The EU will train 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers and unlock another 500 million for weapons

“We have bad news of the Russian attacks“, lamented the head of European diplomacy, Joseph Borrell. The evolution of the war in Ukraine once again dominates the agenda of the meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Twenty-seven that was held this Monday in Luxembourg, just as the Kremlin has carried out a new round of bombings in kyiv with kamikaze drones.

The European Union’s response to the new military escalation by Vladimir Putin involves redoubling military support for Ukraine. “This war continues to send shock waves throughout the world. Russia is increasingly isolated, as we saw in last week’s vote at the United Nations. Morally, politically and even militarily: Russia is losing this warso we have to continue to support Ukraine,” says Borrell.

The EU’s military backing will take the form of two complementary measures. First of all, the launch of a “powerful mission” of “high-level” training, whose objective is to train 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers, not only rank-and-file soldiers, but also commanders. “I am firmly convinced that by pooling the capabilities of European armieswe can offer a much better product”, assured the head of European diplomacy.

[Borrell avisa a Putin de que si usa armas nucleares contra Ucrania su ejército será “aniquilado”]

The training will take place not in Ukraine but on EU territory, above all in Poland. The Defense Minister, Margaret Oakshas announced that Spain wants to play a leading role in this EU mission. Currently there are already many Ukrainian soldiers being trained in Poland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, France, especially to handle weapons supplied by European countries.

The mission (EUMAM Ukrainein community jargon) It will have its operational headquarters in Brussels to ensure overall coordination at the strategic level. Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, director of the Military Planning and Execution Capability (MPCC) within the Foreign Action Service, will be the commander of the operation. His initial mandate lasts two years and its cost amounts to 106 million euros.

In parallel, the Twenty Seven have agreed to unlock a new tranche of 500 million euros from the EU budget to finance the delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The money comes from the European Peace Support Fund, whose total endowment amounts to 5,700 million euros for the period 2021-2027. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the EU has already allocated 3,100 million to finance military aid to Ukraine, a figure to which must be added the national contributions of the Member States.

At the meeting of the Twenty-seven in Luxembourg, the Foreign Ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have demanded that the EU support the creation of a Special International Tribunal to try Russia’s “crime of aggression” in Ukraine, which is “the mother of all war crimes”. In his opinion, this would be the only instrument that would allow Vladimir Putin to be put in the dock for triggering the war.

In the opinion of these countries, the investigation initiated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) is insufficient because its statute only covers war crimes committed on the ground in Ukraine and not those who have given the orders.

“The problem is that the statute of the ICC is limited and excludes the crime of aggression. That means that the people, that the criminals who gave the orders to start this war of aggression (uniformed or not, starting with Russia’s top leader, President Putin) are excluded from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal CourtEstonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu argued.

“We cannot conclude that there is a soldier or a general who is responsible for the atrocities in Ukraine but at the same time ignore the fact that someone gave the order in Moscow, in the Kremlin, to start a war of aggression. If we don’t address this precedent, that would mean that all future aggressors will have a free hand to start other aggressions in the future,” says the head of Lithuania’s diplomacy, Gabrielius Landsbergis.