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Foreign vets rush to train Ukraine’s new troops to fight Russia : NPR


Magnus Ek, 53, a retired Swedish lieutenant, teaches a group of Ukrainian conscripts how to shoot an AK-47 in the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine. Ek, who spent a decade as an instructor in Sweden, is among a number of foreign military volunteers who have come to train Ukrainians on how to defend their country from a Russian invasion.

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Magnus Ek, 53, a retired Swedish lieutenant, teaches a group of Ukrainian conscripts how to shoot an AK-47 in the Donbas region, eastern Ukraine. Ek, who spent a decade as an instructor in Sweden, is among a number of foreign military volunteers who have come to train Ukrainians on how to defend their country from a Russian invasion.

Frank Langfitt/NPR

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Magnus Ek, 53, a retired Swedish lieutenant, teaches a group of Ukrainian conscripts how to shoot AK-47s in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Ek, who spent a decade as an instructor in Sweden, is among a number of foreign military volunteers who have come to train Ukrainians in how to defend their country from a Russian invasion.

“You’ll find yourself in a lot of weird shooting positions,” said Ek, as he strolled around the snow-covered shooting range, where temperatures hover around 16 degrees.

“So funny, so funny,” said one of his students, a Ukrainian conscript.

Ek, who served as a volunteer military instructor for several months in Ukraine, uses physical comedy to get students’ attention. The situation, however, is not a joke.

He was teaching a group of 15 conscripts who had been assigned to the Border Guard of Ukraine a week earlier. Most were inexperienced with weapons and Ek had only a few hours to get as much exposure to them as he could. He won’t even get a chance to show them one basic thing: how to adjust the rifle’s scope so they can aim accurately.

“Maybe another time,” Ek said wistfully.

Ukraine is recruiting thousands of new troops to help replenish the massive losses on the battlefield in the east of the country as the war enters its bloody second year. The pressure to train civilians quickly and then send them to the front was enormous when Ukraine faced an enemy with four times the population.

Lieutenant Colonel Andrusenko Vyacheslav, deputy head of the combat training department of the Ukrainian Border Guard, said the conscripts will be trained for about 17 days. For comparison, the US military training camp Lasts 10 weeks. Vyacheslav says he wants to offer at least 35 days of training and seems uncomfortable with the short timeframe.

“I would say I care,” he said. “I’m a bit worried, I just hope that everything we give them will be used in battle and that it will help them carry out their mission to its fullest potential.”

Three to five days is usually all the conscripts get, foreign trainers say

The war in Ukraine has been a magnet for retired foreign servicemen. But there was a problem. The Mozart Corporation, one of the most famous American organizations operating in Ukraine, trained Ukrainian troops and evacuated civilians, but collapsed amid controversy, defections and a lawsuit in January.

Magnus Ek spent several months volunteering to train Ukrainian conscripts in the use of basic weapons. He works with a small group of foreign coaches, who are funded by donations to a website, their savings, and help from friends and family back home.

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Ek was part of a small group that operated in a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Kramatorsk, the military center of the Ukrainian army in the eastern Donbas region. In addition to providing training, Ek has a website called Stop the war, raise money to support the trainers and buy equipment for Ukrainian soldiers. Team members also rely on personal savings and donations from friends and family back home.

The trainers call themselves “A Team”, a reference to the popular 1980s action-adventure TV show about a mishmash of former special forces soldiers trying to erase the crime they didn’t do. no commitment.

Kelly Kilhoffer, a retired colonel in the US Army Reserve, volunteered to join the group last year. In some cases, he says, he can get three to four weeks to train a group of soldiers. More often, he says, he has three to five days. Kilhoffer, who has returned to the United States, expressed his concerns to a Ukrainian officer.

“I was like, ‘Look, if we had more time, these people would last longer,'” Kilhoffer recalls.

He said the officer insisted that conscripts learned a lot during their three days of training and would learn more on the job.

“I said, ‘Well, yes, but you’re talking to survivors,'” Kilhoffer recalls. “’You don’t talk to dead people.’ “

One of the dead was Ukrainian graphic artist gung-ho turned soldier named Ed. His pass hit Kilhoffer and the rest of the team. They recall Ed as funny, always smiling and dedicated to training and improving.

Lieutenant Colonel Andrusenko Vyacheslav, deputy head of the combat training department of the Ukrainian Border Guard, said the conscripts will be trained for about 17 days. He wants at least 35 days and is uncomfortable with the short timeframe. “I would say I care,” he said.

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Kilhoffer recalls: “He refilled magazines, he practiced shooting. “His total military service was less than two weeks from enlistment until his death.”

Another team member, Stan, a retired US Marine sergeant, said that Ed was killed on his first mission, an attack on a Russian trench went wrong. . Ed, who has a wife and toddler son, lost both legs in a minefield.

Stan said: “They couldn’t find him and he’s still out there to this day. “This is the most painful thing; they say they heard him. They still hear him.”

Stan, who declined to give his full name for privacy reasons, said the messages he and Ed shared are still on his phone. Then Stan started to cry.

Shannon Taylor, 25, trauma nurse from New Zealand, teaches first aid to a Ukrainian conscript. The soldiers who told her what she taught them saved their lives.

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Volunteers come for different reasons and come from many different backgrounds

Team members say they come here for a variety of reasons. Kilhoffer, 56, a retired database administrator, says he considers Russia a bully and is appalled at human rights abuses. Ek, 53, wants to use his skills after more than a decade as an instructor in Sweden.

Another member is Shannon Taylor, 25, a trauma nurse from New Zealand who has trained in first aid on the battlefield. She was inspired by a TV series in her hometown about World War I combat nurses who turned an abandoned building into a field hospital.

“They just treated all the wounded soldiers,” Taylor recalls with a sense of awe. “Since then, I’ve always just wanted to do it.”

Stan, 38, came here because he loved military life, was a tactical enthusiast and considered himself a crusader. He also said that there is a common ground among those embroiled in this war.

“Atonement,” he said. “There are many people [are] get rid of their past, get rid of their supposed sins where they think they have a chance, I guess, to redo and make the universe good again.”

Stan refused to explain.

Back at the training school, a group of Border Force soldiers gathered around Taylor, who was kneeling in the snow, showing them how to patch a wound in his stomach.

Shannon Taylor was inspired to volunteer in Ukraine by a TV series she watched in her home country of New Zealand about field nurses serving in World War I.

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Shannon Taylor was inspired to volunteer in Ukraine by a TV series she watched in her home country of New Zealand about field nurses serving in World War I.

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“Don’t apply pressure,” she warned. Instead, she says, wrap the wound to keep the bandage in place, and if some intestines come out, don’t push them back inside.

Taylor was scheduled to return home in January, but she continued to delay. She says her training has paid off. One soldier she trained told her he could use what he had learned to heal one soldier with a head injury and another who lost half of his hand.

“He just walked in the door and gave me a big hug and said he could use those skills … to rescue these two guys,” Taylor recalls. “That just makes it all worth it.”

Producer Ross Pelekh and London Producer Morgan Ayre contributed to this story.

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