European diplomacy chief says Putin wants to plunge Ukraine into darkness and winter. He wants to discuss training of Ukrainians

The EU’s foreign policy chief said the bloc now aims to train 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers, but he hopes to negotiate with defense ministers to increase that number. Josep Borrell made the announcement ahead of an informal meeting of EU defense ministers in Brussels today. The Czech Republic was represented at the meeting by Deputy Minister Daniel Blazkovic.

“The most important topic of today’s talks is military support for Ukraine. We will discuss increasing the soldiers’ training capabilities and how to improve coordination,” Borrell told reporters, adding that Ukrainian Foreign Minister Rustom Umerov would familiarize the ministers with defending the country.

Borrell said it had become clear in recent days that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to plunge Ukraine into “darkness and winter” by destroying all energy infrastructure. “Only with our support can Ukraine successfully defend itself,” added Borrell, who will be replaced by former Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Kallas this fall.

The EU launched the EU military assistance mission to Ukraine in the fall of 2022, and so far, the training of Ukrainian soldiers has been carried out in EU member states, including Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. They learned the techniques of ground combat, mine clearance, response to nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical threats or equipment maintenance.

According to observers, for many countries the natural continuation of the program would be to conduct the training directly in Ukraine, which would be logistically easier and would also save a lot of time.