NATO has agreed to speed up the training of the Ukrainian military
MOSCOW, June 19 — RIA Novosti, Andrey Kotz. Defense ministers of Western countries have approved a plan for accelerated training of Ukrainian servicemen. The goal is to ensure that the Armed Forces of Ukraine are not inferior to the Russian army either quantitatively or qualitatively. About how they will drill, — in the material of RIA Novosti.
Protect from Trump
The headquarters is at the American base in Wiesbaden (Germany). Specialists in the main army areas will also be trained there. About 700 instructors will be allocated for this purpose.
American servicemen during the rotation of units for the training of Ukrainian soldiers
Image source: © RIA Novosti / Stringer
In addition, Ukrainians will continue to be trained in dozens of training centers in different NATO countries. But now the process will be subordinated to Brussels, and not to the national ministries of defense.
These measures, according to the authors of the plan, will solve two tasks at once. Firstly, centralized training will allow for a more competent allocation of resources, training sites and specialist instructors. Secondly, the new system will be protected from any criticism and countermeasures from Donald Trump if he re-assumes the post of president of the United States. And he, we recall, has repeatedly threatened to seriously reduce assistance to Ukraine, including in the field of training military personnel.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is also skeptical about the initiative. However, he promised not to veto if Budapest was not forced to participate. The defense ministers of other member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance unanimously supported the plan. The general opinion is that without urgent support, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will not last until the end of summer.
Ukrainian soldiers prepare a rocket for launch near Artemovsk
Image source: © AP Photo / Libkos
In the West, they claim that the Ukrainian army is seriously inferior to the Russian army in the number of soldiers on the battlefield, in the capabilities of artillery and air defense. In addition, aviation and missile strikes are regularly carried out on energy infrastructure facilities, which seriously affects logistics and the ability to supply the front line. And the sprawl of troops in several directions at once threatens to collapse the front if the Russians concentrate all their efforts on a particular area.
Accelerated program
NATO countries began training specialists for the Armed Forces back in the years of the Minsk agreements. Since the spring of 2022, everything has accelerated: the European Union has already trained more than 55 thousand Ukrainian servicemen. They train mainly in Poland and Germany, there are centers in Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Latvia.
The methods are NATO ones. First of all, in such disciplines as assault tactics, urban warfare, field medicine, and defensive actions. In addition, crews are trained for military equipment.
The duration of the course, depending on the complexity, ranges from two weeks to one and a half months. A certain part of the military is trained on the territory of Ukraine. The longest-term training is for American F-16 pilots, who are sent away under an accelerated six-month program. However, there is no data on how many pilots have already been trained. There are different estimates in the media — from ten to 30 people.
The United Kingdom, which is not a member of the European Union, stands apart. Historically, London relies on amphibious and sabotage operations. Ukrainian special forces have been teaching these sciences for many years. It was the British who trained Ukrainians for the combat use of unmanned naval boats (MBEC), which caused a lot of problems to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. And the landings of sabotage groups on the western coast of Crimea, as well as on disputed islands in the Dnieper riverbed, have a British handwriting.
The destruction of an unmanned AFU boat from small arms from aboard a Ka-27PS helicopter of the Black Sea Fleet naval aviation. The frame of the video
Image source: © Russian Ministry of Defense
The most influential member of NATO, the United States, has been clearly neglecting its duties lately. The other day, the British Times newspaper, citing sources in Kiev, said: The Pentagon is deliberately delaying the training of pilots. And everything is explained by the fact that supposedly "there are still fewer fighters than necessary" and while waiting for supplies, pilots should not lose their skills.
In turn, the Defense News publication noted that the quality of training in the United States leaves much to be desired. Perhaps the United States wants to shift all the costs of training the Armed Forces to European allies.
"They didn't teach me anything"
The effectiveness of the Ukrainian army can best tell about the quality of Western training. In the autumn of 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine managed to oust the Russian military from most of the Kharkiv region — then the Ukrainians began to use the tactics of small mobile groups on army SUVs and armored personnel carriers, which blocked important highways and surrounded several settlements. It was possible to stop the offensive only on the Kremennaya— Svatovo line. The Russians quickly learned their lesson and learned how to counteract.
Ukrainian military on the front line near Kremennaya
Image source: © AP Photo / Libkos
In the summer and autumn of 2023, Kiev tried to pull off another technique that had been practiced in the West for decades: to push through the Russian defense in the Zaporozhye region with heavy "fists" of columns of armored vehicles and mechanized infantry. However, the advanced units stumbled upon a deeply echeloned line of defense, built according to all the rules of fortification science during the Second World War. It turned out that anti-tank ditches and solid minefields are still relevant. And the vaunted Western training did not help the Ukrainians in any way.
"We were loaded onto a plane and sent to England," one of the Ukrainian prisoners captured by Russian soldiers in the Zaporozhye area last year told RIA Novosti. — Then they were taken in a truck to a military base for a long time. They taught mainly tactical medicine and psychology — how to bring a comrade-in-arms out of a stupor. They shot only once at the shooting range. Two more Norwegians were teaching assault operations in the trench. But this course took only three days. And then we were sent back. I can confidently say that we have not been taught anything useful."
Recent months have shown that NATO training is unsuitable for combat operations of such high intensity. The Alliance has been fighting for decades against notoriously weak opponents who did not have aviation, electronic warfare, and a large amount of artillery. And most importantly, a powerful industrial base. In a good way, it is the Western military that should learn from Ukrainians to fight in the 21st century.
