Foreign volunteers race to train new Ukrainian troops to be sent to the front

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/27/ [login to see] /russia-ukraine-war-foreign-veterans-train-ukrainian-soldiers
Magnus Ek, 53, a retired Swedish lieutenant, is teaching a group of Ukrainian conscripts how to fire an AK-47 in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. Ek, who spent a decade as an instructor in Sweden, is among a group of foreign military volunteers who have gone to train Ukrainians how defend their country from Russia's invasion.

"You will find yourself in many strange shooting positions," Ek says, as he tromps around the snow-covered firing range where the temperatures hover around 16 degrees.

"So funny, so funny," says one of his students, a Ukrainian conscript.

Ek, who has served as a volunteer military trainer for months in Ukraine, uses physical comedy to hold the attention of his students. The situation, however, is not a joke.

He is teaching a group of 15 conscripts who were assigned to Ukraine's Border Force a week earlier. Most have no experience with weapons and Ek has only a few hours to expose them to as much as he can. He won't even have the opportunity to show them something basic: how to adjust the sights of their rifles so they can aim accurately.