NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday welcomed the step taken by the European Union to launch a training mission to instruct 15,000 Ukrainian military personnel, assuring that this operation «complements» the efforts already being made by NATO allies «for years».
«This complements what NATO allies are doing and it is important that we give more training because the Ukrainians are fighting a battle that is bloody and represents a great challenge,» said the allied secretary general in statements before participating in the meeting of EU defense ministers in Brussels.
The former Norwegian prime minister has put the focus that beyond the fact that a country participates in one or another organization «the good thing is that they work together in different formats to offer more training to Ukraine».
In fact, Stoltenberg has recalled that several EU member states were already participating in different training programs of NATO allies, such as those launched by the United States or the United Kingdom after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. «This is something we do together in different formats,» he has assessed, pointing out that Denmark, the Netherlands or Sweden are currently participating in the training program organized by the UK.
According to European sources, between 15 and 20 countries will take part in the EU training mission for Ukrainian forces, which will be European in nature and will include multinational teams. The idea is, in part, to bring together under a European umbrella all these efforts already being made bilaterally by the Member States.
