BRUSSELS, August 27. /TASS/. The European Union External Action Service (EEAS) has recommended that the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine) be extended until November 2026, the Euractiv portal said, citing a draft document.
According to the portal, Kiev insists that the training of Ukrainian soldiers be relocated "if not in Ukraine then to a border region, for logistical purposes." However, this idea "is far from getting support from all the EU countries," it noted.
Apart from that, the Ukrainian side claims that "the realism of training (which differs strongly from the field reality)" is a most critical shortage of the mission.
"Current training models are shaped by peacetime standards of Western training (lower levels of risk acceptance in training design and conduct), and in some EU member states’ legal restrictions in organizing certain types of training," the document says. "The gap between the training conditions and the reality of the battlefield should be reduced to as much as possible."
The EUMAM Ukraine mission was launched in October 2022. Under this program, Ukrainian servicemen are regularly trained according to the standards of the armed forces of EU countries, with the main training bases located in Germany and Poland. In late November 2023, the EU allocated almost €200 million for the training of the Ukrainian military.
Germany’s Welt am Sonntag reported earlier that as the EUMAM Ukraine mission’s mandate was to extended, the EU countries might use this as a pretext to expand this mandate along with extending it and allow EU instructors to train Ukrainian troops in Ukraine’s territory.