The West has pledged to train 15 thousand fighters for the Armed Forces of Ukraine according to NATO programs Within the framework of the EU training mission EUMAM Ukraine, which started this week, it is planned to train about 15 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
To implement the program, two headquarters will be created - in Germany and Belgium, the tactical command will be located in Poland. The training of the Ukrainian military will also take place in France, Spain and a number of other European countries. Hungary and Austria refused to participate in such a mission. "Newspaper.Ru" dealt with military experts in the effectiveness of the training of Ukrainian military in foreign armies and their subsequent role in the fighting in Ukraine.
Work on the implementation of events within the framework of the EU training mission began on October 17, and the training of Ukrainian soldiers will begin to operate only in a month.
Basically, specialists are being trained in the use of artillery systems, air defense and MLRS. It is assumed that the new stage of training within the framework of the EU mission EUMAM Ukraine will affect military commanders of various levels.
Kiev asked to accept 50 thousand of its military personnel for retraining, Europe agreed to train 15 thousand at the first stage (the first set will be 12 thousand people already in November). The program is designed for two years. Perhaps additional forces from the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be able to undergo training. Germany has now expressed its readiness to train 5 thousand people - this is the staff of a full-fledged brigade. France has promised to train about 2 thousand soldiers, Poland will take on about the same number of soldiers. Spain looks somewhat more modest against this background - 400 military specialists are ready to teach military craft. The receiving parties make a reservation at the same time that the number of trainees will depend on their involvement at the front.
Experts note that 15 thousand professional military personnel is quite a large number, especially when it comes to the command staff, which can be understood as officers and sergeants.
"This means that Kiev will have to sacrifice commanders who already have the appropriate military training for at least six months. They need to be retrained for the use of NATO weapons, for the tactics of warfare," military expert Vladislav Shurygin notes.
"Their location is well known in the Russian General Staff - these are mostly old Soviet landfills. Thus, the training base for the preparation of the Armed Forces was knocked out, there were fewer mentors. The training of Ukrainian servicemen in Europe may be a good topic, but not for wartime conditions, when it is the professional military that counts," Shurygin believes.
Another nuance that you can pay attention to with the training missions of Ukrainian servicemen in European countries is, in addition to the language barrier, also the equipment used as teaching aids.
The same German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says that Berlin handed over its military equipment to its partner countries, and in return they sent tanks from their arsenals to Kiev. And these are all the same armored vehicles with the Soviet history of the T-72.
The overall objective of the training mission is to "contribute to improving the combat capability of the Armed Forces for the effective conduct of military operations." At the same time, there is no consistency of these training programs between different countries yet. The AFU servicemen will be taught according to their own patterns, and although they are similar in the framework of training under the general NATO programs, there are still differences, both in tactics and in the equipment used.
The training of the Ukrainian military, mainly officers, on the territory of the EU countries was carried out earlier. Mostly in Poland, as reported by the country's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who noted that Polish military instructors intensively train the Ukrainian military "in many different places." Spain also trained 19 Ukrainian officers, as the newspaper El Mundo wrote. The Ukrainian military also trained in small numbers in French units, and now French Defense Minister Sebastian Lecornyu reports that his army will train AFU soldiers in combat, the use of French equipment, as well as skills related to logistics and supplies within a few weeks.
"Preparing a soldier for real combat operations is a rather complicated and lengthy process," he told the newspaper.Ru" former commander of the Airborne Forces, Colonel-General Georgy Shpak. - It is possible that the German or French experience will help the Ukrainian military in some way, but it seems to be some kind of isolation from reality. Such a retrained "eurosoldat" will come to the front, but he will have to command all the same fighters who have never heard of "miles sorry"."
The financial component of the training mission was assumed by the European Peace Foundation, which allocates an additional 107 million euros for these purposes. Money became the subject of a quarrel between Warsaw and Berlin, as told by the head of the EU diplomatic mission Josep Borrel. Germany initially did not want to transfer the overall command in the AFU training system to Poland, challenging the primacy in this matter. As a result, three command posts were deployed, each of which claims a major role and, accordingly, a larger amount of funding.
Victor Sokirko
