Bundeswehr to learn modern combat tactics from 'world's only army with front-line experience against Russia'
Ukrainian military trainers will help the German military achieve its goal of being ready to defend against any Russian attack on NATO by 2029, Germany's army chief said, in a role reversal after years of Western troops training Kiev's forces.
Berlin and Kiev agreed last month that Ukraine would send military instructors to German army schools to teach lessons they learned from fighting the Russian invasion.
“We have high expectations,” Lt. Gen. Christian Freuding, head of the German army (Bundeswehr), told Reuters in an interview.
“The Ukrainian military is currently the only one in the world with front-line experience against Russia,” Freuding said.
Ukrainians, teachers for Americans too
Germany is not the only Western country relying on Kiev's experience: on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pledged to provide assistance to the United States in combating Iranian drones in the Middle East.
Freuding said Germany was the first country to reach an agreement with Ukraine to supply military instructors, but predicted other countries would follow suit.
Asked what the Ukrainian trainers would contribute, he referred to assessments by German and Western intelligence agencies that Russia could be ready for a full-scale attack on the NATO military alliance by 2029.
“That means almost the day after tomorrow. We don't have time, the enemy is not waiting for us to declare that we are ready. So we have to use every possibility to prepare,” Freuding said.
Russia has insisted it has no plans to attack NATO, but Western officials say such assurances cannot be taken at face value because Moscow made similar statements before invading Ukraine.
Artillery, drone and engineering experience
Freuding, who became Germany's military chief last October after previously coordinating Berlin's arms shipments to Kiev, said the initial contingent of Ukrainian instructors would likely number “several dozen” and stay for several weeks.
Ukrainian instructors are expected to contribute their experience in artillery, engineering, operations involving armor and the use of drones.
Since Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Germany has trained Ukrainian forces in the use of equipment such as Marder infantry fighting vehicles, Leopard tanks, howitzers and air defense systems.
Freuding said Ukraine has capitalized on these skills in combat, developing tactics and capabilities in data-centric warfare, the military term for highly digitized and interconnected operations, that cannot be found in textbooks.
“The fact that they now come to us as instructors reflects an equal security partnership,” Freuding said.
