The Armed Forces of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Збро́йні си́ли Украї́ни), most commonly known in Ukraine as ZSU (Ukrainian: ЗСУ) or anglicized as AFU, are the military forces of Ukraine. All military and security forces, including the Armed Forces, are under the command of the President of Ukraine and subject to oversight by a permanent Verkhovna Rada parliamentary commission. They trace their lineage to 1917, while the modern armed forces were formed after Ukrainian independence in 1991. Ukraine's armed forces are composed of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, the Ukrainian Air Force, the Ukrainian Navy, the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces and the Special Operations Forces. Ukraine's navy includes its own Ukrainian Naval Infantry, as well as Ukrainian Naval Aviation. The Territorial Defense Forces serve as the military reserve force and in cases of war, it can be mobilized for civilian volunteers to serve in local defense. The Ukrainian Sea Guard is the coast guard service of Ukraine, and it is organized as part of the Border Guard Service, not subordinate to the navy. The Ukrainian Air Defence Forces were a military branch responsible for anti-aircraft warfare from 1991 until it was merged with the Air Force in 2004. Because of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the president commissioned the governors of regions of Ukraine to create volunteer units under the government's Territorial Defense Forces. These units received minimal funding from regional budgets initially and mostly relied on donations. In November 2014, most of the territorial defense battalions were integrated into the Ukrainian Ground Forces. The National Guard of Ukraine serves as a paramilitary reserve component of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Following hostilities with Russia in 2014, Ukraine increased the size of its armed forces to 204,000 soldiers (+46,000 civil servants), not counting additional forces such as border guards (53,000), the newly formed National Guard of Ukraine (60,000) or the security service. In 2021, Ukraine's Armed Forces, now numbering 246,445 (including 195,626 military personnel), was the second largest in the region after the Russian Armed Forces. Military units of other countries have participated regularly in multinational military exercises with Ukrainian forces in Ukraine. Many of these exercises have been held under the NATO cooperation program Partnership for Peace.
