8th Army Corps (Ukraine)

8th Army Corps (Ukraine)

The 8th Army Corps is one of three army corps of the Ukrainian Ground Forces. The Corps is headquartered in Zhytomyr, Ukraine.

The 8th Mechanised Army was initially formed on 6 June 1946 with its headquarters at Zhitomir in the Carpathian Military District, Soviet Union. It was was formed out of the 52nd and the 18th Armies. It initially comprised the 23rd and 31st Tank Divisions (the former 23rd Tank Corps and 31st Tank Corps) and the 11th Guards and 32nd Mechanised Divisions. In November 1956, Hamazasp Babadzhanian led the Army in Budapest, during the Soviet intervention that led to the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It became The 8th Order of the Red Star Tank Army in 1957.

By the time of the collapse of the USSR the army had two tank divisions: the 23rd and 30th Guards (converted from the 11th Guards Mechanised Division). The 31st Tank Division had remained in Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring, becoming part of the Central Group of Forces, and the 32nd Guards Mechanised Division had been reorganized in 1957 as the 41st Guards Tank Division, then became the 117th Training Tank Division.

On 1 December 1993, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 8th Army Corps was formed by the redesignation of the 8th Tank Army. The 23rd Tank Division at Ovruch became the 6065th Base for Storage of Weapons and Equipment and the 117th Training Tank Division later became the 119th District Training Centre. The 30th Tank Division became a Ukrainian mechanised brigade.