Volunteers deliver crash courses in battlefield tactics that should take six months to teach
“Stand by,” shouts a former US Marine. “Threat!” comes the next call and a volley of gunshots echoes around a disused quarry, in a Ukrainian hillside, just a few miles from the frontline of the war.
The Mozart Group’s name was coined by its members as a tongue-in-cheek musical reference to the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian paramilitary organisation that’s often described as Bison, a mechanical engineer from Dnipro, bought a hunting rifle after the war started, to get some shooting practice and is now operating as a platoon medic. “I did a week’s tactical medical course after having a bad cycling accident during the Covid lockdown. I told them and they made me a medic,” He says with a smile and a medical pack attached to his body armour.
“It’s backwards: you don’t go to combat first and then come back to be trained,” Dathan agrees. “The Ukrainian government doesn’t want to say that most of their military isn’t really trained. But they are trying to fight the Russians who, luckily enough, aren’t trained either.”“This is what it must have been like in world war one,” says Alex , speaking to the Guardian over the phone from Bulgaria.
From speaking to Ukrainian troops and commanders, Alex and Milburn agree that US and western weapons systems and military equipment are not being used or distributed correctly due to Ukrainians lacking training and skills.
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