[3] Since 2000, the battalion of 545 Polish and 267 Ukrainian soldiers has been deployed as part of KFOR, an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, claimed as a Serbian province and then under UN administration.

[4] The Kyiv and Warsaw governments reached a preliminary agreement to create a joint peacekeeping military formation on October 5, 1995;[3] the first training started in 1996[3] and the respective national units to comprise the battalion were committed in 1997 when on November 26, the Ministers of Defense of Ukraine and Poland signed the appropriate agreement in Warsaw.

[3] The unit was named after two historic military leaders of the respective nations: Polish-Lithuania Hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz and Zaporozhian Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, whose mutual campaign that brought about the stinging defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Khotyn (1621) was one of the very few historic examples of Poles and Ukrainians cooperating against a mutual enemy.

[6] However, strong resistance from the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada) to the idea of a joint formation with Poland—the country at the time in line to join NATO (the accession took place in March, 1999)—became the main obstacle to the formal creation of the battalion, despite continued efforts of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, which favored the idea.

[11] The unit's service received good reviews from the force's high command and a positive regard from the Kosovo locals, both Serbs and Albanians.