The relatively brief training is insufficient for more advanced or complex roles. To train a “stormtrooper”, a soldier who can work in an assault group to capture and hold an enemy trench, needs far more resources.
“It is simply impossible,” said Lt Col Kurylenko. “Two weeks is not enough for a soldier to even believe in the fact that he has already become a stormtrooper.”
He argues the West should base military trainers in Ukraine – an idea floated by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, but which sparked a backlash among Nato allies.
“It will speed up the whole process a lot. We will save time for logistics or programme planning. We can select people on the ground based on an understanding of their capabilities – if they are better able to operate artillery, join the infantry, become a stormtrooper or an anti-tank specialist.”
Lt Col Kurylenko added: “Don’t you worry, we will survive anyway. The question is how hard it’s going to be.”
Then there is the more fundamental problem of a gap between the Nato training and the way in which the war in Ukraine is actually being fought.
In Nato’s teaching, there is an assumption that the top-of-the-range kit needed to fight like a Nato army is readily available to Ukrainian troops. However, even at the height of Western weapons deliveries, that was not the case, Lt Col Kurylenko said.
“When we speak about the Nato approach, it implies huge amounts of gear to be applied. However, it doesn’t imply the scenario when such weapons are absent. Here the Nato approach doesn’t have any other plan for a manoeuvre,” he explained.
For Lt Col Kurylenko, at the heart of Soviet strategy is the idea that soldiers start in a defensive posture, and only gradually move to the offensive; the shift being underwritten by superior manpower and artillery. It is costly, bloody but effective, he said.
Nato on the other hand is, in a sense, more proactive, with the emphasis on manoeuvrability and a standpoint that looks to gather data and then move forward to assault. “Both strategies have huge drawbacks,” said Lt Col Kurylenko.
To illustrate his point, he gives the example of Ukraine’s loss of the town of Avdiivka in Donbas earlier this year. Hundreds were killed and many captured as Russian forces finally overran the besieged hold-out.
“When we were in Avdiivka the last time, 45-70 guided aerial bombs were dropped there. Not a single division would endure that many attacks if it had worked according to Nato standards, since Nato doctrine doesn’t [involve] digging trenches.”
The answer, for Kurylenko, is to develop a third way, suited to the Ukrainian military as it actually is – with a lack of sophisticated kit and unwilling to spend the lives of its soldiers as wantonly as Russia. Specialisation of a soldier’s role would be key.
“Right now we have a special operations battalion with a rifle regiment standing right next to it and a para and stormtroopers battalion behind them both and all three of them implement the same tasks. I am 100 per cent sure we will abandon such a doctrine soon.”
In the future “a soldier would clearly perform just a specific range of tasks and won’t be a Jack-of-all-trades – an engineer, a sniper, a machine-gunner or a cook”, said Lt Col Kurylenko.
Lt Col Kurylenko’s predictions for the coming year are bleak and predicated on Western aid that is non-existent or late to arrive.
“We will be assaulted by a full-scale and overpowering offensive. Closer to the summer, Russian forces will be ready to attack the area on the junction of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions and try to advance in the direction from the Kharkiv to Poltava regions.
“After that, the battle line will be extended and the depth of the frontline will get bigger as well. We will be able to break their logistic routes so they won’t be able to prevail even overpowering our forces.
“This line will freeze along the Dnipro river and we will lose the territory of Ukraine right up to the Dnipro.”
The travails of the Ukrainian army are reversible, said Lt Col Kurylenko, but much does depend on the West.
His gratitude for the support so far, from government’s to volunteers, is evident, but there is also frustration at the slow pace of aid.
“This so-called crucial moment which is unfolding at the moment has been artificially created by our western partners,” he said.
“I don’t really know what our partners consider as their minimum and maximum goals. I won’t say they don’t have [them], I just don’t know what [they are].”
“When we call each other friends and partners ready to help each other, we can’t assist with one thing, and then refrain from helping with the other one.
“If all of us as a coalition are fighting against our common enemy, we either keep beating it together or we just say ‘bye’ to each other and go home.
“Partnership implies assistance even in the hardest times. To go ahead towards victory mutual assistance is vital and should be supported by actions, not just by words,” said Lt Col Kurylenko.
