NATO Training Leaves Ukrainian Troops ‘Underprepared’ for War

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. More and more Ukraine-supporting Western outlets are making admissions against interest as far as how the war is going. Consider the twofer in the headline: that Ukraine forces are by implication taking a drubbing from the Russians, and the once-implied-to-be-superior NATO training might be a big reason why.

This framing is a very big shift from repeated claims by US, NATO, and EU officials, as well as many commentators. Russia was running out of missiles. Russian troops had poor morale. Russian forces were badly led. The Russian military was hopelessly corrupt.

This sort of thing has finally started to die down as the much ballyhooed Ukraine counteroffensive has proven to be not just an embarrassing failure, but also a disaster. Independent Western experts like Douglas Macgregor (who recall has excellent contacts) suggest that Ukraine deaths in this campaign are approaching 40,000. To give a sense of significance, compare that to the 60,000 men specifically trained by NATO since March of last year to shore up Ukraine forces. And recall that there are additional, and significant, numbers of wounded men.

On top of that, we had the spectacle of Western equipment such as the vaunted Leopard 2 tanks meeting densely mined Russian “crumple zones” ahead of the Russian fortified lines and not coming out well from the encounter. Western experts also seemed surprised that Russia engaged in remote mining, delivering mines behind the advancing armored vehicles so that if they retreated, more would be lost.

It’s not clear who was behind the decision to try to conserve equipment, but Ukraine has changed tactics to a more manpower-intensive approach of trying to move men close to Russian positions in small groups, usually along tree lines which they hope offers cover, then getting out and moving in on foot.

As Alexander Mercouris in particular has chronicled, the US and NATO are engaged in a blame game with Ukraine. Ukraine is supposedly at fault for being forced to take on a military Mission Impossible, of attacking very well fortified Russian positions with no air support, and worse in a world of ISR where each side can see very well what the other is up to. So the Collective West line is that Ukraine is at fault for abandoning a “combined arms operation” approach like they were supposed to and reverting to something they hoped might work better.

So that is a long-winded way of explaining that this piece is part of the Ukraine effort to point a finger at its sponsors.

Those who have been following the war closely will notice all sorts of omissions and misleading spin. For instance, the piece says those trained by NATO since the war started get 35 days of basic training. As Brian Berletic and Mark Sleboda have pointed out, basic training for US service members is 90 days, and four months for Marines. Berletic made clear that was not remotely adequate for going into combat; he said something to the effect that all you know at that point is how to use a gun and that it takes many months more of working with a unit to reach a basic level of competence.

Scott Ritter has elaborated on that observation by describing how service members need to learn to operate within their unit, then those units need to learn to function effectively as part of a battalion, and then battalions need to learn to train as part of a brigade, and then brigades need to coordinate as part of an army. Ritter has stressed that Ukraine is now burning through its third army and its poor performance is no reflection on the courage of its men, but that you can’t expect forces built on the fly to be effective.

Ritter also stated that training Ukraine troops in so many different countries would lead to additional problems, since each NATO member has its own armed forces and not 100% consistent approaches to operations. That means differences in flavors of training would undermine cohesiveness in action

Berletic and Sleboda (I infer based on personal experience) said many months ago that NATO training is not so hot. Ritter and Macgregor have depicted NATO as in the business of fighting insurgents, as in noting even remotely approaching a peer power. The article confirms that criticism. For instance:

A key concern about the Western training is that the instructors have never fought a war of this kind, or against an enemy like Russia. For years, Western armies and their defence industries have focused on fighting insurgencies in the Middle East.

Even though this piece may seem fairly tame compared to what attentive war-watchers have seen elsewhere, the fact that it goes as far as it does is yet another proof that the West can no longer pretend that Project Ukraine is going well. But you see here nary an admission of how much our arrogance has cost in terms of Ukraine lives and loss of limb.