What do Ukrainian soldiers think of their training abroad?

The UK, Norway, Germany and France, as well as other European Union states, have offered military training for Ukrainian soldiers and officers since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine three years ago.

One of them, who asked DW to use his combat name Mara, is deployed with the 114th Brigade of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense against Russia’s war of aggression.

Mara completed two months of basic training in France in 2023.

“But Western trainers sometimes don’t understand the kind of war we’re fighting,” he told DW. “They are used to fighting terrorists who don’t have tanks, artillery or drones.”

The soldier would have preferred training with drones and in tactical medicine.

He also thought that the exercise to set up and dismantle a tent camp was unnecessary. “Nobody does that in Ukraine, everyone sits in shelters,” he explains.

“When the artillery fire starts, we immediately hide in the holes and don’t take down tents first,” Mara said.

In contrast, the shooting exercises were particularly useful. “Both at night with vision devices as well as with obstacles and in urban areas,” the soldier said.

He was also impressed by the exercise to escape from captivity in a town that was specifically built for training purposes.

“There were bare buildings and ruins, in other words, conditions that really resembled those in Ukraine,” Mara told DW.

He also underwent exercises in the sewers of this training town. “We were supposed to set up an ambush in there. It stank terribly because the instructors had scattered rotten meat,” he recalls.

“They said we had to crawl over corpses in war,” he adds.

Later in Ukraine, when he found himself crawling over corpses, the psychological training helped him and his unit to remain combat-ready even under extreme conditions.

Swapping lessons learned

“We were taught the basics, such as how to handle weapons and how to shoot properly but I wouldn’t say it was all useful,” a National Guardsman, who was in Poland in October 2024, told DW.

“The instructors immediately said it was an exchange of experience, that they would teach us what they knew and we should tell them how we would do it,” he said.

However, his unit had no combat experience at the time.

Another training focused on coordinating combat rotations abroad.

“But what kind of coordination is there when you see your comrades for the first time?” asks a soldier from the 153rd Independent Mechanized Brigade who trained in Germany. According to him, a completely newly formed unit was sent to this training.

The fighters of the 153rd Brigade were also trained using American mortars in Germany, however, they were given Ukrainian mortars in the combat zone.

The soldiers therefore had to undergo additional training in Ukraine.

Exercises with western weapons

For his part, Danylo Khrebtov, a soldier in the 35th Marine Infantry Brigade, rates his training in Norway positively.

In 2022, he practiced handling the Hellfire missile system.

“The instructors had been in Afghanistan and had combat experience,” he told DW, adding that “we really wanted to learn as much as possible from them.”

The two-week training course consisted of theory and practice. “We worked directly with the equipment, shooting at the sea or at moving targets,” the soldier explains.

Once on the battlefield, his unit benefited from the Hellfire system. “We were able to destroy a Russian fortification,” the fighter, who received a military award after this mission, recalls.

However, he also thinks that there were three military personnel who were only permitted to join the training due to family connections to senior officers.

“Back in Ukraine, they stayed in the hinterland, so real combat soldiers could have been trained instead of them,” he criticizes.

Issues with training courses

In other cases, the training abroad did not match the announced itinerary.

A Territorial Defense soldier who was in Slovakia in July 2023 told DW that his commanders had promised him training on the “latest weapons and equipment” and in tactical medicine.

“But it turned out that they had prepared a basic training and our boys were a bit disappointed,” he said.

However, once the instructors modified the program and brought in more experienced specialists for tactical training, they practiced with the remaining Soviet equipment from the Slovakian army.

“That was useful,” the fighter agrees.

In his opinion, however, the one-month long exercises took too long.

“We felt like we were stalling for time. On the other hand, you could say we had a month’s rest from the war. We were in a place with beautiful nature and no air raids,” he says.

Later, in October 2023, the soldier again travelled abroad.

In the Czech Republic, he was to receive training as a “combat medic”.

However, this time, there was another disadvantage of the month-long training course.

“There were guys like me, but also some who had only recently been mobilized or had changed their specialty,” he told DW, adding that also “the instructors weren’t the best as some had been only on a peacekeeping mission in Cyprus or Iraq.”

Courses for Ukrainian instructors

In February 2024, a sergeant from the 59th Separate Assault Brigade, who asked DW to refer to him as “Ranger”, was invited to the UK.

The 35-day exercise, including the evacuation of a building, was carried out by British and Romanian instructors.

“But there was nothing new for anyone with combat experience,” Ranger told DW.

“Ukrainian military personnel with combat experience would have been more effective instructors,” he added.

Later, in May 2024, he returned to the UK, this time for an instructor’s course.

By this time, he was already teaching new recruits.

“The British themselves didn’t know what to do with us because we were already instructors,” he recalls.

Also the timeframe was different.

The Ukrainian instructors were taught according to a six-week basic training curriculum. But Ranger has to train new recruits within a few days inside the combat zone.

“We don’t have time for such lectures,” he told DW, adding that “we explain how to hide from a drone or close a trench during cigarette breaks.”

This article was originally published in Ukrainian and was adapted from German.