Editor's Note: This story was produced by the students of the 2016 Summer School for International and Ukrainian Students of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
As Russia continues its military build-up in Crimea and on the Ukrainian border, and amid fears of a new escalation of the war, the Ukrainian army is struggling to get itself combat ready.
While
the army has already undergone some major reforms in the face of Russia’s
aggression, little has changed in terms of the training of ordinary soldiers.
Maksym Muratkin who served in the
Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2015-2016, doubts much has actually been achieved in
terms of training.
“A lot of things are done only for
show,” Muratkin said. “The real training takes place on the frontline, under
the bullets of the enemy, like in 1941.”
Having suffered humiliating
defeats in 2014, the Ukrainian army underwent major reforms, which have started
to bear their first fruits. As of 2016, the army could boast more than 200,000
combat-ready soldiers. Given that at the beginning of 2014 Ukraine could field
only 6,000 combat-ready but ill-equipped soldiers, the overall picture today
looks significantly better.
But the training system for the
bulk of army recruits remains poor and largely unreformed. New soldiers might
be better equipped than two years ago, but they still lack the appropriate
combat training. That is troubling, as they could again come up against the
modern and well-trained Russian army in future.
The Ukrainian army training system
is largely based on Soviet military culture, which often leaves soldiers ill
prepared to fight. Recent reforms, such as the adoption of the Strategic
Defense Bulletin (SDB) in June, which lays out the major framework for the
modernization and strategic re-orientation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces until
2020, have yet to show whether they will fundamentally overhaul the training
system.
And with a possible further
escalation of the war looming, it remains doubtful whether the reforms, if they
come, will come in time.
Help from NATO
“Before 2014 the state didn’t
really finance our army, and there was a problem with corruption and low
morale,” said Antin Shaposhnikov, a member of the defense-related strategic
communication team of the presidential administration.
The disastrous defeats in late
summer and autumn 2014 highlighted the horrendous state of the Ukrainian army, its
lack of equipment, strategy and training. It was evident that Ukraine needed
major defense reforms.
As a consequence, defense spending
rose from $1.5 billion in 2014 to nearly $5 billion in 2016. The reforms also
aim, by adopting NATO standards, to establish interoperability between
Ukrainian and NATO forces.
In 2014 the Ukrainian government
asked its Western allies to assist with the reform process through providing training
and expert advice. In 2015, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada answered
Ukraine’s call and established the Joint Multinational Training Group – Ukraine
(JMTG-U). Together, the nations have set up three new training sites, in
Khmelnytskyi, Javoriv and Kamyanets-Podilsky.
Both Ukrainian instructors and
regular troops are being trained at these sites.
“Each
aspect of allied assistance is designed to expose Ukrainian leadership and
soldiers to new approaches and nested training concepts that steadily build
confidence, decentralization, precision, and unity of effort toward NATO
Interoperability” said U.S. Colonel Nick Ducich, commander of Joint
Multinational Training Group.
A major emphasis of this training
is teaching the Ukrainian soldiers to operate with more autonomy, initiative
and leadership – something the Ukrainian army all too often neglected. By the
end of 2016, the United States will have trained five battalions, including one
for special operations. According to Phil Jones, a U.K. defense specialist, the
United Kingdom had trained about 5,000 Ukrainian personnel by March.
Training for show
Nevertheless, this type of
training remains the exception, and the vast majority of soldiers still go
through the traditional Ukrainian training system.
One such soldier is Ivan Zarubin,
who was drafted in the third wave of mobilization in the summer of 2014 and who
participated in the infamous battle of Ilovaisk after only three weeks of
training.
“As far as I can see, the reforms
may exist, but mostly on paper. In reality, not much is changing for the
regular soldiers,” Zarubin said.
“The training system we currently
have is just a degraded Soviet system,” said Muratkin.
The Ukrainian
Ministry of Defense refused to comment.
But ordinary
soldiers say the ministry is not keeping its promises to soldiers to provide
proper, modern training.
“The training we had was
old-fashioned and not useful in real combat situations,” said one soldier who
has been in military service since 2015. He asked for his name to not be
published due to fears of retribution.
“The training seemed to have been
organized just for the commanders, to show we were doing something. We were
promised that we’d be be taught by different instructors from abroad, with the
use of new NATO training systems. But it never happened.”
Enduring effect
Captain Tigran Mikaelian, a U.S.
Army Reserve Civil Affairs officer, speaking in a private capacity, gave one
possible explanation for the lack of NATO standard training.
“The focus of the program was to
create a hub for international training assistance and NATO doctrine in order
to develop a native and autonomous training capability, not to train large
elements of Ukraine’s military,” Mikaelian said.
However, recent reports raise questions over whether the JMTG-U’s target of
training just 300 Ukrainian instructors will be hit in time.
Nevertheless, if the
implementation of NATO standards and principles is successful, it may bring
positive changes and thus prepare soldiers better for the fighting in eastern
Ukraine, said Andriy Tsybulskyi, a Ukrainian soldier who went through both
training systems.
But even though
some changes are happening at the operational and tactical levels in Ukraine,
Phil Jones, a U.K. defense specialist, said that “without systemic reform these
changes will not take root and have an enduring effect.”
