The unit is created in May 2014 by the name 24th Territorial Defense Battalion "Aydar" (24-й батальйон територіальної оборони «Айдар») and took part in the war in Eastern Ukraine and had roughly 300-400 members in 2014.

[12][13] On 8 August 2014 Ukraine's Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey stated that the battalion would be reorganised, would receive better equipment and would see more combat missions.

[1] Aidar was formally disbanded on 2 March 2015 "to prevent illegal actions of some representatives of volunteer units" (according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces).

[19][20] The Aidar Battalion consisted of volunteers from Lviv, Chernihiv, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Crimea, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Donetsk regions.

[27] Its volunteer pilot, Nadiya Savchenko, was captured by pro-Russian separatists near Luhansk, transported to Russia and charged with killing two Russian journalists.

[28][29] On 8 September 2014 Amnesty International claimed that the battalion had committed war crimes, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions.

[30] Denis Krivosheev, acting Director of Europe and Central Asia for Amnesty International, stated that starving civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime.