The dust kicked up by the bullets mixes with the men’s sweat in the 30 C heat. “This is not the gun,” says the instructor, singling out a frustrated man who had peppered a target five meters away with small holes. “You set the scene at a different point each time.” Ukrainian recruits conduct target practice in a quarry near the front line. In the heart of the Donbass, a team of eight experienced ex-Western soldiers are delivering an intensive 10-day training program for 40 young Ukrainian recruits straight from the fighting. As the battle for eastern Ukraine continues, soldiers in the Donbass are taking heavy casualties in a vicious artillery battle. Ukraine’s professional fighting force, which has been defending the eastern front since 2014, is severely depleted. Since February 24th, new recruits have been rushing to the front lines, many with shockingly little training. Recruits in the course have a patchwork of gear: different weapons, fatigues, and body armor of varying quality. Aged between their early 20s and early 50s, men come in all shapes, sizes and fitness levels. Andy Milburn, left, talks with an interpreter. One in 10 were in the army before the war and had very little formal training, explains Andy Milburn, founder of the Mozart Group, a new private security company that has taken on the task of training Ukrainian soldiers. Milburn, a retired Marine Corps colonel who spent 31 years in the U.S. Army, recruited special volunteers to train civilian fighters in Kiev’s civil defense force as they defended their capital. Now based in Donbass, the Mozart Team consists of 20 to 30 volunteers from the US, UK, Ireland and other Western countries. The name Group Mozart was coined by its members as a linguistic musical reference to Group Wagner, a shadowy Russian paramilitary organization often described as Vladimir Putin’s private army. Milburn says at first he was “a bit ambivalent about using the name” but that “it’s caught on as a brand now”. Recruitment to the 10-day training course Since 2014, the Wagner Group has been operating in insecure, low-income countries, including Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic, protecting Russian interests without regard for human rights or international law. “I didn’t want to be associated or compared to the Wagner group. We are not opposed to the Wagner Group. what we do is quite different,” says Milburn. Largely funded by private US donors and staffed by carefully vetted recruits, the Mozart Group also provides humanitarian aid, including hygiene products and food to frontline cities, and evacuates vulnerable people from high-risk areas. Ukrainian soldiers receive five or 10 days of conflict courses in basic weapons handling, marksmanship, fire and maneuver and battlefield tactics that would ideally take six months to learn. Trainers have taught thousands of soldiers to talk to recruits through two interpreters, which Milburn says is not enough for the job, but they have struggled to find people with the necessary skills. Bison administers first aid to a soldier hit by a hot bullet casing during target practice “I’m still going to be fighting on the front line, but we’ve manned positions that have been bombed and hit by rocket attacks,” a 42-year-old soldier, identified only by his Bison badge, told the Guardian during the firing practice. dressed in a used British camo tunic with a rod badge on the sleeve. Bison, a mechanical engineer from Dnipro, bought a hunting rifle after the start of the war to practice shooting and now serves as a platoon medic. “I did a week’s worth of meds after a bad bike accident during the Covid lockdown. I told them and they made me a doctor,” he says with a smile and a medical pack attached to his armor. An interpreter, in the center, liaises between an instructor, a leftist and a soldier That’s more than most doctors, according to Dathan, a former advanced paramedic who served 23 years in the Irish Army in counties including Syria and Kosovo, and joined Team Mozart in May. “You ask doctors what their qualifications are and they say, ‘Well, I was given this bag and now I’m the doctor,’” says Dathan. “Only one of that group of 40 had zeroed his weapon before the training started,” Milburn says as he walks through the scrub toward the makeshift training ground. Zeroing a gun means aligning the sights so you can accurately aim a target. “That’s the first thing you do,” says Milburn. Ukrainian troops are training close to the front lines, as their commanders cannot risk their soldiers being away from the battlefield for too long in case the Russians try to advance. Ideally, these teams will train 100 to 120 men at a time, but they can’t afford to remove them from their posts, Milburn says. “It’s backwards: you don’t go to fight first and then come back to train,” agrees Dathan. “The Ukrainian government does not want to say that most of its army is not really trained. But they are trying to fight the Russians who, fortunately, are not even trained.” The targets are located in a quarry near the front line “That’s what it must have been like in the first world war,” says Alex (not his real name), speaking to the Guardian by phone from Bulgaria. Alex is an ex-UK soldier who took a break but said he intended to return to help permanently. “They are 36, 37-year-old men and four months ago these guys were taxi drivers or farmers. None of them want to be in the military, but they say our country has been invaded. What do you expect us to do? Huge respect to them. But it’s very sad to be honest,” says Alex. But what the troops lack in experience they make up for in enthusiasm and determination. “They’re optimistic, they listen, they’re careful, and most of all they have a great sense of humor,” says Milburn, watching the exercise. “They don’t complain, they take everything and give 100%,” agrees Dathan. Tigris, a 22-year-old soldier who was studying law in Dnipro when the war began, says he is now completing the final year of his degree by distance learning as he prepares to fight. A soldier adjusts his Tiger kit Mozart’s members want to stand out from the influx of war tourists and fighters who could be found telling stories and propping up hotel bars in expensive new military clothing in Kyiv at the start of the conflict. “It’s dangerous,” Alex says. “You can injure or kill yourself or someone else – and that hurts relations between Westerners and Ukrainians.” The trainers say they joined Team Mozart to become “combat multipliers”, saying it made sense to train hundreds of Ukrainians rather than risk being killed quickly in combat. The UK government website states that those traveling “to fight or to assist others involved in war” could be prosecuted on their return to the UK. From speaking to Ukrainian troops and commanders, Alex and Milburn agree that American and Western weapons systems and military equipment are not being used or distributed properly because the Ukrainians lack training and skills. “They don’t develop the weapons,” said Alex, who, during his seven-and-a-half years with the British Army, specialized and trained in the use of javelins and NLAWs, high-tech US and UK anti-tank weapons, the use of which proved instrumental in Ukraine’s success in pushing Russia out of Kyiv in March. Alex says he understands from conversations with commanders that without proper training, the $178,000 Javelins systems are being misused or rendered redundant, with sophisticated line-of-sight batteries dying before the missiles are fired. “They’re not getting the training they need,” says Alex. Nestor, center, a 26-year-old Ukrainian soldier from Dnipro At the end of the marksmanship course, the troops gather for a debriefing and Q and A session. “Where should metal plates ideally be placed on our body armor?” asks a man, and the instructor gives a demo while the men look on, listening intently. “I’m getting calmer the more I train,” Bison says when asked if he’s worried about going to the front line. Nestor, a 26-year-old Ukrainian soldier also from Dnipro, one of the few who have been fighting in the Donbass since 2014, returned to the firing range with Rob, the ex-US Marine, to get some more tips on changing magazines once he finished the review. “These instructors are amazing, they are so thorough no matter what your experience level is,” says Nestor. Of the 15 friends Nestor has lost in the conflict since 2014, 10 have died this year. Ukrainian troops are training close to the front lines as their commanders cannot risk their soldiers away from the battlefield for too long While they have supplied weapons and training abroad, the US, UK, EU and other Western allies have not deployed troops to Ukraine for fear of the conflict escalating into a war between Russia and NATO. However, Andy Milburn wishes he had more contact with the US government. Asked if he shares information with the US, he says: “That’s kind of the easy part” – and explains that the US government is worried that if they fund Mozart, the group could turn into a private military contractor involved in the fighting. . If any of the Mozart Team volunteers get involved in the fighting, they are no longer part of the Mozart Team, Milburn explains. “There is a very clear line.”
