After training Ukrainian soldiers, Canada turns its attention to brass

Latest mission will spend time developing upper echelon of country’s defence force

There was little in the way of an overarching strategic architecture for comprehensive military reform when Canadian soldiers began their training mission Operation Unifier in Ukraine two years ago.

At the time, it was a visceral response to Russian aggression in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the fight between Moscow-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.

A small-team training mission led by about 200 Edmontonbased 3rd Canadian Division soldiers was deployed in a bootsup operation to aid an undermanned, under-resourced, largely conscript infantry thrust into an anti-terrorist conflict they were not adequately prepared to fight.

Ukraine’s military complex had fallen into disrepair since independence in 1991.

Defence spending had shrunk to record lows, corruption in procurement was rife, troop numbers had dwindled to 160,000 in 2014 from a peak of 700,000, and its military hardware was antiquated.

Fast-forward to 2017 and enlisted numbers have climbed to 250,000; defence spending, at 5.2 per cent of GDP or around US$5 billion, is at a record high; and the largest full-scale reform of the defence force in the country’s history is underway. The strategic architecture absent in the beginning is now in place.

A two-year extension to the training mission announced earlier this week by the Trudeau government will now allow Canada’s troop trainers to evolve their approach from boots-up to brassdown, says Jill Sinclair, Ottawa’s appointee to Ukraine’s Defence Reform Advisory Board (DRAB).

After training more than 3,200 Ukrainian soldiers, mainly at the International Peacekeeping and Security Centre in Starychi in the west of the country, Canada’s focus will in time turn to the upper echelon of the defence force to ensure changes in tactics, strategies and ethos are solidified in military culture.

“We recognize we need to do some top-down stuff, too,” Sinclair says.

“You can train your infantry fabulously, but if you haven’t got the next level up the chain of command trained or sensitized to doing things in a different way, that training is going to be good, but it’s only going to have a limited effect.”

DRAB, a four-person panel established last year at the behest of the Ukrainian government, is shepherding the modernization process of Ukraine’s military based on a strategic defence bulletin that provides a comprehensive road map to reform using Ukraine-NATO “partnership goals.”

The bulletin lays out dozens of “very ambitious targets” for the professionalization of the military, from ethos to logistics to defence planning and budget, Sinclair says.

Key to the process is a 40-strong collective of “civil society” volunteer experts in the Reform Project Office, a group helping drive transition while championing the will of Euromaidan Revolution protesters for open and transparent governance and accountability to the people.

The ultimate aim is to ensure democratic civilian oversight of the armed forces is entrenched in Ukraine’s legislative framework “to make sure that these changes are irreversible.”

With backgrounds in everything from political science to project management, the group offers guidance and expertise in everything from procurement to uniform and food supply, logistics automation and military housing.

“I think Ukraine is almost unique in this area,” Sinclair says of the Reform Project Office.

“It’s an almost non-governmental team embedded in the ministry and they have their finger on the pulse of everything and it shows how serious Ukraine is for reform,” he added.

Rather than looking at the ongoing conflict and the constant and repeated violations of ceasefires as a distraction, those involved in the reform project are looking at it as inspiration to get it done quickly and get it done right, Sinclair continues.

“There’s probably no better time to undertake reforms than when you are in a fight because you are learning lessons very quickly, you are learning what works and doesn’t work.

“One of the big challenges about doing reform in a fight is that you cannot afford to make mistakes because you lose lives, you lose territory and you put things in danger. It doesn’t become an impediment, it just sharpens the mind on what needs to be done.

“It makes the need to do it right the first time more acute,” she says.