A group of men dressed in military fatigues gather around a table where first aid techniques are being practiced on a plastic figure.
For many, it is the first contact with a hypothetical scenario of assistance to war wounded.
In the next room there is a less than epic (and still indispensable) class on the rules of combat: if the enemy surrenders, you cannot attack him.
With these brief lessons, which later continue in some trenches and a town that try to recreate the conditions of the war in Ukraine, the British Army teaches some keys about armed conflicts that seek to convert a group of volunteers into deployable soldiers in a few weeks. on the front against the Russians.
“I have decided to fight because I love my country and my family,” argues simply a 47-year-old man, somewhat aged, who in his previous life was dedicated to building maintenance and who asks to be identified by the name of Alexánder.
As two years pass since Russia's large-scale invasion, the need to nourish the war front in Ukraine is more urgent than ever.
The army itself has claimed to incorporate up to half a million new recruits.
Aware of the challenge, the British military command accelerates the training of Ukrainians, in the vast majority of cases civilians who voluntarily enlist in the Armed Forces and who, after spending a few weeks in the United Kingdom, return to their country to take up arms. .
Their dilemmas are constant.
Moryachok, who has just turned 30 in full training, hides his time at the front from his children, aged nine and five (he has fought previously).
With a stern face and almost defiant speech, this soldier denies feeling afraid of what awaits him.
“Fear, what is that?” he blurts out, surrounded by British and Ukrainian commanders.
Moryachok, who uses a nickname like all the Ukrainians interviewed for this report, is one of the more than 34,000 who have gone through the training offered by the United Kingdom within the so-called Operation Interflex.
A dozen countries collaborate in the project.
The secrecy is absolute.
The visit, organized by the British Ministry of Defense and to which EL PAÍS has been invited this week along with other Spanish media, takes place at a military base in the east of England that the authorities ask not to be identified for security reasons.
It is an extensive and cold area populated by semi-cylindrical barracks built largely during World War II and which is today dedicated to the conflict that has returned the war to European soil.
The United Kingdom army, one of the most active in the training of Ukrainian forces, uses five other bases distributed in different parts of the country for training that seeks to convert volunteers - carpenters, technology experts, teachers... - into combatants. .
Colonel James Thurstan, commander of Operation Interflex, emphasizes the purpose of his work in a room at the base: “We intend to equip soldiers with the offensive spirit that is required for war, to go to the battlefield and kill to the enemy.”
Thurstan, who accompanies his words with energetic gestures that reinforce the message, admits that it is “a challenge to mobilize civilians who have to acquire this knowledge in a short period of time.”
The most basic courses last five weeks.
The most advanced, aimed mainly at professional soldiers and focused on leadership skills, last up to 11. The average age of attendees is around 25 years and barely 1% are women, largely in charge of translation tasks because the Training is given in English and knowledge of the language is not a requirement to receive it.
Ukrainian soldiers attend first aid training for war wounded by a British Army instructor.
Lucía Abellán Hernández
The hardest part of the training usually takes place in the trenches, according to the British soldiers involved in these courses.
Although any Ukrainian citizen endures temperatures much colder than those recorded these days in the east of England, spending 48 uninterrupted hours crouching on wet, uneven ground with no other shelter than a military uniform consumes large doses of energy.
Nor is the experience of surviving in a semi-ruined town where the enemy can lurk in every staircase or passageway, all in the dark, easy.
Once training in the United Kingdom is completed, the Ukrainians return to their places of origin with basic equipment for deployment – helmet, boots or bulletproof vest;
weapons are not included― and the conviction that they are more prepared to fight against the Russians.
The greatest difficulties that the Ukrainian Government is encountering these days in recruiting soldiers to fight on the front has led to including in these training courses people who until recently were outside the military orbit.
This is the case of Andrii, a 45-year-old citizen of kyiv who was not initially chosen for the mission but who three months ago joined the Armed Forces.
“My time has come,” he argues laconically.
With more or less conviction, these soldiers try to shield themselves from the increasingly uncertain outlook thrown up by the war in Ukraine.
The counteroffensive is stalled and Western support begins to falter.
The United States, kyiv's main financial and military support, has serious problems disbursing the promised money.
The EU, which at the end of 2023 took the decisive step of opening accession talks with kyiv, also reveals some difficulties, essentially to circumvent Hungary's veto of a 50 billion euro package that Ukraine is impatiently awaiting.
An expert who has spent much of his career in the British Foreign Office and who asks not to be identified warns that Russia now maintains a slight advantage in the war, although it cannot sustain it in the long term.
But if the US presidential election gives victory to Donald Trump in November, large-scale aid to Ukraine will likely suffer.
“It is a potential risk,” he warns and urges European countries to make “difficult decisions” to maintain support for the invaded country.
These doses of realism do not seem to make a dent in the morale of those who leave their country for a few weeks to return as soldiers.
From a large room where the participants in the course kill their scarce free time playing chess or table tennis, Vedmid, 28 years old and with a distant gaze, only contemplates a scenario to end a war that has shaken the world scene and has caused a enormous destruction in the eastern country: “Let the Russians leave and I stay in my country.”
Follow all the international information on
and
X
, or in
our weekly newsletter
.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_
