Volunteers from the West have flocked to Ukraine to train recruits to fight for their country, feeling it’s a meaningful way to share their experience and knowledge.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
Ukraine’s military suffers from a severe shortage of qualified trainers, because experienced combat troops are needed on the front lines. The active-duty soldiers from the U.K., U.S. and Canada who used to conduct training missions here were pulled out in February, and a new training program on British soil can take up only some of the slack.
That’s where volunteers like Steven Tomberlin, 62, a retired police officer from Colorado who used to train Afghan commandos, come in.
The trainers are among the thousands of Westerners who flocked to Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in the first days of the war that the country would welcome anyone willing to fight for its independence. Many joined the new International Legion, which has since suffered significant casualties in combat. Several of these Western fighters have been captured by Russia and several others killed.
Older, more experienced volunteers like Mr. Tomberlin felt that they would be far more useful imparting their knowledge to Ukrainian recruits than sitting in a trench—an assessment shared by senior Ukrainian commanders. “Here, there is such a hunger for what we are offering,” said Mr. Tomberlin, who has already trained some 270 Ukrainian troops. “These guys will be better prepared than 75% of the Ukrainian army.”
The unit Mr. Tomberlin joined calls itself the Mobile Assault Training Group, or MATG. It includes around a dozen Americans, plus a few Britons, Canadians and Israelis, assisted by Ukrainian translators and support staff.
The fierce nature of the war turns his Ukrainian students into quick learners, he adds. “They have no choice and time is not on their side,” said Mr. Crawford. “In Afghanistan and Iraq, we did have dangers, but here we are sending these guys to full kinetic warfare, not some kind of counterinsurgency.”
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