Germany and Spain plan to train thousands of Ukrainian troops under an EU program to bolster Kiev’s fight against Russia, officials said Tuesday.
Their support complements announcements already made by other EU countries that they will train Ukrainian soldiers on their territories.
The European Union is launching its largest-ever military training mission, aimed at initially preparing 15,000 Ukrainian troops for the battlefield.
The mission’s main hub will be in Poland, Ukraine’s EU neighbor, with a second headquarters in Germany.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said at a meeting of EU colleagues in Brussels, Berlin plans to train 5,000 Ukrainians “in a wide range of skills” by June next year.
Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said her country will train 400 soldiers every two months, with a total capacity of 2,400 per year.
She said facilities to house the troops have already been set up at a training facility in downtown Toledo.
France announced last month that it would train up to 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
Britain, Canada and the United States – all other NATO countries – have already trained Ukrainian military personnel in Britain and at a US base in Germany.
– EU funds under pressure –
The EU training mission is initially planned for two years and will cost around 60 million euros annually.
The money comes from the bloc’s European Peace Facility, a fund that has been stretched as it is being tapped to defray the cost of arms shipments from EU members to Ukraine.
Defense ministers discussed increasing the fund, as €3.1 billion – out of its €5.7 billion total budget until 2027 – has already been earmarked to arm Ukraine.
Brussels says the European Union has delivered military arms and equipment worth eight billion euros to Ukraine, in addition to deliveries from individual member states.
That’s about 45 percent of the value of US arms shipments.
Buoyed by the recent liberation of Ukraine’s key city of Kherson by Russian forces, Kiev’s European supporters have pledged to keep the support going.
“This means that the help that Ukraine gets – weapons, but also training – works on the battlefield,” said Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren.
“It means that Ukraine has a very good military strategy. So I think it is extremely important and means that we must continue our support for Ukraine,” she said.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who also attended the defense ministers’ meeting, said the “very sophisticated” nature of modern weapons and tactics requires that armies using them be “fully trained”.
He welcomed the advances made by the Ukrainian army.
“Russia’s troops are withdrawing. The war is taking a completely different turn than (Russian President Vladimir) Putin could have imagined when he launched this attack on Ukraine nine months ago,” he said.
