Ukraine’s Defenders (9) – Hunting a better-armed enemy: Viktor Pavlov – Kyiv Post

Viktor Pavlov’s war job is finding Russian Federation (RF) soldiers and weapons, so that other members of the Ukrainian army can destroy them. By almost any standard, he’s a professional.

Pavlov, 36, is a member of a reconnaissance unit numbering full strength at around 20 men – the eyes and ears of the Azov Special Operations Forces (SSO) Regiment. Unlike the Azov Regiment that fought in Mariupol, a National Guard formation at war since 2014 in south Donbas, Pavlov and his mates were all civilians living peaceful lives, mostly in the greater Kyiv area, when the Russians invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 and began their assault on the capital.

Through friends, Pavlov learned that Azov members and supporters in Kyiv were forming a Territorial Defense Battalion as part of the national defense plan. The idea was to turn the battalion, at this point armed civilians barely able to fire their rifles, into a disciplined fighting unit. Patriotism was at a crescendo, and for each spot in the…