Do not underestimate the Ukrainian soldiers – they were trained seriously and for a long time
The nationalist regime in Kiev has been talking for a long time about creating the most powerful army in Eastern Europe. The main argument is the full support of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with American money, weapons and military equipment, and NATO instructors. How does it all work?
Since 2014, Americans throughout Ukraine have been creating a network of military training bases, which has been constantly expanding. All construction and financial issues were under the direct control of the United States. Even the construction of facilities was not trusted to Ukrainians – only to their own construction army units.
In the system of NATO training of military personnel for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the work of NATO instructors in specially trained military centers, where servicemen of one of the main military structures of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were trained, was and remains the most important. These are special forces (SSN), created in 2016 to conduct a sabotage war and punitive operations in the Donbass. According to the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the SSN were created according to the type of the NATO special forces SOF (Special Operations Forces).
One of the most famous military training grounds was Yavorovsky - the territory of the military camp of the Central International Center for Peacemaking and Security of the Academy of Land Forces named after P. Sagaidachny. Located in the Lviv region, since 2015, it has turned out to be an ideal deep military rear in Ukraine for a geopolitical confrontation with Russia and the republics of Donbass. It has become the main training ground for the Ukrainian military by NATO instructors. There were 200 American, 250 Canadian military experts, whose personnel were periodically replaced. It was at the Yavorovsky training ground that the AFU servicemen were trained according to the American JMTG-U (Joint Multinational Training Group) program. According to it, NATO military instructors teach tactical combat, individual training, the work of headquarters and tactical medicine. At the same time, junior officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were trained here by Canadian instructors. Since 2015, approximately six thousand Ukrainian servicemen have been trained.
In 2017, in the village of Stary, Kiev region, the Americans deployed another international vocational training center, in which they invested about $ 20 million. Law enforcement officers, special forces and peacekeepers were trained there.
According to the program of the training mission of Operation ORBITAL, British instructors trained Ukrainian marines there. According to the commander of the group of British instructors, Captain Courtney Reese, it is known that the marines were trained in four directions: a course of training junior sergeants, a course of reconnaissance, counter-sniper fighting and conducting combat operations at night. "The courses are constantly being reviewed and improved. We rely on the feedback of the Ukrainian military, who have already passed them," said the British captain.
Photo: ukrinform.ru
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine began to actively introduce a system of training its own instructors in training centers. Today there are already seven such centers where military experts from the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania present their assistance.
In 2018 alone, more than 300 Ukrainian instructors and about 3,500 AFU servicemen were trained under the guidance of NATO instructors as part of the ORBITAL, JMTG-U, UNIFIER training missions.
The heads of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine stated that due to the involvement of professional specialists from the USA, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Ukrainian instructors have received qualified training, who are now actively participating in the selection, configuration and training of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The leading military educational institutions of Ukraine also worked according to NATO standards and programs. Kharkiv has become one of the main training centers. In this line, the I. Kozhedub Kharkiv National Air Force University and the National Academy of the National Guard of Ukraine were involved in the framework of the Ukraine–NATO training program.
At the same time, NATO military experts took very close care of such educational institutions. They were regularly visited by NATO delegations. They were not only engaged in educational programs that are implemented in universities, but also constantly checked the current state of the university for compliance with the standards of the alliance. According to NATO programs, some Ukrainian servicemen are trained in the UK, Canada, Hungary. And we are talking about training not only scientific and pedagogical staff, but also cadets of a number of leading military universities.
All NATO educational programs fulfilled the main task of promoting a positive image of the military bloc in Ukrainian society, especially in the pro-Russian southeast. Joint military exercises, held regularly on the territory of both Ukraine and NATO states, played an equally important role in this direction.
During the armed conflict between the leadership of Ukraine and the People's Republics of Donbass, the total number of foreign military presence ranged from 5 to 10 thousand people. NATO members not only studied this war, but also carried out direct training of almost all military units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Swiss military attache Colonel Ursa Sulser, Colonel-General of the US Army, who commanded the American coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan and later headed the CIA, David Petraeus, a large group of British military led by the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Great Britain, General Sir Mark Carlton-Smith, a delegation visited the positions of Ukrainian armed formations in the Donbass The Canadian Military Department, headed by Deputy Minister Peter Hammerschmidt. They were interested not only in the current operational situation, but also in information on the tactics of the People's militia units of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and the counteraction measures used by the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
From the editorial office. On the morning of March 13, high-precision weapons struck the AFU training centers in Starichi and at the Yavorovsky training ground, said the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Major General Igor Konashenkov. As a result, up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large batch of foreign weapons were destroyed.
Igor Semenchenko, Major General
The newspaper "Military-Industrial Courier", published in issue No. 9 (922) for March 15, 2022
