Ukraine is keeping soldiers in Western training longer — betting on skill over mass against Russia

Ukraine has chosen to keep its soldiers in Western training for longer — a “brave” decision that prioritizes quality over quantity, even as Russia throws waves of poorly trained troops into battle, the head of the UK-led training program told Business Insider.

Through Operation Interflex, the UK and its allies have trained thousands of Ukrainian troops in Western ways of warfare. At Ukraine’s request, the standard course for new recruits was recently extended from five weeks to seven, said Col. Boardman, the program’s commanding officer.

Boardman, who the British defense ministry requested be identified only by rank and last name, described Ukraine’s choice as “a very conscious decision in the face of a huge quantitative mismatch to the Russian military,” which is much larger, with more people and significantly more equipment.

He said that Ukraine could have pushed for shorter, faster training to rush more soldiers to the front. Instead, it asked for the opposite: Ukraine said, “Have them for longer, make them better.”

Boardman said, “the idea is that they’ll be more lethal, more effective when they get back to the front line.”

A ‘brave’ decision

Boardman said that Ukraine’s decision to hold longer courses means fewer courses in a year, meaning a reduction in the number receiving training. “That’s more than offset by the increased quality of the output,” he said.

Ukraine can’t match Russia in force size, so it wants to make the troops it does have as lethal and effective as possible.

“The Ukrainians have decided to address this by increasing the quality of their training in order to offset the quantitative disadvantage, which I think is a brave decision,” Boardman said.

He said that makes a Ukrainian basic recruit “so much better than a Russian conscript,” who may have been trained for just a few weeks, if not a few days.

Different from Russia’s approach

Boardman said Ukraine’s emphasis on longer, higher-quality training stands in stark contrast to Russia’s.

There is a big difference “in the quality of the training,” he said. “And that’s not praising ourselves. That’s in terms of the Ukrainian’s approach to the quality of their training, while the Russian training is comparatively short.”

Many Russian soldiers have been sent to the front line with just days of preparation.

Ukraine, by comparison, has steadily extended its training pipeline. Beyond Operation Interflex, Kyiv lengthened mandatory basic training from 30 to 45 days in late 2024, though some support roles were later cut back again to ease pressure.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the quality of training for their troops. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in December, “It is the quality of training that largely impacts the effectiveness of our soldiers in battles and, of course, it saves the lives of our guys.”

Even with the extensions, Ukraine’s training periods remain far shorter than NATO’s — a reflection of how the grinding war against a much larger adversary forces constant compromise.

The quantity-versus-quality divide shows up not only in training but also on the battlefield, Boardman said. “The Russian approach is extraordinarily wasteful of its people,” he said.

“It is bludgeoning along using mass to soak up an enormous amount of fire and then to creep forward very slowly, which is not something that any Western military could or would do with its people.”

Russia has repeatedly been accused by its own soldiers, by Ukrainian troops, and by Western officials of using “meat grinder” tactics — sending wave after wave of barely trained men to die in an attempt to overwhelm defenses.

Adm. Rob Bauer, who was then the chair of the Military Committee of NATO, said in 2023 that the conflict in Ukraine was increasingly a contest between Russia’s masses of poorly trained troops with outdated equipment and a smaller Ukrainian military with better Western weapons and training.

A new US Army report in July said Russia had “reverted to Soviet form on the battlefield, favoring mass over maneuver, quantity over quality, capacity over capability, brutality over precision, and mobilization over readiness.”

Ukraine’s training

Since 2022, the UK and allied nations have trained more than 56,000 Ukrainians under Operation Interflex, while Ukraine’s own academies and General Staff provide additional instruction at home.

Boardman stressed that the program is shaped by Ukraine’s requests, with courses adapted to battlefield realities.

That situation means Western trainers — who lack the direct experiences of this war — are teaching Ukrainians who have already fought in it. It’s an unusual dynamic, but the Ukrainians clearly see value in the training.

The result, Boardman explained, is a mixture of NATO-standard training and Ukraine’s front-line experience that produces something stronger than either alone.

It’s “an enormously worthwhile and valid mission” that supports Ukraine and shows “it’s not okay to just invade another country and try and subjugate the people,” he said.

The effort also feeds back into NATO militaries themselves. “We use their expertise to guide us, but we are not just letting it go past us in the British Army. We are also feeding all that knowledge into the field army, the British Army, all of the contributing nations.”

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