How Canada helped Ukraine learn to stop fighting wars the Soviet way

For months afterMoscow launched its full invasion a year ago, the government ofPrime Minister Justin Trudeau resorted to a standard messagewhenever it was accused of going too slowly, or doing too little, in its efforts to help Ukraine.

Did we evertell you Canada trained over 33,000 Ukrainiansoldiers?

Thatmessage served as bothtalking point and deflection. It was bolted ontoalmost every speech and media response line in Ottawa during those early months, as the world was riveted by the dramatic stand Ukrainian soldiers made outside the capitalKyiv and inKharkiv, the country's second largest city.

CBC News has been on the ground covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine from the start. What do you want to know about their experience there? Send an email to ask@cbc.ca. Our reporters will be taking your questions as the one-year anniversary approaches.

At the time, many world leaders and seasoned military, defence and geopolitical observers were expecting Ukraine's defence to collapse swiftly in the face of Russia's vastly superiormanpower, firepower andairpower. The expertswere subsequently caught off-guard by the determination and professionalism of Ukraine's military, and by itsearly victories against a brutal antagonist.

There are many reasons explaining Ukraine's survival. They start withthepalpable rage that has united Ukrainians a visceral anger thatonly grows with each new atrocity, eachindiscriminate missileattack takinginnocent lives.

The Russian army itself is another reason. With their ill-prepared soldiers, uncoordinated units, snarled logistics and a habit ofcombining over-confidence witha lack of competence, Russian army commanders have bungled their war to a degree that hasbeen as astonishingas the Ukrainians' performance has been inspiring.

But most military commanders will tell you that wars are won and lost on the training grounds in the mindset instilledin soldiers by that training.

Which iswhere Canada and its allies came in.

CBC News wanted to know how much of a difference Canada's much-hyped military training mission made to Ukraine's ability to survive over the last year. We spoke to both Ukrainian and Canadian soldiers.

For seven years leading up to last year's invasion, hundreds of Canadian soldiers deployed to western Ukraine to train an already battle-tested army that was holding back Russian-backed proxy forces in the eastern Donbas region.

The trainees were put through advanced courses in just about all aspects of combat, from marksmanship andchecking for booby-trapped vehicles to battlefieldmedical treatment and evacuation.

Canadian Brig.-Gen. Tim Arsenault commanded one of the early rotations of trainers. He vividly remembers the sobering experience of watching the first Ukrainian troops arrive directly from the eastern front at the training centre in Yavoriv, near the Polish border.

"What will stick with me the most is just watching that first battalion come in from the Donbas, and seeing the state of the soldiers, who were very tired," said Arsenault.

"I think it really hit home at that point in time, how it was affecting Ukrainians ... at a very basic, you know, moral level, and the fact that they feltalmost violated to have to fight with one neighbour who spoke the same languageas many of them."

Arsenault saidhe encountered "a certain degree of reticence" among the Ukrainians, all of whom had combat experience. Col. Sergeii Maltsev of the Ukrainian National Guardsaid his soldiers were doubtfulat first.

"I think some of our people were skeptical," Maltsev told CBC News in a recent interview in Kyiv.

"Maybe it was the fear of the changes? Maybe because they didn'tknow at the beginning what it will give as a final result."

In the end, the Canadian training made two key contributionsto Ukraine's defence, said Maltsev, a short, tough, wiry soldier who has beenfighting Russians since the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The first was the combat medical training provided in the later stages Operation Unifier, the Canadian namefor the training mission.

That training has saved many lives, said Maltsev. Hisopinion was backed up by Ukrainian soldiers CBC News recently interviewed outside of Bakhmut, the focal point of the Russian winter offensive.

WATCH | Canadian trainersurged Ukrainian soldiers to seize initiative:

Canadas mission to train Ukrainian soldiers

2 years ago

Duration 5:34

Canadian soldiers have trained tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops on Western military tactics. Two Canadians involved in that training and a Ukrainian on the front line tell CBC's David Common how it has helped Ukraine survive this long.

The second criticalcontributionwas the training of sergeants and non-commissioned officers amid-level layer of command that made Ukrainian units far more nimble than their opponents.

"Previously, it was [an] old-Soviet type approach," said Maltsev, referring to atop-down command structure that discourages troops from taking the initiative without orders.

• This week, join The National, hosted by the CBC's chief correspondent, Adrienne Arsenault, in Kyiv. Watch at 9 p.m. ET on CBC News Network, 10 p.m. on CBC-TV, or stream it on CBC Gem and CBC News Explore.

"We improved the role of our sergeants in our military, and with your help, with Canadian help, we developed our sergeant ... training programs. And now sergeants are capable to assist effectively, assist the officers and even to command their small units, without any assistance or officers'assistance. So they can take the lead. They can take the decision directly at the battlefield, without any consultation with higher ranks."

Lt.-Col. Melanie Lake was one of the last Canadian training commanders to work with the Ukrainians before the onset of major hostilities. She finished her tour in the fall of 2021.

Changing the mindset of the Ukrainians away from the oldSoviet approachof waiting for orderswas an uphill battle, she said.

"In the old Soviet system, there was very much a culture of punishment," she said. "So you have to break the risk-aversion that comes from that culture of punishment, the ... aversion to delegating authority, empowering subordinates."

Nothing demonstrated the drawbacks of the Russian military mentality better, she said, than the fate of that 65-kilometre-long convoy that had been barrelling down onKyivin early 2022 before it wasstopped dead in its tracks and picked apart by Ukrainian resistance.

"Nobody could make a decision," said Lake."You've got senior [Russian] generals coming forward, coming way too far forward and getting picked off because they're the only ones who are empowered to make decisions.

"And then you see the contrast of the small teams of Ukrainians enabled with anti-armour weapons, or picking off a general ... execution in small teams that allows them to see initiative."

Volodymyr isa lieutenant serving with a Ukrainian National Guard artillery unit near Bakhmut; CBC News is identifying him only by his first name, for his protection. He saidit was victorieslike halting the convoy outside Kyiv that convincedUkrainians that they could win.

"In the very beginning of this war, there were lots Ukrainian defence specialists saying that there is a big Soviet army fighting against, like, [a] small Soviet army," he said."But you see what's happening."

Another Canadian training commander, Col. Kris Reeves, now admits that when Moscow launched its full invasion on February 24, 2022, he fearedthe Ukrainians were going to get bulldozed.

"February 24 I've said this to my wife to me,that's my 911 moment," Reeves toldCBC News in Ottawa.

"I had this rock in my stomach, this pit of mygut ...thinkingeverything they had worked for, everything we worked for to help them, is going to be gone."

It's also possible Canadian military training will have a deeperlegacy in post-war Ukraine.

CBC News spoke to asenior Ukrainian lieutenant in charge of a mortar battery a young woman in an army still beset by gender stereotypes.Krystyna "Kudriava" (her nom-de-guerre, meaning "curly hair") said she met Lake in her capacity as the Canadian in charge of the training mission in early 2021 and was inspired to find a woman commanding soldiers.

"Meeting Col. Melanie Lake was a very significant event for me," she said. "And obviously, after I heard the Canadian commanding officer of Operation Unifier was coming and she was a female, I had the great desire to just communicate with her to share our experiences, to hear her story.

"And to my amazement, she happened to be very open in terms of her personality."

The twobecame close. Lake gave Krystyna a commander's coin and in return she received a bracelet made out of bullets.

When asked whether she believes she'll return toUkraine eventually for its Aug. 24 independence day celebrations, Lake doesn't hesitate.

"Absolutely. I have no doubt. I have no doubt."