BERLIN — Ukrainian military instructors will deploy to German army schools to help the Bundeswehr meet a readiness target against a hypothetical Russian attack on NATO by 2029, the head of the German army said Wednesday.
The announcement, reported by Reuters, marks a striking role reversal from years of Western forces training Ukrainian troops and underscores the value of lessons learned on the increasingly drone-dominated battlefield of the Russian invasion.
“We have high expectations,” Lt. Gen. Christian Freuding told Reuters in an interview. “The Ukrainian military is currently the only one in the world with frontline experience against Russia.”
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The deployment follows an agreement signed between the German and Ukrainian defense ministries, under which Ukrainian instructors will embed at Bundeswehr schools to pass on battlefield knowledge accumulated over more than four years of full-scale war. The first contingent is expected to number in the “middle double-digits” and will rotate through for several weeks at a time, Freuding said.
Their expertise will span artillery, engineering, armored operations, drone employment, and command and control − precisely the capability types where the Ukraine war has produced the most rapidly evolving battlefield lessons. The move reflects growing recognition across NATO that European armies have more to learn from Kyiv than they can offer in return.
Freuding grounded the urgency in Western intelligence assessments suggesting Russia could be in a position to mount a large-scale offensive against the alliance as early as 2029. “That’s almost the day after tomorrow. We have no time – the enemy doesn’t wait for us to declare we’re ready. So we have to use every possibility to prepare,” he said.
Germany has trained Ukrainian personnel on platforms including the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, Leopard main battle tanks, artillery systems, and air defense since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. That the relationship has now effectively inverted − with Kyiv dispatching trainers north rather than receiving them − is, Freuding said, a reflection of “an equal partnership in the field of security.”
Berlin is currently Kyiv’s most significant backer, having provided the most aid of any country aside from the United States, which has paused direct military support to Ukraine under the Trump administration. By the end of 2025, Germany had provided a total of €20 billion ($23.1 billion) in military aid to Ukraine, according to a running tally by the German-based Kiel Institute, an economics research organization.
Defense and government officials from both countries have launched a number of initiatives to benefit from each other’s comparative advantages, including taking steps to foster tighter integration of their defense industrial bases.
The latest announcement comes as Berlin accelerates its broader Bundeswehr buildup, with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius targeting defense spending of 3.5% of GDP by 2029 as part of an ambition to field Europe’s most powerful conventional army.
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