The United Kingdom is imparting basic infantry skills to Ukrainian soldiers at four locations in the country. The country aims for 20,000 personnel by the year-end. The UK has already trained 10,000 newly recruited Ukrainian soldiers since June 27 last year.

Major Trucker Middleton Officer Commanding the UK training team told ANI, “This training is very basic. Essentially, the recruits that come through have very little military experience. We treat them as civilians, and then provide basic training in infantry skills to arm them with the right key skills and experience so that they can go back and defend their homeland.”

He also mentioned that the duration of the training program for the newly recruited Ukrainian soldiers is for few weeks.

Under the United Kingdom command element, Canadian and Lithuanian contingents are also working together to impart the necessary training to new Ukrainian military recruits.

The commanding officer of the Canadian contingent of the training element Major Jurgen Miranda said, “Training focuses on bringing recruits up to basic infantry skills. So our main aim is to teach these soldiers how to shoot, move, communicate and medicate on the battlefield in such a way that they can effectively fight in this war. Our overall anticipation is that by the end of this training, they’ll be more effective, more lethal on the battlefield.

We make sure that they are actually capable of defending their country.”
The training includes weapons handling, battlefield first aid, fieldcraft, patrol tactics and teaching on the Law of Armed Conflict.

Highlighting the number of soldiers they expect by the year-end, Miranda mentioned, “So, up to this point, we’ve already trained upto 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers and we are anticipating that this number will continue to increase with a goal of over 20,000 soldiers on the battlefield to support Ukraine’s mission.”

Talking about the Ukrainian soldier’s perspective on the training in the UK, Igor who is a native of Odesa and joined the army one month ago said, “It is a valuable and interesting experience for me. We are taught by our partners to defend our land and the learn defensive tactics of the military. We are training here at this moment on urban operations.”

Igor also mentioned that he used to create handmade leather objects before joining the military.