The EU is considering establishing a major program to train Ukrainian troops in neighboring nations, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has said. EU defense ministers will discuss the matter during a meeting in Prague on August 29.
“I hope it will be approved,” Borrell stated on the sidelines of a forum in Santander, Spain on Monday. “Of course, it would be a big mission,” he said, adding that the training program “has to be up to the level of the conflict.”
“It seems reasonable that a war that is lasting and looks set to last requires an effort not only in terms of supplies of material but also training and help to organize the army,” he said.
The US and Britain are already training Ukrainian soldiers in the use of Western-supplied weapons and are also teaching battle tactics. News agency Euractiv quoted EU sources as saying that Ukraine’s foreign and defense ministers wrote a letter to Borrell last summer asking for a training program, and the EU has since “drawn up several options.”
Moscow has insisted that the Western military assistance to Ukraine will lead to more casualties but will not change the course of the conflict.
“We should call a spade a spade: the EU will set up bases to train terrorists and Nazi militants for the Kiev regime,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on social media on Monday.