Squad To Add Armed Forces Of Ukraine In A Future Update

Valorant isn’t the only game moving to Unreal Engine 5. In the recent “Letter from the Squad Leader (LFTSL)” on X (formerly Twitter) and Steam, Squad is getting ready for two major updates this year, and there is also a roadmap to highlight what is in store for the game in the next update, things that are being worked on, and some long-term plans.

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While Squad had initially planned more than four releases for the game this year, with July being almost over, the developers are merging smaller updates to launch together in v9.0 and another major update with v10.0 sometime down the line.

Squad’s July 2025 Roadmap Showcases Armed Forces Of Ukraine In Progress

Squad v9.0 Update Plans And Future Addition Of Ukraine Faction

The “In Progress” section of the roadmap has the things the developers are actively working on, but do not have a planned release date, and “Armed Forces of Ukraine” is a new faction among the many things planned.

The demand for adding the Ukrainian army to the game isn’t exactly new, and the community has been requesting it for some time now, as we can see from u/War3Thog’s post on r/joinsquad. Things even go as far back as 2020, with Steam user Parasite opening the discussion on the same topic, and it seems the developers are planning to give players what they want.

With an overview of the showcase is about complete, let’s delve into some specific items. Ukraine’s active player base is tied for the third and fourth largest. So, I’d like to announce that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will join Squads’ lineup of factions later this year!

But as Ukraine vs. Russia is an ongoing war and a sensitive topic, and since this is in the “In Progress” section on the roadmap instead of “Next Update”, it is hard to say whether the release date will be affected by the conflict.

In the meantime, we can look forward to the rework and improvements to the Eastern European biome, and a new Commendations system.

“Commendations system is a socially-driven progression system in which players gain the ability to give a ‘commendation’ to another player, giving them agency to recognize them for being good at playing their role, or being a good leader, teacher, or teammate,” says Howitzer. “As players receive commendations, they will progress down a track relevant to the type of commendation they’ve received, allowing them to unlock better versions of the commendation icons.”

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While the new features are something to be excited about, the main thing that a lot of players are worried about is how well the game will play after it completely transitions to Unreal Engine 5. UE5 doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for giving players the best performance.

We recently saw this with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, even though the game has a lot going on for it, both in terms of its story and game mechanics, as seen by many reviews, including our own. Its PC performance, sadly, wasn’t one of them, causing the game to have “Overwhelmingly Negative” reviews on Steam.

And even though the developers quickly released a performance patch, at the time of writing this article, the game still sits at “Mostly Negative” reviews. Will Squad and Valorant face the same fate after moving to Unreal Engine 5? Only time can tell.