Celebrating Ukrainian Soldiers’ Skills & Spirit

Today’s Ukrainian solider is accumulating unique battlefield experience that should make him and her the envy of any country’s armed forces. It should also make their skills a desirable commodity for American and NATO armies.

Ukrainian soldiers are the only ones in history to have learned on the battlefield not classroom how to engage invading Russian troops in battle and succeed.

For five years, Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting against the biggest war machine in history. Russia invaded eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the spring of 2014 and in the first days of the war a ragtag Ukrainian army confronted a well-financed, trained and equipped Russian military corps of murderers.

In time and patiently, former President Petro Poroshenko, Minister of Defense Gen. Stepan Poltorak and the field commanders built a mighty, well-trained, well-armed and dedicated army of fighting men and women. Yes, they suffered combat losses but they also managed to stop the Russian invaders and their secessionist lackeys from advancing beyond the eastern oblasts. Today, they deserve complete victory against Russia; they should be given the opportunity to expel Russian invaders back to Russia – not an endless, deadly truce.

It has been observed that Ukrainians are very good soldiers and even those who served in the Soviet Army were very good soldiers. I heard this observation enough times not to overlook it. Why were they thought of as very good soldiers even in the Soviet Army?

I turned to a friend in Ukraine for an explanation. He hails from a typical Ukrainian village in the Ternopil region, a veteran, an airborne officer of the rank of colonel who completed the USSR’s top airborne school in Ryazan – Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Command School.

“As for the Soviet Army, I will say the following: from my own experience, almost half of the students of the military schools were from Ukraine (then still part of the USSR). They studied well, and then served appropriately well. And not only the junior officers but also those in the highest ranks. Personally, I reached the rank of commander of battalion headquarters – 420 personnel, plus 66 officers, NCOs with more than 30 amphibious infantry fighting vehicles. The reason why it was like that was quite simple. A Ukrainian, by nature, and according to a warrior's genes, fought his whole life and history. He wasn’t a stupid soldier. We did not crawl out of Muscovite swamps. This is to say that a real Muscovite is a moron and a predator. Yes, throughout their lives, from the Middle Ages and perhaps earlier, they liquidated the intelligent and smart, because it is easier to control halfwits. They managed to destroy the officer elite after the October revolution, civil war and red terror. Those who managed, escaped to diaspora, that the educated ones, officers, were quietly destroyed the Cheka, as our Petliura, Konovalets, Bandera, Rebet, and many others.”

Hopefully, the President Zelensky, Defense Minister Poltorak and Chief of Staff Gen. Ruslan Khomchak – as well as US and NATO allies – will give Ukrainian soldiers the moral and materiel support to expel Russian invaders from Donbas and Crimea.