Kiwi soldiers are earning international respect training Ukrainians in the UK.
Kiwi photojournalist Tom Mutch went to southern England to meet members of the New Zealand Defence Force training Ukrainian troops in the basics of combat.
“If you’d told me in January that we’d be looking at this, while a major war was going on in Europe, I would have told you to get out of the room,” a New Zealand drill Sergeant told me as we overlooked a dozen or so Ukrainian marksmen practising on a shooting range.
The crack of rifle fire echoed over the Salisbury Plains, and in the background, we could hear the whir of helicopter blades as a chopper carrying the defence ministers of New Zealand and the United Kingdom landed.
As they did, Kiwi troops greeted them with a haka, before the ministers were whisked into a tent for a private briefing from top UK and Ukrainian officials on the course of the war.
Here is the heart of New Zealand’s effort to help Ukraine, a young sovereign and democratic nation, defend itself against Russian aggression.
When President Volodoymr Zelenskyy - beaming into the New Zealand Parliament from his bunker in Kyiv - thanked Kiwis for their “unique contribution” to Ukraine, this is what he was referring to.
I’d last seen Zelenskyy almost exactly a month ago, as he strode across the courtyard of liberated Kherson city, showing great courage while Russia continued to bombard the city from the other side of the riverbank.
Dressed in his trademark green hoodie and track pants, Zelenskyy was flanked by a 20-strong Ukrainian special forces escort while the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine was being hoisted over the square.
Kherson was the only regional capital that Russia had conquered during the war, and its recapture was a huge blow to the Kremlin.
More importantly for Ukraine, it was evident to their Western backers - including New Zealand- that they had the chops to retake their occupied territories, and that the billions of dollars in military assistance were not going to waste.
After Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, the New Zealand Government immediately put together a wide-ranging package of support to Ukraine.
This included more than $30 million in military and humanitarian aid assistance.
But the centrepiece was sending experienced teams of New Zealand soldiers to train Ukrainian recruits - most fresh from civilian life with no previous military experience.
The mission is to turn them into battle-ready soldiers in just a few weeks.
In November, the Government announced that the training mission will be continued, with another 66 personnel returning to the UK next year to carry out more training.
But what does this mean in practice? Last month, I visited a British military base in the south of England to see for myself what the Government’s promises to Ukraine had turned into on the ground.
Here, about 130 Kiwi soldiers had been training Ukrainian troops in the basics of combat.
Major Josh Sullivan of the NZDF said: “It’s not a traditional New Zealand training pipeline where everyone’s coming in with zero life experience as an 18 or 19-year-old. The median age is 34 here. It’s people who are doctors, lawyers, and accountants. In many ways, leaders in their own life.”
Because of the short timeframes involved in the training, they are forced to condense skills that are usually taught over a year into just five weeks.
“We cut out all the fat, so there is no focus on drills or boot polishing.
“We focus on the key skills - shoot, move, communicate, medicate - every effort that can be made to enhance their ability to protect themselves or increase their lethality.”
Another soldier said that they were far more impressive than the Afghans or Iraqis he had trained on previous missions, who had been distrustful and unmotivated to fight in the quagmires that the wars in their countries had turned into.
By contrast, every Ukrainian was passionately committed to the fight.
As Sullivan explained: “They’re really hungry to learn, they have a passion and a thirst for knowledge.”
He explained that in between breaks, the recruits would come to the instructors and bombard them with questions and demand explanations and extra rehearsals of what they had been learning.
Another soldier, who only gave his first name, Nathan, said it was astonishing that “we haven’t had people pulling sickies or trying to get out of the field”.
“They hate it if they have to leave for some medical thing. Whereas back home, if things are going hard, you might get up and say ‘oh, I’m feeling sick today’.”
“Our greatest asset is our people,” New Zealand Defence Minister Peeni Henare says as he inspects the troops.
“We’ve made our position clear about the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and we want to make sure our support is meaningful ... this is a no-brainer for us to come here and contribute in a measurable way.”
He praised the troops, saying “our people work with expertise, humility and in a very collaborative way, and that has struck me”.
As we walked around the training grounds, we could see all the different skills the Ukrainians were learning.
Next to the shooting range, a team of recruits was being taught to use detectors to find mines and other forms of unexploded ordnance.
This is one of the biggest issues plaguing the country right now, as the roads and forests of many liberated territories are especially deadly from the detritus of the recent battles.
When I’d been covering the fighting in the Kherson region, I’d seen this with my own eyes - a Ukrainian tank had blown up in front of me as it drove over a booby trap made from a grenade on one of the back dirt roads in the province.
Despite the professionalism of the Western trainers, and the thoroughness of their instruction, they privately admit there is a gaping hole in their ability to teach.
“Quite frankly, we’ve never fought this kind of war before,” one instructor said.
Kiwi soldiers’ major combat experience in recent decades has been mainly fighting counter-insurgency battles against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But this was a war being fought largely through massive artillery barrages from a powerful state military, which Western soldiers have almost universally never faced.
Nevertheless, they try and prepare them for the environment as best they can. They call it “battle inoculation”.
“We try and give them something close to live fire,” Sullivan said.
“They are practising artillery on the light fire range at the moment, and we do fire manoeuvre ranges as well as battle simulation. We’ll have loud bangs that simulate artillery, we have exercises where we bring in amputees, and dress them to make it look like that amputation was caused by artillery and make the recruits responsible for treating that individual.”
He is confident that despite the short training time “after five weeks they come out combat capable. They can shoot straight, communicate, and medicate”.
After this, many go on to specialised additional training in Ukraine. Others are sent straight to the frontlines in Donbas, currently the heaviest battlefield not just in this war, but in the entire world.
One Ukrainian recruit, who went by the call sign, ‘Limon’ told us that one of the biggest challenges faced was the drone battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
“We are very grateful for all the support we’ve received from New Zealand and other Western partners. We know that we will win.”
So how has New Zealand’s support gone down with the rest of the world?
The training, at least, has gone down very well. One British Army trainer at the base admitted that “soldier for soldier, the best New Zealand infantry is up there with the best in the world”.
Ben Wallace, the UK Secretary of Defence who was also present at the training base, said in an interview with the Herald that: “I just talked to an NZ NCO who said it is the most fulfilling thing he’s done in his life. To help people go home and defend their country from an aggressive, lethal act and as a soldier it is a right cause.
“That is what strikes you and the international community. The Ukrainians - you find absolute determination. They aren’t here for a little jolly in the English countryside, they are determined to give themselves the skills to defend their country.
“And they are brave - some of them will go away from here and come back again. Some are going to finish for five weeks, not have much of a break and go straight to the battle.”
He pointed out the common interest the West had in helping Ukraine defend itself, saying:“At the end of the day, it isn’t me fighting on the frontline. It is these guys doing their stuff, they have to do it. And they are fighting for us in a sense. They are showing the world that an aggressive totalitarian state invading another state that is greatly outnumbered can be beaten.”
But despite New Zealand having contributed millions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, with the Government pledging an extra $3 million after Zelenskyy’s address to the House, some think it’s not enough.
“I would like to see them do more in terms of support,” said Professor Robert Patman, an international relations expert at the University of Otago.
He noted that New Zealand is still yet to provide lethal aid, such as artillery or armoured vehicles to Ukraine, despite having such weaponry in the country’s arsenal.
“We should be clear that New Zealand has a huge national interest in Ukraine winning this war. It is an interest that is distinct from the interests the UK and the US have in this war.”
He pointed out often-overlooked similarities between the two countries.
“Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s, signalling that it also sees a non-nuclear future, like New Zealand. This invasion has been a disaster also for the United Nations, and both New Zealand and Ukraine are interested in getting rid of the veto system of the UN Security Council, which failed to prevent this war.
“If Vladimir Putin can annex even a single inch of Ukrainian territory - which I don’t think he will - that is disastrous for New Zealand’s national interest.
“New Zealand politicians sometimes like to make the excuse that we are a small country and therefore can’t influence world events. In Europe, they find this ridiculous. Norway and Sweden only have populations of around 5 million, but they would never describe themselves as small countries.”
Patman speculated that New Zealand’s complicated relationship with China could explain some of this.
“[Jacinda] Ardern, I think, believes the best China strategy at this time is to make sure Putin’s invasion is rebuffed but in a measured fashion. Ardern does not want to offend China by seeming to be too enthusiastic in its efforts to defeat the invasion of the authoritarian regime in Moscow.
“If Putin’s army is defeated and ejected from Ukraine, it will be a serious blow to Xi’s leadership and could complicate any plans he might have for annexing Taiwan.”
Last weekend, the Kiwi soldiers returned home for the holiday season, after giving what was for many of them, the most valuable military service of their lives. Some will return, but the number of troops will be barely half the original commitment.
Zelenskyy left Kiwi MPs with a few choice words to reflect on, saying: “Let me offer you one more thing, various dictators and aggressors - they always fail to realise that the strength of the free world is not about someone becoming large or becoming full of missiles but in the fact that everyone knows how to unite and act decisively and make a unique contribution to the common cause.”
After 10 months at war, I’d come back to New Zealand myself, the farthest country away in the world from Ukraine, to try to get some rest and forget about the war.
But as I looked at Zelenskyy speaking passionately about his country’s fight, I realised I would never get away from it.
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