Express UK training of 10,000 Ukrainian volunteers to fight Russia

at least that is the goal of the new military training program that Boris Johnson left prepared before being forced to resign last Thursday. In total, up to 10,000 recruits are expected to arrive in the country every 120 days to attend a course run by the UK’s 11th Security Forces Assistance Brigade.

The program is based on the basic plan followed by British troops, but compressed. In a matter of weeks, the 1,500 Ukrainian conscripts who have arrived on the islands will have to learn what, in peacetime, it would take six months.

speed and accuracy

Speed ​​is a priority for the Ukrainian Army. Especially since if he loses up to 200 troops a day, as President Zelensky’s adviser Mikhail Podolyak recently assured, he needs to quickly regroup his troops in Donbas to stop the Russian advance. However, not everything goes: the Ukrainian forces need soldiers who know how to shoot the sophisticated weapons that the West sends without googling the instructions.

[Drones turcos, misiles ‘yanquies’… La lluvia de armas (y de millones) que mantiene en pie a Ucrania]

In this sense, the program, which will be developed in the four military centers deployed in the northeast, southwest and southeast of the country, covers “the handling of weapons, first aid on the battlefield, field skills, patrol tactics and classes on the laws of war”.

The Ukrainian Army loses 200 troops a day in the war

In general, most recruits have never touched a gun. Therefore, explaining how to use pistols and rifles correctly is one of the priorities of more than 1,050 British military deployed for this support mission.

“We know that we train people who in a few weeks will be on the front lines and there is a real sense of purpose behind that,” says one of the military officers in charge at the Bovington training area in southern England in a video. published by the Ministry of Defense.

Beyond frontline defense, recruits will also be taught how to drive armored vehicleslike the Huskies or the Spartans, on the battlefield.

How to launch long range missiles

However, in this phase of the fight, the heavy artillery is the true protagonist. That is why it is expected that the military be trained in the use of theyou Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS). Namely, the most advanced long-range artillery weapon of the British Army that the Johnson Government has been sending to Ukraine for weeks.

Similar to the US HIMARS rocket launchers, its ability to hit a target located more than 80 kilometers away worries Moscow, which sees the delivery of such weapons as a “provocation”. Especially since they could be used to attack Russian soil and cause an escalation of the conflict.

In this way, continuity is given to the training with this type of weaponry that began in June with the support of New Zealand.

Despite the importance of this program, which will help Ukrainian troops abroad, away from russian bombsThis is not the first time that an initiative of this type has been carried out.

In 2015, after the Russian annexation of Crimea, the British Government launched the Orbit Operation. A project aimed at instructing the Armed Forces in Ukraine and from which nearly 20,000 soldiers have benefited until February 2022, according to data of the British Ministry of Defence.

The United States did something similar, before the war it regularly sent military trainers to the country. Nevertheless, the Biden Administration withdrew the 150 soldiers that he had deployed as soon as the Russian invasion began. “We will not fight in the Third World War in Ukraine,” said the American president at the time.

However, the truth is that, since April, the US has been training Ukrainian soldiers in the facilities it has in Germany with the objective that they learn to handle the artillery equipment that Washington is sending to kyiv. A package that a few months ago included radar systems and Howitzer cannons now prioritizes sending the strategic long-range HIMARS missiles.