Warhammer 101: What it is, and why it appeals to soldiers on both sides of the war in Ukraine

The Ukrainian 116th Mechanised Brigade is a unit currently fighting on the front lines of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblask. It features a couple of mechanised battalions, a tank battalion, an assault battalion, and all the other units you’d expect to see in a brigade-level formation.

This includes a field artillery regiment, supported by both an aerial reconnaissance unit, known as the Falcon Group, and a Surveillance and Target Acquisition Battery, which is called… the Khorne Group.

We know a falcon is a bird of prey, but what is Khorne, and why are Ukrainian soldiers naming themselves after a character from a tabletop wargame?

Blood for the Blood God!

Khorne, for those who don’t know, is one of the major villains of tabletop gaming company Games Workshop’s Warhammer setting. He is a Chaos God, one of the four major Chaos entities that seek to rule over reality and bend it to their will. Khorne’s specialty is violence and the spilling of blood. In fact, “Blood for the Blood God!” is basically the not particularly cheery motto of his worshippers.

And, it appears, numerous members of the Ukrainian armed forces.

While it might be alarming to think that a bunch of modern soldiers are hooning around Kursk with patches and other symbols that ally themselves with a bloodthirsty slaughter-god, it’s better than the other three alternatives.

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Slaanesh is a hermaphroditic pleasure-seeking kink-bunny, while the bird-like Tzeentch is all about mutation for the jolly fun of it alongside twisted and evil schemes.

And then there’s Nurgle – the pestilent plague god. Ain’t no one wants that on a battlefield.

As it turns out, quite a few Ukrainian soldiers and drone operators are keen wargamers and fans of Games Workshop’s titles. Which makes a lot of sense when you think of the demographics in play. Plenty of Ukrainian servicemen and women are pretty much the right age to be tabletop gamers, and Warhammer and its various versions and spinoffs are some of the most popular games – and novels, comics, and video games – on the planet.

In fact, one of its biggest fans is Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, the 39-year-old commander of Ukraine’s drone forces. According to The Economist, putting together tiny space men (I can call them that because I put together and paint tiny men to relax too) of an evening is his favourite way to relax.

“The air smells of fresh paint, coffee, and shisha tobacco, to which Colonel Sukharevsky appears addicted,” the Economist wrote in a July 2024 article. “Wires, drone-boxes and computers lie scattered over the floor. Swords, an extensive collection of daggers, and Warhammer models, which he glues together in spare evenings, complete the eccentric image of a modern-day Cossack hetman.”

A (very) brief history of Warhammer

The first edition of Warhammer was released in 1983, and nine more editions of the game have been released since. Warhammer has a fantasy setting inspired by the works of Michael Moorcock and JRR Tolkien and is backed up by a range of originally lead and more recently plastic models that fans paint themselves.

Played on a tabletop, complete with scaled buildings and terrain, a well-presented wargame is quite a sight.

A science fiction version of the setting was released in 1987, and that has grown into arguably the largest of Games Workshop’s tabletop properties. This game – Warhammer 40,000, named after the year of its setting – has sci-fi versions of many of the fantasy game’s protagonists, with orcs becoming orks, elves becoming eldar, and so on. There have been ten editions of that game, too.

It is an incredibly grim and gothic game (and was originally quite satircal, though it takes itself far more seriously these days), full of ruined space cathedrals, terrifying aliens, and a vast, galaxy-spanning human imperium ruled by the 10,000-year-old corpse of the Emperor of Mankind, who is worshipped as a god and just might be.

And as part of that worship, those who are particularly pious bedeck themselves with what is called a purity seal – a wax disk with a small scroll attached with some holy verse, such as the delightful “This brother’s boltgun shall never grow cold from firing or his chainsword dry from blood once the enemy has been encountered”.

And this is where Russia comes in. Not content to let the Khorne Group run rampant in Kursk in Warhammer cosplay, one Russian body armour supplier is going mad with purity seals as well.

Actual, blessed purity seals.

Suffer not the (insert enemy here) to live

Soldiers on both sides have been wearing purity seals for some time, but Russian body armour supplier Ratnik Tactical has taken the practice to its… logical extreme.

The company has begun selling very finely crafted purity seals in the manner of their Warhammer inspirations but with details more grounded in the modern conflict. For one, rather than the symbology of the Imperium of Man, the seal is imprinted with the Chi-Rho Christogram, and instead of text exhorting its wearer to “Cleanse the Mutant,” the scrolls are imprinted with Psalm 90 – or Psalm 91, according to some sources.

And are blessed – literally, blessed – by a priest in the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces.

However, rather than having them bestowed upon each valiant soldier by a warrior-chaplain, they’re available to purchase, for a little shy of the equivalent of $20 Australian.

The more things change…

All of this, while it may appear deeply strange if you’re not aware of the games or its deep lore, is hardly unsurprising when you think about it, however.

Pop culture has been a balm to warfighters for decades if not centuries. From airmen painting popular pinups on the noses of their bombers in World War II to soldiers playing Call of Duty on Xboxes following a gruelling patrol in Afghanistan, warfighters have always liked to carry a piece of home with them, whether for comfort or just to remind them what they are fighting for.

Perhaps wearing the symbol of Khorne helps make some sense of what is a very bloody and violent time, or maybe it’s just a morale boost that makes your squad laugh when there really isn’t much to laugh at. Maybe a Russian or Ukrainian soldier wearing a purity seal feels it ennobles them and the war they’re fighting in – which may be a particularly valuable currency on the Russian side, when you think about it.

It must be said, however, that there is something a little bit… grim when your common soldiery is taking up the symbology of a largely tyrannical, xenophobic, and totalitarian faction. Though, just maybe, that’s the point.

Or they may just think it looks cool.

Whatever the reason, it’s hard to argue with something if it gets you through the next day – or the next trench line.