It was expanded into the 810th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade in 1979, and remained stationed in Sevastopol as one of the Russian units based there under an agreement with Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapsed.

The history of the unit began with the formation of the 309th Separate Naval Infantry Battalion of the Black Sea Fleet in accordance with a 30 April 1966 Ministry of Defense directive.

[2] During the 1991 August coup, the Black Sea Fleet command like much of the military leadership supported the coup of the State Emergency Committee, dispatching more than 500 naval infantrymen from the brigade with full combat gear to the Belbek airport on 20 August in order to prevent President Mikhail Gorbachev from being rescued from house arrest at his dacha in Foros.

[3] The naval infantrymen returned to their base after the failure of the coup and arrival of Vice President Alexander Rutskoy to free Gorbachev on 21 August.

[4] Following the Black January 1990 repression of Azerbaijani nationalists in Baku, 525 naval infantrymen from the brigade, including the 880th and 882nd Separate Naval Infantry Battalions and a company of the 888th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion of the brigade, were sent into the city to enforce martial law, replacing Caspian Flotilla sailors manning checkpoints and guarding government buildings and military installations on 26 January; they returned to Sevastopol in early April.

[5][6] This deployment had a lasting impact on the Ukrainian commander of the 880th Battalion, Major Vitaily Rozhmanov, who explained that it was during the intervention in Baku that "we realized we were abandoned to fight with the Azerbaijani people, to perform police duties, to do everything to intimidate people, kill their national spirit and all faith and desire for freedom" when he and the 880th Battalion swore allegiance to Ukraine on 22 February 1992.

Brigade sailor Aleksandr Pozynich was killed in action in November 2015 during a rescue mission for downed Russian pilots and posthumously awarded the Order of Courage.

[14] According to documents captured by the Ukrainian military, pre-invasion plans called for a battalion tactical group of the 810th Brigade to conduct a naval landing at Stepanivka Persha [uk] on the coast of Azov Sea in Zaporizhzhia Oblast before joining with elements of the 58th Combined Arms Army and 117th Naval Infantry Regiment to surround and capture Melitopol.

[18] Black Sea Fleet sailors, including some from the Project 1164 Atlant class cruiser Moskva, sunk on 14 April 2022, were used as replacements for brigade losses in Mariupol.

[19][20] Brigade deputy commander Colonel Alexei Berngard was made a Hero of the Russian Federation on 4 March for his leadership during the Battle of Volnovakha.

[21] Black Sea Fleet deputy commander Major General Dmitry Pyatunin announced on 1 June that the awarding of the brigade with the honorific Mariupol in recognition of its role in the capture of the city was being considered.

[22] Ukrainian Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) claimed that the unit had a large scale mutiny on 31 July 2022, which saw upwards of 200 personnel refuse to return to front-line combat.

The ISW considered these claims to be "implausible", as a brigade normally has around 3,000 troops, reporting that "Ukrainian forces have reportedly claimed to have defeated and destroyed significant elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade in southern Ukraine several times during the war thus far, forcing the Russian military command to repeatedly reconstitute the formation… is highly unlikely that the 810th is staffed by over 11,000 troops unless as part of a reformation into a division already underway".

On December 31, the brigade suffered another hit in the Kursk sector following a Ukrainian attack with 6 Storm Shadow missiles at the Lgov railway station.