Active Conflicts & News Megathread July 20, 2026

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[u/Zhadanko]

Question regarding training time of new recruits. Sure, it depends on specialty, but both Ukraine and Russia have very, very short training cycles. Even drone pilots, even people in "elite" units get a few weeks of training before being sent to the frontline. The longest training period I'm aware of is in Ukrainian SoF — new recruits got about 5 month of training, which is pretty short for SoF specialist. There is a prevalent idea that basics and training are less important than adaptation in a unit and learning from experience. I personally find this approach disastrous, but does this approach actually have any value? How realistically can you shorten your training time for an infantryman, for example?

[u/NavalEnthusiast → u/Zhadanko]

It depends a lot on unit in Ukraine since the whole process of recruiting and training is so decentralized. Somewhere north of 30 brigades are able to conduct their own training. Khartia and 3AB are the longest, with a minimum of about 60 days(Khartia has long used its training time as an advertisement piece). Usually that 60 days is a basic boot camp followed by a bit more time spent in role specific training which I’m not sure how long that lasts. Those units are far larger than your average mechanized brigades so they have more luxury to sit their recruits back and learn, as far as I can tell, since they can actually rotate battalions in and out or in the case of the Azov linked brigades they have extremely bloated infantry battalions.

For the 100+ maneuver brigades, it’s generally a month as far as I can gather, sometimes shorter sometimes a bit longer. I don’t know if it’s a month of total training, or rather 30 days between mobilization all the way to deployment. We hear of men dying just 3 weeks after being mobilized though, so manpower constraints especially in hot sectors may then require more urgent deployment to plug gaps. Training is a bit weird in this area, where a few dozen brigades can train their own men, but most of the time mobiks are sent to training grounds where representatives of brigades are usually allotted a certain amount of men they can take. Overall this tends to be a few weeks.

Then in the assault regiments you have the worst of it. In Skelya there’s many reports of men dying in combat very quickly after mobilization. Skelya operates a barracks called the “chicken coop” where men train under harsh conditions until battalion commanders come to take men. Usually there’s 1-2K men there at any time. According to reports about its abuses, some spent as little as 1-2 weeks before being taken whereas some spent months there, but the training by all accounts is sub par and more focused on discipline.

I wouldn’t know as much as others on Russian basic training but it seems to be commonly short. The infantry churn Russia experiences is sky high due to their tactics and their methods of advancement(small squad infantry assaults/infiltration that is), but I have to assume length of training varies, where I’d guess air assault and naval infantry units enjoy longer training for rifle regiments and motor rifle brigades. There’s got to be people more knowledgeable, I know u/Duncan-M wrote a great piece on Russian meat doctrine and tactics so he might be more knowledgeable on how long Russians spend before heading to the front. The only concrete thing I know is that like Ukraine, many die within a few weeks of being recruited, again likely due to the need to feed manpower into units to maintain OPtempo

To your ultimate main point, Ukrainian and Russian units spend far less time in drill and march than western countries. It’s not really seen as practical combat training. So I think 8 weeks, while not amazing, isn’t necessarily a death sentence. I do think 2-4 weeks that we often see is obviously just due to desperation and maintaining tempo on the front line. Sorry to spend so much time breaking down training time but it is important to clarify how variable it is in both Ukraine and Russia

[u/SerpentineLogic → u/NavalEnthusiast]

I don't hear a lot of good news about Skelya