At a military base tucked into the Polish countryside, a Canadian soldier kneels beside a TM-62 anti-tank mine, demonstrating how to handle the device without it blowing up.
Across from him, a young Ukrainian recruit watches in focused silence as a nearby Ukrainian linguist translates the Canadian’s instructions.
The soldiers are participating in Operation Unifier, a once modest Canadian military training mission that now plays an important role helping prepare Ukrainian soldiers for active war.
“We recreate known situations of warfare … so that the students will not be taken by surprise,” said Capt. Christopher Danis, who sat down with Canadian Affairs between training exercises.
Danis leads Unifier’s combat engineering element — just one of the courses that compresses months’ worth of instruction into a mere 33 days.
“The schedule is very tight,” said Unifier trainer Sgt. Christopher Cormier-Godin, who spoke with Canadian Affairs in an interview at one of Unifier’s Polish training facilities.
“We work on a schedule of six days out of seven with training … It’s a pretty intense course, but we try to adapt to the level of training that everyone has and maximize the effect of our instruction.”
Compressed combat school
Operation Unifier began as a training mission between Canada and Ukraine following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Initially, Canada deployed about 200 soldiers to train active duty Ukrainian soldiers at training sites in Ukraine.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the operation was moved to Poland and Latvia.
For more than three years, Ukraine — a country of about 37 million — has been locked in a grinding war of attrition with Russia, a country with nearly four times the population and about twice the number of active duty soldiers.
Today, about 300 CAF soldiers facilitate training for Ukrainians with a wide range of military experience.
“Some of them have 30 years experience in the military,” said Cormier-Godin. “Some of them have almost none.”
Master Cpl. Levi Beaudoin, who leads Unifier’s mobility training, says both veterans and novices come ready to engage fully with the Canadian trainers.
“Both groups are very eager to learn, he said. “If it is a more experienced guy, he’s always willing to give us his input on what he’s actually seen in real-life situations.
“If he has a way to … improve the way we’re teaching here, we’re always super open to receiving that information, and we try to adjust and make [the training] better for the next group.”
Throughout Unifier’s six-week schedule, Danis and his team run trainees through a series of drills designed to simulate the battlefield. One exercise involves trainees navigating forested paths that have been tangled in mock explosive tripwires — similar to what soldiers see in the Russian-occupied eastern oblast of Donetsk, where much of the current fighting is concentrated.
Cormier-Godin, who deployed to Iraq in 2019 and Cyprus in 2023, leads the counter-explosives instruction, training Ukrainians to navigate and neutralize booby-trapped buildings and trench systems.
“We teach them the basics of how to deal with any explosive threat they might encounter on the field,” he said. Those threats include modified grenades, bounding munitions and antipersonnel mines — all of which contribute to Ukraine’s growing casualty count.
In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 46,000 Ukrainians had died and an additional 380,000 had been injured since February 2022. International estimates suggest the actual death toll could be far higher, with some reports putting Ukraine’s combat losses closer to 100,000.
Pushing forward
With just one per cent of Ukrainians fluent in English, translators play a key role bridging the language gap.
“The training could not happen without our linguists,” said Cormier-Godin. “They’re very professional and provide a lot of knowledge.”
The civilian and military linguists at Unifier also help build lasting bonds between trainers and war-bound trainees.
“My senior linguist … sent me a message from the Ukrainians that we trained,” said Cormier-Godin. The message read, “This morning I used one of the techniques, and it saved my life.”
Canadian trainers also welcome more substantive feedback directly from the frontlines.
CAF soldiers told Canadian Affairs they continually adapt their curriculum to be responsive to changing battlefield conditions, with each new training cycle — or “serial” — reflecting new updates from Ukrainian partners.
“We try to improve every serial of the course,” said Danis. “Refined skills, refined teaching methods that work best for Ukrainians.”
“I receive information every week … on stuff that happens on the battlefield,” said Cormier-Godin.
A key threat is the use of aerial combat drones, which have fundamentally changed how soldiers must move on the battlefield.
In recent months, Russia has dramatically escalated its air raid campaign on Ukrainian infrastructure — launching record-breaking swarms, including 728 suicide and decoy drones in a single night in July.
“With the drone threat, you want to have your guys spaced out … so it’s not going to be as effective in wiping out the whole section,” said Beaudoin.
But for all its modern elements, the war also harkens back to the ugliness of 20th-century world conflicts — a reality evinced by the dramatic increase in the number of Ukrainian men now missing limbs.
The strategic situation on the battlefield remains concerning. Russian forces are making incremental gains in the Donbas, while Ukrainian commanders, constrained by manpower and munitions shortages, are prioritizing defensive fortification and drone-enabled attrition tactics.
Looking beyond 2026
Canada has spent $380 million on Operation Unifier since its inception in 2014. But the majority of this spending has occurred in recent years. In 2023-24, it spent $85 million; last fiscal year, it spent $143 million.
“Canada has been steadfast in its support for Ukraine’s long-term security and sovereignty,” a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence told Canadian Affairs in an email.
Ottawa has extended Unifier through to March 2026 — and is projected to spend an additional $106 million this fiscal year. But the combat training operation’s long-term future remains unclear.
“DND continues to plan the delivery of military training and capacity building support to Ukraine,” the spokesperson said. “Decisions concerning the extension and expansion of military operations rest with the Government of Canada.”
Danis, for his part, says Ukrainians’ performance during Unifier has surpassed Canadian expectations.
“ Most of them will actually surprise us by the speed at which they understand [combat engineering tactics],” he said.
“That’s very impressive, because the course is very condensed. But still they keep track of everything, and they apply what we teach them very efficiently.
“Their ingenuity is limitless … They come up with plans that are very ingenious.”
“With very little, they can do a lot.”
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