Today I write to you from a place I cannot name.
I can tell you that it’s beautiful and cold and consequential. It’s in the south of England,deep in the countryside.
I’ve just been in tears and so has the woman I’ve just finished interviewing. I don’t know her name or what her face looks like,but I can see from her body shape underneath her military fatigues and from the way she stands that she’s a woman and,from the creases around her eyes,that she’s older than I am.
Olena,a Ukrainian receiving infantry training in Britain,fights back tears as she explains why she joined up.Getty
I can’t understand a word of what this warrior woman,let’s call her Olena,is saying,but I can hear from the pitch of her voice and see from the tears that fill her eyes that she is speaking of love.
Through a female interpreter,I learn that Olena is driven by love for her 18-year-old daughter and for her motherland. This is what has brought the 46-year-old to England to learn how to fight;how to kill Russian invaders and survive their attacks. She speaks of her grief but also of her resolute belief that Ukraine will win.
As we arrived at the army base,we were briefed on the type of training Australian Army officers would be conducting for these brave Ukrainians who,just a year ago,were living “really sweet lives”.
Here,they will be taught how to kill,how to cope after an attack,how to test the ground for land mines,how to test a body for booby traps such as grenades and how to hide from drones spying in the air. The simulations we watched were grim,and jolting. Artillery fired,pounding our eardrums and the ground below our feet. It gave us a sense of how real this all is and at the same time of how safe we are from the brutality of the war in Ukraine;a brutality Olena says she is unafraid to return home to face.
Better times ... shoppers visit a weekly street market in Troieshchyna,a suburb of Kyiv,in November 2021.Christopher Occhicon
It was a proud moment for the young Australians teaching the Ukrainians these skills. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles describe it as such and also as “poignant”. Marles is in the UK for the annual AUKMIN talks between the defence and foreign ministers of the two countries.
The operation we witnessed is a testament to what highly capable friends do,Marles’ British counterpart,Ben Wallace,told me. A big moment is approaching for the oldest of friends − or what the UK’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly described as being “best mates”. Soon,Australia will announce how it plans to acquire nuclear submarines and the UK is poised to have a greater role than we’ve been led to expect.
While there’s been a lot of attention paid to Penny Wong’s decision to raise colonialism during her first visit to the UK,the two countries share a vital security mission and are about to forge a historic new path.
Get a note directly from our foreigncorrespondentson what’s making headlines around the world..