New training on NATO soil for Ukrainian soldiers learning Western best practices for their fight against Russia’s invasion has been set up on the war’s doorstep, purposefully so.
The training camp’s location helps Ukrainian soldiers get to training quickly, while a steady flow of Ukrainian commanders, instructors, and returning front-line feedback helps keep the curriculum current.
Operation Legio is led by Norway, with several other allies involved, at the purpose-built Camp Jomsborg in eastern Poland, roughly two hours from the Ukrainian border.
Other allies have provided training to Ukrainian troops at locations farther away, such as the UK-led Operation Interflex. Legio is closer to the fighting.
Maj. John, the S3 Operations Officer in charge of synchronizing the overall training operation, told Business Insider at the camp that “we’re actually closer to the eastern front being in eastern Poland than we are to our own capital in Norway.”
Brigadier Atle Molde, the commander of Task Force Legio, told Business Insider that the location was deliberate. “Very early in this process, we decided that our approach should be to be able to deliver high-quality training, flexible and adaptable to the changing situation on the front and as close to Ukraine as possible.”
Both officials said the location makes it easier for Ukrainian troops to reach the camp for training, preserving valuable time, while also tightening the feedback loop between instructors and the battlefield for more realistic training.
NATO has said that “due to its close proximity to the Ukrainian border, Camp Jomsborg is an ideal place for Ukrainian forces to sharpen their skills.”
More time for training
Molde said the decision was practical, aimed at giving Ukrainian troops as much training as possible. A site further away would involve sending soldiers and equipment on aircraft across Europe, something that is “much more expensive, takes more time, takes more time away from training.”
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For soldiers who are leaving the battlefield to attend training before returning to the fight, eastern Poland is “only a bus ride.”
The Operation Legio training may ultimately be “a question of life and death, Molde said, so “to preserve the hours and days for training that we have, it’s practical to do it there.”
“Every minute, every hour we have them for training” matters, he said, sharing that he and his colleagues know that every time the buses leave, some of the soldiers on them “will, in the worst case, be dead.”
Safe from attacks
Though the training camp is close to the border with Ukraine, where war has been raging for years as a result of Russian aggression, it is safely on NATO soil. Soldiers can train away from the threat of attacks. The same isn’t true at home.
In Ukraine, training camps are often targeted. Drone schools previously told Business Insider that they keep their locations secret and move frequently. Some do polygraph security interviews to avoid risks that could make them the target of a Russian strike.
Facing those kinds of threats, John said, “they can’t maximize training time.” But in Poland, with no attacks, “we are able to maximize the 51 days we have available for each training course.”
Ukrainian training camps are “under a serious threat from above, both by ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, everything,” Molde said.
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There, “you have to be dispersed, you have to be underground.” At Camp Jomsborg, “we are able to utilize every minute for high-quality training toward the trainees without having to worry about anything falling down on our heads.”
The feedback loop
Part of ensuring high-quality training is realism. The training is trying to replicate the battlefield as much as possible, recreating the terrain and the trenches, and using the kinds of weapons that Ukrainian and Russian forces use. But the fighting evolves rapidly, so staying accurate means getting constant feedback.
“We’re not that far from Ukraine, and that close connection is very important,” John told Business Insider during a visit to Camp Jomsborg. The proximity to the border has helped to provide “a very direct dialogue with our Ukrainian partners that are here in Jomsborg.”
It’s key to having a “fast feedback loop,” he said.
John said that information about the terrain, Russia’s actions, and Ukrainian tactics “must be fed into the training mission continuously. And that is a very important success criterion for this mission. That requires “a close connection between front-line realities and what we do at this training center.”
The trench network at the camp, for example, has been “changed a couple of times already, and we’ve only been active for less than a year,” Molde said.
Jørgen, a Norwegian Army instructor for the operation’s platoon leader course, told Business Insider that “we make a lot of changes, and we try to evaluate on a day-to-day basis, and we’re bringing the flexibility to be able to change tomorrow or tonight.”
Much of that feedback comes directly from Ukrainians cycling through the camp. New commanders and instructors arrive with each new rotation, John said, “and they give us feedback on what works in the training and what does not work in the training.”
There’s also an ongoing dialogue with graduates who have gone on to front-line positions. They send back information about new battlefield developments.
“A very, very close dialogue is really important,” John said.
Being in Poland also helps with realism because “we are allowed to do stuff in Poland that is more complicated in other parts of Europe,” Molde said, like operating drones and electronic warfare systems. It’s something Western Europe has more restrictions on. Integrating what has become ubiquitous on the battlefield into the training is key to ensuring the training is effective.
