The words of Major John Moulton of the Australian Army, drawing comparisons between the First World War and the front line in Ukraine, anchor the new exhibition at the Australian War Memorial, Operation Kudu: supporting Ukraine.

Image-led and immediate, the exhibition pulls the visual language of war out of the past and into the present.

Opening on the newly completed Anzac Hall Mezzanine, the display is the first temporary exhibition to occupy the six-years-in-the-making area. Rather than depicting the front line itself, the exhibition focuses on preparation for war, the people caught in between, and the Australians who are assisting them.

The majority of the photographs, footage and objects on show were gathered in late 2023, when the AWM, with assistance from the Australian Defence Force, sent four staff members and an official war artist to the United Kingdom.

They were tasked with documenting Australia’s role in Operation Kudu, the Australian Defence Force mission training Ukrainian forces as part of a broader multinational effort.

Director of the Australian War Memorial Matt Anderson said: “This new exhibition captures history as it is happening, documenting a conflict still unfolding through material gathered in real time by Memorial curators deployed to observe it first-hand”.

The curatorial deployment generated an enormous volume of material. More than 1,200 photographs,600 videos and over 100 objects entered the National Collection, each carefully catalogued on return.

From that archive, and Australian Defence Force contribution, the exhibition distils the story into about 50 images and roughly 15 minutes of footage, shaping a tightly focused visual narrative.

“Once we started reviewing the breadth of content captured during the deployment, it became very clear that we had a story of contemporary war that was important to share with visitors,” AWM Curator, Ms Sarah Kershaw, said.

That story centres on training. At the time of the deployment, Australian soldiers delivered basic infantry instruction to Ukrainian recruits, many of them civilians preparing for the realities of combat.

Assistant curator Dr Bryce Abraham, who joined the curatorial deployment, said the contrast between instructor and trainee stood out immediately.

“Many Australian trainers were professional soldiers in their twenties. The Ukrainians they trained were, on average, in their mid-thirties and came from a wide range of civilian backgrounds,” said Dr Abraham.

“They had more life experience, but no military experience,” Dr Abraham said. “The Australians were professional soldiers, and they were preparing these people to survive.”

Language barriers shaped much of that instruction. One of the exhibition’s most quietly affecting objects is a small personal notebook kept by an Australian instructor.

Its pages carry handwritten reminders such as “simplify the words” and “watch out for Australianisms”, alongside Ukrainian words carefully pencilled out as he tried to learn the language of those he was training.

Another object captures the same challenge with unexpected ingenuity. To explain trench movement, one instructor sketched layouts on paper and used Sour Patch Kids to represent soldiers advancing through space.

Dr Abraham: “As the trainer explained it to us, ‘people pay attention to food’. Even when there’s a language barrier, everyone can follow where a lolly is moving through a trench. Once the lesson was over, the lollies were shared out.”

Such moments of levity sit alongside a sobering reality. By the time curators visited, Australian trainers already knew that some Ukrainians taught in earlier rotations had been killed after returning to the front.

“That knowledge was there,” Dr Abraham said. “You could see the psychological weight of it, for both Australians and Ukrainians.”

The exhibition acknowledges that cost with restraint. Lengths of barbed wire collected from training grounds evoke imagery instantly recognisable from a century earlier.

For the AWM, documenting an active conflict is not new. From its earliest years, it has collected and displayed material while wars were still being fought.

Ms Kershaw said: “It is important that the Memorial continues to share the contemporary Australian experience of war. While Australia is not directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine, Australian service personnel are making a valuable contribution that should be acknowledged back at home.”

The exhibition also explores the contribution of the Royal Australian Air Force to Operation Kudu.

Operation Kudu: supporting Ukraine is open now and will run at the AWM until 9 September 2026.