AUG 2026

Russia–Ukraine War: Open-Source Order of Battle

A structured public-source baseline for understanding command layers, theater groupings, corps evolution, unmanned systems, and prisoner-of-war exchange mechanisms.

Analytic boundary: this is not a classified TO&E and does not claim battalion-by-battalion completeness. Units rotate, regenerate, rename, and operate as ad-hoc or understrength formations. Treat this page as a dated open-source baseline requiring continuous verification.

Evidence Model

Claims should be tracked as source-backed observations with date, confidence, provenance and contradiction state.

Operational Picture

Russia's main publicly reported effort remains eastern Ukraine, with supporting northern and southern axes.

Technology Shift

Both forces increasingly institutionalize unmanned systems as dedicated formations rather than auxiliary capabilities.

Executive Assessment

The public picture as of late August 2026 is best understood as a dynamic theater model rather than a static order of battle. Russian force employment is commonly described through theater groupings, while Ukraine continues moving toward a corps-plus-unmanned-systems architecture layered over operational commands.

Strategic Command Layer

Russia

  • Supreme Commander-in-Chief: President Vladimir Putin.
  • Chief of the General Staff: Army General Valery Gerasimov.
  • The war is managed through the General Staff and theater groupings rather than one publicly identified “Overlord” headquarters.
  • Public reporting indicates continued institutional expansion of unmanned-systems formations.

Ukraine

  • Supreme Commander-in-Chief: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
  • Public reporting identifies Major General Mykhailo Drapatyi as Commander-in-Chief and Major General Ihor Skybiuk as Chief of the General Staff in the late-August 2026 baseline supplied for this brief.
  • Operational commands West, North, East and South coexist with an expanding corps layer and separate Unmanned Systems Forces.

Russian Theater Picture

GENERAL STAFF / THEATER GROUPINGS ├── SEVER (North) │ └── Sumy / northern Kharkiv focus; Leningrad MD elements ├── ZAPAD (West) │ └── Lyman–Kupyansk–Oskil axis ├── TSENTR (Center) │ └── Pokrovsk / central Donetsk pressure ├── YUG (South) │ └── Kostyantynivka–Druzhkivka / southern Fortress Belt └── DNEPR / VOSTOK └── Zaporizhia–Kherson and eastern Donetsk sectors

Publicly cited formations include combinations of legacy divisions and brigades, newly numbered motor-rifle regiments, assault formations, volunteer and ethnic formations, and expanding unmanned-systems brigades and battalions.

Ukrainian Theater Picture

UKRAINIAN DEFENSE ARCHITECTURE ├── Operational Commands: WEST / NORTH / EAST / SOUTH ├── Corps Layer │ ├── 3rd Army Corps │ ├── 1st Corps “Azov” (National Guard) │ ├── 9th Army Corps │ └── 7th Rapid Response Corps └── Unmanned Systems Forces ├── 414th “Magyar's Birds” ├── 412th “Nemesis” └── 1st Separate Center of Unmanned Systems + associated regiments/battalions

Prisoners of War: Exchange System

POW exchange remains one of the principal functioning official channels between the belligerents. The supplied late-August baseline records exchanges including 10-for-10 on 26 August, 103-for-103 on 19 August, and 160-for-160 on 26 June 2026. Stock estimates and detention-condition claims remain difficult to independently verify and should be presented as attributed estimates rather than settled facts.

ClearGlass OSINT Confidence Protocol

For every entity in this theater model, maintain the following fields:

ENTITYDATE OBSERVEDSOURCEGEOREFERENCECONFIDENCECORROBORATIONCONTRADICTIONSLAST VERIFIED

Recommended analytic rule

Never infer force strength, readiness, or exact sector deployment from a single public mention. Preserve competing hypotheses and downgrade stale observations automatically.

Sources & Verification

This publication is a structured rendering of the user-supplied open-source baseline. Before treating individual claims as current operational facts, independently verify against dated primary and reputable public sources such as official statements, ISW assessments, MilitaryLand, GeoConfirmed and major reporting. The absence of classified access is a feature of the methodology, not a gap to be concealed.