One of the toughest lessons for Western military instructors to teach Ukrainian soldiers has been fire discipline — holding fire and conserving ammunition instead of unloading relentlessly at Russian forces, a former training leader told Business Insider.
Maj. Maguire, a UK military officer who spoke to Business Insider on the condition that only his rank and last name be used, said that when he was working with the UK-led training program for Ukrainian soldiers, troops in training had a “massive tendency” to unleash everything at opposing forces.
The attitude, he said, was that if you see a Russian, “you shoot them,” and you don’t stop until they’re dead or they surrender. Ukraine’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition might be fired down range in a matter of minutes, “and clearly that’s not sustainable,” Maguire said, sharing that this was “the biggest thing I think we gave them” — helping the Ukrainians identify and communicate clear targets and then measuring the correct response.
He said that this kind of control and coordination was “the hardest thing we found to train them in.”
The training didn’t eliminate this tendency, though; it merely redirected it. “When they needed to send it, they were far more aggressive in their aggressive use of offensive firepower than I think any Western army might be,” Maguire said.
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Operation Interflex has trained more than 56,000 Ukrainians. It is led by the UK with support from 13 partner nations, including Canada, Australia, and Denmark.
The training is provided to both new recruits and Ukrainian soldiers with prior combat experience fighting against Russia. Last year, Maguire led a subgroup that trained experienced fighters while also producing reports for the UK and its allies on battlefield tactics observed in Ukraine and the lessons Western forces could draw from them.
Limited ammo
Col. Boardman, the commanding officer of the UK-led training program Operation Interflex, previously told Business Insider under the same conditions that the training is designed to make sure that Ukrainian soldiers make every shot count.
“The Ukrainians don’t have the luxury of a huge amount of ammunition in the way the Russians do,” he said. As a result, Ukraine needs to “make best use of the ammunition they’ve got.”
Ukraine has faced shortages of ammunition and other weapons throughout the war. Western war aid has often been delayed — and in some cases halted — amid concerns about stockpiles and political debates in countries like the US. Ukraine’s defense industry has boomed and expanded rapidly, but it still can’t produce everything the military needs.
It is a stark contrast to the kinds of conflicts Western militaries have fought in recent decades, counterinsurgencies and campaigns against terrorism, where they enjoyed overwhelming advantages in both the quantity and sophistication of equipment.
Maguire said Ukrainian troops had an aggressiveness that surpassed what he’s seen in Western troops, noting that Western armies haven’t fought a large-scale, high-intensity war in a long time.
Ukraine has had to fight without many of the advantages that Western armies have enjoyed, like quickly getting care to wounded troops. Because there’s a possibility the West could face similar hardships in a future fight, it’s learning from the Ukrainians even as it provides training for them in their fight against Russia.
Lessons from Ukraine
Western militaries are watching this war closely. Maguire said the UK military has learned many lessons from Ukraine, both from observing the war and its aid to it, as well as through its interactions with Ukrainian soldiers during Operation Interflex.
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Maguire said the British Army has already adopted a range of lessons from the Ukrainians, from how to employ drones and trenches to how quickly troops should advance.
He said that the Ukrainian soldiers are often “far more comfortable in taking tactical risks.” They are “far happier taking levels of tactical risk, and consequently they’re just able to show a bit more imagination,” he said, describing many of the Ukrainian officers as “less indoctrinated” in military rules and norms.
“I think that we took from the Ukrainians that they have a much greater tactical imagination than we do,” Maguire said.
That creativity often impressed the trainers. When planning an ambush, the major recalled, Ukrainian officers came up with what he described as “the most tactically brilliant plan I could think of,” using the terrain in ways he hadn’t even considered and showing confidence in departing from standard doctrine.
Those leading Operation Interflex recognize that many Ukrainian trainees have more battlefield experience than the Western instructors. Boardman previously told Business Insider that the program draws on Ukrainian combat experience, blending their battle-tested methods with NATO doctrine to create tactics greater than the sum of their parts.
Maguire said that training Ukrainians who had been involved in high-intensity war “could be quite intimidating for us” as there are some areas where “they are much better than us.”
Ultimately, he said, that didn’t get in the way of helping them understand and become better soldiers and leaders. When meeting new Ukrainian trainees, he said, he would explain: “We’re not here to impose our doctrine on you. We’re just here to show you different ways of doing things.”
