President Voldymyr Zelensky on Wednesday named a pair of young generals known for proved battlefield skills to command major forces trying to hold in Ukraine’s Donbas region, the main objective of Russia’s ongoing offensive.Brig. Gen. Denys Prokopenko, 35, a Kyiv native who studied at university to become an English teacher, first fought Russian troops in 2014 as a civilian volunteer. He is best known in Ukraine for leading a die-hard defense of the port city Mariupol in 2022, and later for building the 1st National Guard Corps “Azov” into the one of the Ukraine’s hardest-fighting military formations. Azov Corps training emphasizes discipline and individual soldier skills.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletsky, 47, a Kharkiv native, is a trained historian and martial arts enthusiast. He first saw combat as a volunteer rifleman during Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. When Russia invaded Ukraine a second time in 2022 Biletsky raised a volunteer civilian unit fighting in defense of Kyiv. The unit converted to regular forces and in following years expanded into the all arms 3rd Army Corps, a crack unit at the forefront of Ukrainian tactical drone operations.Both Prokopenko and Biletsky are a generation younger than the Soviet-trained general officer corps that led the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in 2022. Zelensky in July sacked then-AFU Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, at the time 60, in favor of Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapaty, 43, another battle-tested, wartime generation general with deep combat experience.