Ukraine wasting Western military training: German intelligence report
Iran Press TV
Wednesday, 26 July 2023 5:42 PM
Ukraine's counteroffensive is failing to make progress because its army is not fully implementing the training it has received from the West, a leaked German intelligence document has revealed, blaming Ukraine's lack of success on the tactics of its commanders.
According to an assessment paper by Bundeswehr, Ukraine is spreading its troops out too thinly on the front line and attacking with units composed of a few soldiers.
The confidential document that has been obtained by Germany's Bild newspaper says that the Ukrainian soldiers trained by Western forces are showing "great learning success" but are let down by their commanders.
It further adds that the Ukrainian military favors promoting soldiers with combat experience over those who have received NATO training.
The document claimed that commanders can therefore show "considerable deficiencies in leadership" which lead to "wrong and dangerous decisions."
According to the German army's assessment, Ukraine is sacrificing its advantage in manpower by splitting its Western-trained brigades into small units of just 10 to 30 men, insufficient to break through Russian lines.
"Some of the troop units are divided up in so many small sections that each troop unit does something, but a joint combat leadership is not recognizable," the paper said.
It adds that the small unit sizes increase the risk of friendly fire and fail to group together enough Western-trained soldiers to be operationally effective.
Sergei Sumlenny, founder of the Berlin-based European Resilience Initiative Center think tank, dismissed the report as "typical German arrogance."
"The belief of the Bundeswehr is that the German-trained soldiers are so much better than everyone that they can be better officers than experienced Ukrainian soldiers. A German certificate doesn't make you a better soldier," Sumlenny said, as cited by The Telegraph.
Many in the Ukrainian army believe that they are being pressured by the West to sacrifice large numbers of their men without sufficient weaponry to protect them.
Despite the fact that Berlin has been one of Kiev's largest arms supporters, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has regularly clashed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz over several issues.
The West has trained more than 50000 Ukrainian troops and has supplied Kiev with a raft of military aid packages since the Ukrainian war started last year.
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