Western instructors are teaching Ukrainian troops how to fight a war they’ve never fought themselves, but it works, officials say.
More than 56,000 Ukrainian troops have been trained by Western allies under the UK-led Operation Interflex since June 2022, giving Ukraine’s soldiers the skills they need to survive and fight in Europe’s biggest land war since World War II.
Strangely, many of the Ukrainian troops who come to training arrive straight from the front lines — fresh from trench assaults, drone strikes, and days under artillery fire — while some of the instructors have never fought in a war like the one they came from.
Col. Boardman, commanding officer for Operation Interflex, told Business Insider that the UK’s Ministry of Defence is well aware of this unusual dynamic.
Far from being a disadvantage, he said, the mix of Western warfighting doctrine and Ukrainian battlefield experience produces tactics that are better than either side’s knowledge alone.
“I’m conscious of our need to have credibility even though we may not have up-to-date combat experience of this type,” he said.
“But I don’t see that as a disqualifying factor, if you like, because I think we do have the institutional credibility and expertise that what we’re teaching is genuinely valued, not only at the top end of the Ukrainian military, but right all the way down through to those who actually go through the training.”
A different type of war
The West hasn’t fought a major war against a powerful, industrialized military in decades. Most NATO combat experience in recent memory comes from the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Western forces enjoyed air superiority and faced smaller, less-equipped adversaries. Some Interflex trainers weren’t even in Iraq or Afghanistan, having joined after those conflicts ended.
Ukraine is battling one of the world’s largest militaries in a grinding, high-casualty war with no control of the skies. Russia’s relentless artillery fire, missile strikes, and widespread use of drones have reshaped the battlefield in ways NATO has not faced for generations, or in some cases at all.
For years, Western militaries were heavily focused on counterinsurgency skills while maintaining a theoretical capability for large-scale war. Boardman acknowledged this, while saying the UK did not lose the capability for major operations: “I think naturally you do shape yourself for the moment.”
Now, Boardman said, there’s a renewed focus on combating a well-armed foe. That has meant dusting off tactics such as trench warfare and learning as much as possible from Ukraine’s front-line soldiers about emerging threats like exploding drones.
A win-win scenario
Boardman said Ukrainian soldiers bring “a lot of valuable military experience” to the training. That experience often challenges NATO’s best practices and leads to adjustments.
The Western officials and instructors behind Interflex are “approaching it with a humility of approach that allows us to provide our opinions and our ideas and our teaching, but also learn from some of the feedback that we get,” he said.
For example, when learning casualty evacuation, Ukrainians sometimes reject NATO’s extraction techniques, explaining that in their war, it may be safer to wait until nightfall to move the wounded. In trench warfare lessons, Ukrainians sometimes correct their instructors based on tactics they used in combat just weeks earlier. Those insights are then incorporated into the training.
Both sides are learning from the training exercise. Key lessons from Ukraine are feeding directly into Western planning as militaries across Europe prepare for the possibility of a future conflict with Russia. And NATO allies are sharing their skills with Ukraine. Finland, for example, brings forest-warfare expertise to Interflex that Ukraine lacks.
“There’s no question that’s a benefit to the Ukrainians,” Boardman said.
He explained that there is a “really rich mutual understanding going on” and that the training program “ends up with the sum being much greater than the parts, which is really valuable for us.”
Ukraine’s expertise with drones, particularly the first-person-view attack drones, has been especially valuable, especially considering the changes to the operating environment since Iraq and Afghanistan.
Boardman said that while the UK has drone operators and instructors, “we are not currently at war, so we are not developing them at the same pace that the Ukrainians are.”
He said Ukraine is “very good at sharing the understanding with us,” which also helps the UK and other Western militaries.
Bracing for more war
Boardman said he recognizes that it can be a bit “uncomfortable” for trainers to teach trench assaults without having actually done it personally, but the West has a lot of institutional credibility from past military operations and combat successes that give “us license, effectively, to do this training.”
Ukraine, he said, is asking for the training. “We’re not just asking them to come and be trained here; it’s Ukrainians who are asking us to do it.”
Exit interviews show how much Ukraine values the training, Boardman said: “The overriding theme is one of gratitude for the training that they’ve been a part of.” Highlighting the value of the training, Ukraine has requested that it be extended.
He said Ukraine places a lot of value on NATO and Western military doctrine because while “they may have the current battle experience,” the Ukrainians “know that we have some of the history, some of the hard-won experience of this in the past.”
But again, the West also sees tremendous value in learning from this war and the Ukrainian experiences.
“This isn’t a completely charitable activity,” Boardman explained. “There is a big benefit to us in doing this that we are learning an awful lot from our engagement with this war.”
Boardman said that information and tactics from Ukraine are fed to the UK and allies.
The West wants insights from this war, with many European allies fearing Russia may attack elsewhere on the continent. They are closely watching Ukraine to see what kinds of tactics and weaponry they need to adopt for such a conflict.
“We want to teach them as much as we can,” Boardman said of the Ukrainians and the war against Russia. “We also want to learn from it so we can benefit ourselves.”
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