OP TIEKE

in common was wanting to have regular five-minute smoke breaks. Joking aside, most of them were highly motivated and wanted to defend their country. They were keen learners and picked up the training fast. Sometimes it was difficult to get the message across if there were no interpreters around but usually there was enough broken English from the AFU and enough broken Ukrainian from the Kiwis that training could still be conducted after hours. During breaks in the lessons you’d often see them practising what had just been taught or coming up and asking the instructors more questions. They only had a short window of training before they were sent to the frontline and it was obvious that they wanted to learn as much as possible.

Working with the AFU NSE (National Support Element) was a whole other story again. You might get a section commander that’s been in the military for less than a year or you might get one that’s been in for over 20 years and has been fighting Russians since 2014. The NSE personnel had some amazing stories to share with us and the relationships we built with them were strong. It was really a luck of the draw, but whoever you ended up with you will probably never forget.

The Experience

K3 worked long hours, from the early in the morning until late into the evening, planning and executing quality training for the AFU. Fortunately there were well timed rest days throughout the training programme where we could rest, recover and explore the UK. Training the AFU was our main effort and something that we all worked tirelessly to ensure they were as prepared as they could possibly be.