The 18th Army of the

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Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

was formed on 21 June 1941 on the basis of HQ

Kharkov Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city in Ukraine.

Military District Military districts (also called military regions) are formations of a state's armed forces (often of the Army) which are responsible for a certain area of territory. They are often more responsible for administrative than operational matters ...

and armies of the

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Special Military District. The Army's commander in 1941 was General-Lieutenant Andrey Smirnov. The Army composition on the beginning of the war was: * 16th Mechanised Corps ** 15th Tank Division, 39th Tank Division, 240th Motorised Division, 64th Fighter Air Division and 45th Mixed Air Division * 17th Rifle Corps ** 96th Mountain Rifle Division, 60th Mountain Rifle Division, 164th Rifle Division * 18th Mechanised Corps ** 47th Tank Division, 218th Mechanised Division * 55th Rifle Corps ** 130th Rifle Division, 160th Rifle Division, 189th Rifle Division, 4th Independent Tank Brigade It was caught soon after the start of

Operation Barbarossa Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along ...

in 1941 in a huge encirclement south of Kiev along with the 6th Army and 12th Armies. This encirclement was part of the

Battle of Uman The Battle of Uman (15 July – 8 August 1941) was the World War II German offensive in Uman, Uman, Ukraine against the 6th Army (Soviet Union), 6th and 12th Army (Soviet Union), 12th Soviet Armies. In a three-week period, the Wehrmacht encircle ...

. A further formation was shattered during the Battle of the Sea of Azov in September–October 1941. On 1 October 1943 the army consisted of 20th Rifle Corps (8th Guards Rifle Brigade, 81st and 83rd Naval Rifle Brigades), 55th Guards Rifle Division, 89th Rifle Division, 176th, 318th, 414th Rifle Divisions, 107th Rifle Brigade, 255th Naval Infantry Brigade, 10th Guards Separate Antitank Battalion, artillery, armoured forces, and engineers. As part of Southern, North-Caucasian, Transcaucasian Front, and the 1st and 4th Ukrainian Fronts the 18th Army conducted defensive operations in right-bank Ukraine, participated in Donbass, the Rostov defensive and offensive operations, and in the fight for Caucasus. Based on the experience of the Kerch - Eltigen landing operation, the Army was uniquely identified as 18th Desant Army () for amphibious operations, between 15 February and 5 April 1944 around Malaya Zemlya. For this operation the Army included: * 10th Guards Rifle Corps * 16th Rifle Corps * 176th Rifle Division * 318th Rifle Division * 5th Guards Tank Brigade * also two artillery regiments of the High Command Reserve, a regiment of Guards mortars (multiple rocket launchers), ''desant'' detachment of Major Kunikov, and elements of the 255th and 83rd Naval Infantry Brigades, elements of 107th and 165th Rifle Brigades, 31st ''Desant'' Regiment, machine gun battalion and 29th Tank Destroyer Regiment, all under command of Army Operational Group Grechkin (commanding officer General-Major А.А. Grechkin). The Army reverted to its previous designation for the clearing of right-bank Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. For much of this period the 24th Rifle Division served with 18th Army, and the Division was still serving with the Army in May 1945, along with the 17th Rifle Corps (

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and 138th Rifle Divisions) and a

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. After

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, the 18th Army was transformed into a Mountain Army in the territory of the

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and

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. The 1st Guards Mechanized Division came under the army's control while in

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from September 1945 to June 1946. This army was disbanded in May 1946. Some of its elements, along with parts of the 52nd Army were used to form the 8th Mechanised Army.

Commanders

* Andrey Smirnov (June - October 1941), Lieutenant General, killed in action * Vladimir Kolpakchi (October - November 1941), Major General * Fyodor Kamkov (November 1941 - February 1942 and April - October, 19th 1942), Major General * Ilya Smirnov (February - April 1942), Lieutenant General *

Andrei Grechko Andrei Antonovich Grechko (; ; – 26 April 1976) was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He served as the Soviet minister of defence from 1967 to 1976. Born to a Ukrainian peasant family near Rosto ...

(October 1942 - January, 5th 1943), Major General * Aleksandr Ryzhov (January - February, 11th 1943), Major General * Konstantin Koroteyev (February - March, 16th 1943), Major General * Konstantin Leselidze (March 1943 - on February, 6th 1944), Lieutenant General promoted to Colonel General in October 1943 *

Yevgeny Zhuravlev Yevgeny Petrovich Zhuravlev (Russian: Евгений Петрович Журавлев), (October 8, 1896 - May 11, 1983) was a Soviet lieutenant-general in World War II. Biography Zhuravlev was born in the village of Roudkovka in the Chernigov ...

(February - November 1944), Lieutenant General * Anton Gastilovich (November 1944 - May 1945), Major General, since January 1945 Lieutenant General

Sources and references

*http://samsv.narod.ru/Arm/a18/arm.html *Feskov et al., The Soviet Army in the Period of Cold War, 2004, Tomsk University Press,

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*Ukrainian Book of Memory, Vol VIII, http://memory.dag.com.ua/browse?1270 *Victory site https://web.archive.org/web/20160521225208/http://victory.mil.ru/ by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation {{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017 018 Military units and formations established in 1941 Military units and formations disestablished in 1946