00:00It's a little bit difficult for me to imagine that another country could be prepared for this
00:08kind of war without having the experience or even the insight that Ukraine has.
00:14Let's not be coy about it. We are in some kind of war already with Russia. They are attacking
00:25us with cyber operations. They are trying to and have been undermining the democratic
00:32processes in the West and of course they're conducting a full-scale war against Ukraine,
00:38a nation that is on our most eastern flank right up against the Russians. But they are also conducting
00:45penetrations of NATO airspace as part of probing operations. All of this is adding up to a sense
00:53that perhaps fairly soon we may actually have to confront Russian troops on the ground and in
01:00that context there's a lot to learn from Ukraine. But I've been speaking to Ukrainians and other
01:06international volunteers on the ground who are operating against the Russians and they are
01:11telling me that NATO forces and British forces within that have a long way to go before they
01:18incorporate the lessons that are being learned on the battlefields of today.
01:24Do you think that they're ready for the next war with Russia?
01:28No. No, I'm honestly a little bit terrified.
01:32Because I think that no one, first of all, no one is ever prepared for a war like this.
01:36Now Rebecca is a veteran of nearly four years of combat in Ukraine and her analysis just of the medical
01:45challenges I think are very, very revealing because she has had NATO training and in her view it really
01:53did not account for reality.
01:55No, I think if you were to talk to military officials they would reassure you that everything
02:00is under control, they're well equipped, they're well prepared. But I don't think anyone can be
02:05prepared for a conflict like this. I don't think anyone can. And what's concerning to me is
02:13while they're offering these trainings, which I'm very grateful for, like these allied forces are
02:18offering trainings to the Ukrainians, I think it would do them well to also take some information
02:25and training from the Ukrainians.
02:27Just for example, when I went to a NATO training, the factor of drones
02:44was not really filtered in. It was very much the tactics that were learned in the previous war.
02:49And these tactics now do not apply because you're not making like a linear assault.
02:58Everything has changed with drones. And I think
03:02I don't think it was factored in, at least not in this training. When I talked to the other soldiers
03:06as well.
03:07You mean the Ukrainian soldiers?
03:08Yeah, who have also gone to training. We've kind of like discussed experiences. There are some
03:13really good benefits from these trainings. But in general, all of the tactics don't reflect the
03:19updated conflict.
03:20What kind of changes have you seen?
03:22Massive changes. In the beginning of the war, you had more basic wounds. Like,
03:28we didn't really have this problem with FPV drones, we had a lot of like artillery wounds,
03:34in and out clean bullet, bullet wounds, and so on.
03:38Now the wounds, the injuries are catastrophic. Catastrophic. And they're multiplying because
03:45the radius of impact for, let's say, a drone drops a grenade or explosive device, it's a massive
03:54radius of impact. So you can have an entire group that's taken out, all of them injured, in one drop.
04:00We're not seeing that hand-to-hand combat so much now. And the wounds are very complex.
04:06It's a little bit difficult for me to imagine that another country could be prepared for this kind
04:11of war without having the experience or even the insight that Ukraine has. I'm actually really
04:18proud of the guys because even, you know, my drone boys, my artillery boys, my grenade launchers,
04:23my infantry boys, all of them are excellent medics. They're excellent. They're not, they're not listed
04:30as a medic, but they can do all the medical care. They practice, they learn about everything that's
04:33instead of first aid kit. They do so many simulations. So when they go to the position,
04:37when they're in the combat position, when someone is wounded, they are immediately providing aid.
04:43She's going out of her way to be polite, but the upshot of all of this is that it is urgent,
04:50I think, for NATO officers to try to incorporate the lessons learned and incorporate actual Ukrainians
04:58inside NATO as part of their forward planning. Now, Ukraine, ironically, has applied for NATO
05:07membership. That so far is being rejected and indeed it is cited regularly by Russia as a reason for its
05:14original full-scale invasion in February 2022. But the truth of the matter is, it is becoming increasingly
05:23clear that NATO needs Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs NATO. So we're using drones and we are dropping
05:32medical supplies with the drones. We can take like kind of an inventory of what the wounds are,
05:39what the condition is. We actually even have like sometimes like a thermometer, a pulse oximeter.
05:46We can drop that in as well and get kind of feedback on what's going on. Let's say this is an injury
05:52and the injured are staying a long time in the position, we can send antibiotics. But my soldiers also
05:57know when they're wounded to take their pill pack, which is in their personal first aid kit,
06:01because the quicker they take it after injury, the lower risk of infection.
06:07When you've been doing medical training with NATO forces, are they aware of all of these new
06:12techniques that you're developing?
06:16No, and I think what was actually kind of alarming to me was, you know, for example,
06:21when we went through the medical training portion of my NATO training, it was,
06:28to be nice, like to put it nicely, it was sorely lacking.
06:32I think one of the biggest things that worries me is the rigid structure of training. This is the
06:38way it is, this is the way we've always done it, this is the way we're going to continue to do it.
06:42That's not war. We have to adapt. If we don't adapt, we die. We have to adapt.
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