EU officially establishes military training mission for Ukraine

With two weeks behind schedule, the Member States of the European Union (EU) must establish, Monday, October 17, during a Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Union, in Luxembourg, a mission of assistance in the training of Ukrainian soldiers, known as “EUMAM Ukraine”. On August 30, in Prague, the 27 ministers undertook to launch this initiative. This time, they will be able to announce it officially to the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kouleba, invited to take part in the council.

The goal is ambitious. Europe intends to initially train about 15,000 members of the Ukrainian defense forces on its territory. “Twelve thousand Ukrainians will be able to receive basic military training and 2,800 more specialized training”assures a European official. “This is an initial objective, which can progress later”, says another diplomatic source in the European capital. With this proposal, the EU will be able to better complement the education and training that the United Kingdom has already been offering since June, with the help of a number of armies in Europe, including Sweden, the Netherlands or Denmark again.

“Share the costs”

“Today, many Member States offer training, but in a somewhat disparate way. The mission will make it possible to better coordinate everyone’s efforts, by centralizing Ukraine’s requests and the offers from European countries. Likewise, we will pool costs and facilitate logistics.”, assures a European diplomat. Concretely, all volunteer countries, whether they already offer or plan to offer training at home, will be able to do so under a single banner. And “if technically, the mission will not be launched until Novemberadds a Brussels source, military training is already underway”.

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This new tool has been awaited for a long time by Josep Borrell, the high representative of the EU, whose services already evoked the idea of ​​a mission a few weeks before the outbreak of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Monday, October 10, in front of all the EU ambassadors, the chief European diplomat lamented: “Yes, we should have launched it” from the beginning of the year. “And now we are doing it quickly – quickly by European standards. It means two months. Unfortunately, the war is still ongoing, so our training mission will come in handy. »

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The mission will be directed from Brussels by the military planning and conduct capability, a body of the EU staff which already manages the training of certain African armies in Mozambique or Somalia. Two main operational headquarters will be set up in Poland and Germany. Gateway to Ukraine, Poland is already one of the compulsory crossing points for arms transferred to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky.

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