The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces made the statement in a Facebook post on Wednesday — days after the country’s military won a landslide victory that forced the Russian military into a hastily staged retreat in northeastern Ukraine. The achievement, just months after it began, is “quite, quite significant,” one defense expert said. “It’s almost worth a brigade’s worth of personnel,” said Sean Maloney, a history professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., who added that these soldiers may also help increase training capacity in Ukraine itself, creating a multiplier result. “If they train the coach, they will go back and train people in Ukraine.” The initiative was announced last June by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and involves more than a thousand British soldiers from the 11th Security Force Assistance Brigade, a unit focused on training foreign militaries. Canada has sent about 225 troops, including trainers. The Netherlands and New Zealand are also contributing trainers. Ukrainian recruits are flown to the UK on British military planes. There they receive instruction at four different bases, including a major training center in Kent where urban combat is taught. The three-week course covers basic offensive and defensive combat tactics, weapons handling, medical training, engineering and mine clearance, and an introduction to the laws of war. An M142 High Mobility Artillery Missile System (HIMARS) is fired at an undisclosed location in Ukraine on June 24, 2022. (Pavlo Narozhnyy/Reuters) As well as training new recruits, Britain has instructed experienced Ukrainian soldiers in the use of a number of sophisticated weapons systems, such as high-mobility artillery rocket units (HIMARS) provided by allied countries. In its online posting, Ukraine’s general staff said it hoped to expand the UK-based instruction beyond recruits to include training for current junior officers, whose leadership is considered the backbone of an army. Maloney said the basic training is a step up from the instruction Russian troops receive because Western soldiers are taught what is known as “combined arms tactics” involving ground troops, tanks, artillery and aircraft. “It will be a more sophisticated approach to maneuver warfare, possibly enabled with a variety of other technologies,” Maloney said. A Ukrainian soldier holds a captured Russian flag in Izium, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (Kostiantyn Liberov/The Associated Press) The withdrawal of Russian troops in areas east and southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was described as frantic and chaotic by locals who spoke to international media in the region. Rapid offensives last week allowed Ukraine’s military to recapture hundreds of square kilometers of territory and strategic towns. Ukrainian soldiers have also captured dozens of abandoned weapons, including tanks and armored personnel carriers. Maloney said the Russian military has lived off the myth of the Soviet Red Army for decades. What the past weeks and months have shown, he said, is that Ukraine is facing a “decentralized Russian military” crippled by years of “corruption, opportunism and political interference.”
