Inside the British Army base training Ukrainian civilians to be battle-ready in just five weeks

Guy Walters joins a squad of postmen, IT workers and drivers being turned into frontline soldiers to find out why Operation Interflex – which has prepared more than 30,000 ordinary citizens to fight Putin – could be the training model for our own citizen army

Standard training takes 12-18 weeks – Interflex recruits learn to fight in a fraction of the time (Ben Birchall/PA)

A squad of six Ukrainian soldiers slowly but confidently approaches a seemingly abandoned house. Inside there may well be Russians, men who have invaded their country with the utmost savagery for the past two years. The Ukrainians are not minded to show them any mercy, and they know that they will need to go in hard and fast.

With a silent signal from their leader, they enter the building. Far from bursting in, screaming and yelling like something from a hackneyed war film, the soldiers infiltrate silently and gracefully.

Like ballet dancers, they glide into well-rehearsed positions that will give them the greatest chance of neutralising their enemy but also prevent themselves from being killed.