Canadian Army Combat Engineers helping ‘bridge the gap’ in Ukraine

By Steven Fouchard, Army Public Affairs

Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine — Under the banner of Operation UNIFIER, Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel have been sharing their expertise in the name of building capacity within the Security Forces of Ukraine since 2015.

Op UNIFIER is a large, multinational effort that also includes Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, Denmark and Sweden.

There is one component of that CAF contribution, a team of Canadian Army (CA) Combat Engineers from Quebec City-based 5 Combat Engineer Regiment (5 CER), that is small in size but having a large impact.

These 17 soldiers have helped develop and are now instructing their Ukrainian counterparts in a course dubbed “Sapper Level 1” – Sapper being an informal shorthand name for Combat Engineer. It includes instruction on dealing with land mines – a necessity in a country where, according to the UN, 600,000 people live in areas with “extreme levels of mine contamination.”

The course, as 5 CER's Master Corporal Daniel Lefebvre explains in the following interview, is also designed to align Ukraine's military practices with the standards of NATO and bring it a step closer to membership.

And, MCpl Lefebvre notes, the experience is proving to be nothing less than “inspiring.”

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q1: Describe the Sapper Level 1 course.

The Sapper level 1 course has been developed through collaboration between the…