The New York Times: Ukrainian military are now studying the “young fighter course” under the US program

The soldier threw a hook attached to a rope over the barbed wire fence and pulled hard to check whether it was mined, New York Times correspondent Andrew E. Kramer said, reporting from the Ukrainian city of Yavorov. According to the author, this is a typical exercise for beginners, but it is performed by soldiers of the Ukrainian National Guard, who have already fought for several months in Eastern Ukraine. “Their instructor is a U.S. military officer training troops to fight the United States' former Cold War adversary, Russia, and Russian-backed separatists,” the article says.

“I haven’t heard a target called ‘Ivan’ in a long time,” said one of the instructors, First Sergeant David Dzuik. “And now I hear it again.”

The “Military Course for Laggards,” as the newspaper called it, consists of 63 lessons. The classes, combined into three consecutive two-month courses, are taught by 300 US Army instructors. The instructors discovered that the Ukrainian military, unfortunately, did not have proper training. Now they are taught to use walkie-talkies for encrypted conversations, break down doors, and also drag the wounded while holding a machine gun at the ready.

“When the war began a year ago, the Ukrainian army was almost useless: it was riddled with corruption, overrun by Russian spies and consisted mainly of “skeleton” battalions: officers plus a few privates. Only 1% of the equipment in the army was produced over the past 10 years. Needless to say, morale was extremely low,” says Kramer.

The government was forced to send National Guard soldiers into battle, who had been trained in military affairs for only two months. “They mishandled weapons, fell into traps and died from non-fatal wounds,” the newspaper writes.

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The US also organized a refresher course for professional military fire spotters. “The goal is to increase the accuracy of artillery fire so that more enemy fighters and fewer civilians die,” explains the author.

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