Erik Kramer and Paul Schneider are two former U.S. special operations soldiers who have been in Ukraine since 2022 to train Ukrainian troops.
At War on the Rocks they paint a dark picture of the state of the Ukrainian military. Their intent is to get money for more training, thus the real picture may be less dark than they describe. But even if one takes that into account it is still a sad state for an army that has been at war for more than a year. Some excerpts:
Based on our nine months of training with all services of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, to include the Ground Forces (Army), Border Guard Service, National Guard, Naval Infantry (Marines), Special Operations Forces, and Territorial Defense Forces, we have observed a series of common trends: lack of mission command, effective training, and combined arms operations; ad hoc logistics and maintenance; and improper use of special operations forces. These trends have undermined Ukraine’s resistance and could hinder the success of the ongoing offensive.
What ongoing offensive?
Under mission command, the German Auftragstaktik, the leader disseminates his intent ("to attack through the northern woods to take town x") and authority to subunits that is passed down with the mission to empower subordinates at all levels. Each subunits can make its plans to coordinate and execute the mission as best as possible. The contrast is an order command where every detail of execution is ordered from the top down. Both have advantages but to have a mixed system, as Ukraine currently has, is the worst of all places.
In our experience, across many units and staffs, the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not promote personal initiative and foster mutual trust or mission command. As Michael Kofman and Rob Lee recently discussed on the Russia Contingency podcast, elements of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have an old Soviet mentality that holds most decision-making at more senior levels. Amongst military leaders at the brigade level and below, our impression is that junior officers fear making mistakes.
But to use mission command down to the lower levels of a Platoon one needs noncommissioned officers (sergeants) to run the show. Those the Ukrainian military had are by now probably dead:
Having trained every component of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, we have continually seen a lack of an experienced noncommissioned officer corps. It is common to see field grade officers running around during training counting personnel and coordinating for meals. In the United States, it takes years to develop just a junior noncommissioned officer.
The next big lack is combined arms training and use. Tanks protect the infantry, the infantry protects the tanks, the artillery covers the battlefield to allow tanks and infantry to maneuver, command takes care that all three coordinate their actions.
The armor/infantry relationship is supposed to be symbiotic, but it is not. The result is that infantry will conduct frontal assaults or operate in urban areas without the protection and firepower of tanks. Also, artillery fires are not synchronized with maneuver. Most units do not talk directly to supporting artillery, so there is a delay in call for fire missions. We have been told that units will use runners to send fire missions to artillery batteries because of issues with communications.
Most of the military’s operations are not phased and are sequential. Fires and maneuver, for example, are planned separately from infantry units — and infantry units plan separately from supporting artillery. This mentality also carries over to adjacent unit coordination, which is either nonexistent or rare and causes high rates of fratricide. Unit commanders have concerns about collaborators and thus are hesitant to pass on critical information that can be used against them to sister units.
These issues are compounded by unreliable communications between units and with senior leadership. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have a hodgepodge of radios that are vulnerable to jamming. Further, battalion missions are mainly independent company operations that do not focus on a main effort coupled with supporting efforts. The armed forces do not combine effects, so operations are piecemeal and disjointed. The separate missions are not supporting each other, nor are the missions of lower level units “nested” under a higher level mission. Sustainment is not synchronized with operations, either.
Due to the wild mix of weapons and for lack of trained mechanics logistics and the maintenance of equipment are a mess.
This lack of coordinated maintenance and logistics also translates into medical care. Medical evacuation and care are haphazard. Experienced Ukrainian combat medics have repeatedly stated that many of the evacuees would have survived it they had reached definitive care in a timely manner. The Ukrainian Armed Forces can solve this issue with a systematic logistics process.
Ukrainian special forces are mostly used as infantry even as they should be used for more demanding missions. There also are gimmick missions:
Ukraine special forces units comprised of international volunteers shop around their services to conventional unit commanders without a mission being tied to a strategic or operational goal. One example of a mission was a conventional brigade commander who had reported to his command that he had occupied a village taken from the Russians. When he realized that the information he had was mistaken and they had stopped short, he asked the international special operations forces unit to go into the occupied village and take a picture of a Ukrainian flag placed on top of a building in the center of the village.
A suicide mission to hide the commanders false reporting …
The authors claim that most of the above problems could be fixed by more 'western' training which they are more than willing to sell. However, what has become of the last armies 'western' forces have trained in Iraq and Afghanistan? Both fell apart. An army must reflect the local society and culture. It can not be formed top down by outside forces.
Since 2015 the Ukrainian army has been build up and trained by U.S. and British forces. What the WotR authors describe is the result of that.