From 'decrepit' to 'effective': How U.S. advisor helped train Ukraine's military
A retired U.S. military colonel who helped train and reform Ukraine's military following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 said on Saturday (March 26) that Ukraine's military has gone from a 'decrepit' state to becoming effective at fending off Russian advances in major cities.
Retired Colonel Liam Collins served as retired Army General John Abizaid’s executive officer for his Secretary of Defense appointment as the Senior Defense Advisor to Ukraine in 2016 at the end of the Obama administration, when Collins helped Ukraine reform its defense establishment, according to 'The Conversation, an independent journalism publication.
Collins recently wrote a column in that publication titled, 'In 2014, the ‘decrepit’ Ukrainian army hit the refresh button. Eight years later, it’s paying off, where he opens by writing that Ukrainian General Victor Muzhenko described Ukraine's military in 2014 as 'decrepit.' It was a characterization he echoed when he spoke with Reuters on Saturday.
"Ukraine's military in 2014 was decrepit, it didn't have a lot of training capability, they weren't effective at the tactical level," the retired colonel said.
"So, it wasn't a surprise to see how poorly they performed at that time (during Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea), given their level of training."
Collins said that one success from that 'reset' was reassessing the Ukrainian command structure, noting that played an "effective" role in Ukrainian forces fending off Russian advances during the present conflict. He said that is due to the new culture of giving junior Ukrainian leaders more battlefield decision-making capabilities, rather than a top-down command approach.
"It allows them to take initiative on the battlefield, right? You might be given some orders, 'Go take this hill,' for example, and if you can't adjust on that, you're just going to keep running up the hill into the hornet's nest," he said. "It also requires a trained professional military to do that.'"
Collins said the Russian military appears to have taken a less flexible approach at allowing junior leaders to inherit decision-making at the tactical level.
"It appears that they [Russia] are still more regimented," he said. "If you have a conscript army, which a lot of the Russians are, you're not going to be capable of executing that same kind of discipline initiative at the tactical level."
