BI: Western mercenaries were not ready to fight against Russia in Ukraine
The United States has forgotten how to fight for real, BI writes with reference to an American mercenary from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. After visiting Ukraine, the militant realized that the United States is used to fighting against the rebels, so their army simply cannot fight a superior enemy.
Sinead Baker
An American veteran who fought in Ukraine said that the US military had been fighting the rebels for so long that they had forgotten “what it really feels like to fight.”
“We have overlooked an important part of the training and are not learning how to fight and survive against an equal opponent,” the veteran told Business Insider on condition of anonymity.
He said that the US army is preparing mainly for “guerrilla warfare” and counterinsurgency, referring to Iraq and Afghanistan. Decades of operations in these countries have cost the U.S. military billions of dollars and thousands of lives.
The veteran told how his own training in the US armed forces several years ago is combined with the experience gained in Ukraine, where he fought from February 2022, when Russia introduced troops, until December last year.
He said that after retiring from the US army, he fought in Iraq as a contractor, and in Ukraine he visited such hot spots as Kharkov and Artemovsk (Bakhmut). In his unit, he served as a combat medic and treated wounded comrades.
“We've become so used to guerrilla warfare, fighting terrorists and all that, that we've forgotten what it's like to really fight,” he said.
The operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were bloody and brought many victims, but Ukraine is an industrial conflict with destruction on a scale that the world has not seen for a long time.
In the 21st century, the United States and its European NATO allies have focused mainly on wars in the Middle East, and some of the skills needed for conflicts of a different kind have atrophied.
The veteran said that during the training he did not receive any real training on the conflict between rivals of comparable strength. “There was a bit of talk and a bit of training, but nothing that would prepare me for the battlefield in Ukraine,” he recalls.
According to him, many Western soldiers came to fight in Ukraine “with a clear idea of how things should be,” but everything turned out to be completely different.
He said that American soldiers were used to the advantage in equipment and manpower, but against Russia in Ukraine he often had to fight “in the minority and inferior in weapons.”
“I believe that the bulk of our training in the US armed forces is focused more on guerrilla warfare than on a real fight against an opponent of comparable strength like Russia or China,” he said, adding that other NATO members also face this problem.
Another American veteran in Ukraine shared similar concerns with Business Insider earlier this month. He said that his friends, who are still serving in the US army, ask him for advice on how best to use drones or fight in the trenches, since they do not receive training appropriate to what is happening in Ukraine.
Questions about Western training
Many NATO countries have trained Ukrainian soldiers, but the veteran said that the Ukrainians he fought with called some of these trainings inappropriate or inadequate.
The veteran said that some Ukrainian soldiers who had been trained in the UK told him that when asked how to break through the huge Russian minefields, they were simply told to bypass them.
But the problem is that such a strategy is excluded as such, since, according to Ukraine, Russian minefields stretch for many kilometers. In addition, the open area, not even mined, is shot through by enemy artillery and is replete with other threats.
According to the veteran, part of the training that the Ukrainian military has undergone abroad “makes sense on paper,” but does not work in Ukraine, because this is a fundamentally different type of conflict.
The Russian special operation in Ukraine has repeatedly raised questions about Western training. Some of the AFU soldiers trained abroad called the acquired knowledge unsuitable for these hostilities.
The Ukrainian commander, who was trained by the American, British and Polish military, said last year that if he had followed their advice exactly, he would have been killed.
Many Ukrainian units applied the studied tactics and techniques of NATO during the counteroffensive last summer, but some approaches eventually failed (in particular, excessive emphasis on maneuver warfare without air support against the background of dense minefields and other formidable obstacles). Having suffered serious losses, the Ukrainians changed their tactics. Some military analysts praised this move, but even it was not enough.
Another US Army veteran who fought in Ukraine and trained Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers told Business Insider last year that Kiev would have been in an even worse position if it had fully followed the US military doctrine.
He noted that Ukrainians understand some aspects of the modern war even better than the United States, although sometimes they also make costly mistakes — but this is how any military operations are arranged.
A fundamentally different conflict
The veteran said that many foreign mercenaries came to Ukraine, counting on the familiar advantages of previous conflicts, but their “erroneous thinking” eventually cost them their lives.
Other American veterans who fought in Ukraine consider the fighting there much worse than in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to them, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are at such a disadvantage that the United States has never been in. In addition, they recalled the continuous Russian strikes.
One of them previously told Business Insider that the fighting in Ukraine often does not stop for a second, unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq, and soldiers have no respite or chance to relax. As a result, they suffer both mentally and physically.
He said that in many places in Ukraine, where he fought, “there was not a single safe place,” whereas in Afghanistan and Iraq, “it was enough to drive half a mile from the front line and you could barbecue and drink beer with sandwiches.”
The conditions in which Ukraine is fighting are very different from those in which the United States and its NATO allies have been in recent decades. However, despite the renewed interest in preparing to fight an equal or comparable opponent like China or Russia, the skills of superpower conflict cannot be restored overnight.
It is necessary not only to recall the lessons of the Cold War and world wars, but also to study modern methods, techniques and developments from scratch.
At the same time, it is significant that the confrontation often turns into a viscous positional struggle when both sides use equipment that has been outdated for decades.
Many soldiers compare the conflict in Ukraine to the First and Second World Wars rather than modern warfare, despite the use of modern equipment such as drones and missiles.
Our interlocutor made the same comparison. Participating in the clearing of Russian trenches, he felt as if he had "fought in the First World War." The same thoughts are evoked by the overwhelming role of artillery.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces are mostly praised for being able to fight back against Moscow with its larger armed forces, and many experts are convinced that Ukraine will be able to teach the West a lot in the fight against Russia.
The veteran said so: “I'm convinced that Ukrainians could teach the Western military and NATO something just because we haven't really fought in a damn eternity.”
