Training bases in EU will give Ukraine manpower and skills

The EU is planning to train up to 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers on European soil in the next two years with operational headquarters in Germany and Poland.

The “military support mission for Ukraine” will be co-ordinated with programmes being run by British forces and will be signed off by the bloc’s foreign ministers on October 17.

Britain has already set up Operation Interflex providing basic training for 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers with the involvement of the Danes, Dutch, Finns, Lithuanians and Swedes, and this will continue. According to confidential documents seen by Welt am Sonntag newspaper in Berlin: “In view of the urgency of the Ukrainian demands, the relevant modules and structures should be set up quickly.”

Under the plan a “multinational operational-level training command” will to be set up in Poland with a focus on air defence and the use of artillery, as well as defending Ukraine against cyber, chemical, biological and nuclear attacks. In Germany a special command will work on mine clearance and tactical training on a larger scale than the more expert courses in Poland, with combat simulation facilities.

The EU has accepted that Russia will see the mission as an “escalatory step” and Germany blocked initial Brussels proposals to set up a central training command in Poland because its proximity to Ukraine might provoke Russia.

The aim of the EU programme is that “Ukraine is able to independently conduct combat operations to defend territorial integrity and sovereignty. The successful counteroffensive of the Ukrainian armed forces on several fronts is encouraging, but it does not yet mark a turning point,” the leaked paper said. “Ukraine’s needs exceed its current capabilities.”

A senior British source welcomed the initiative and said that the UK had been in talks throughout September with European allies to “make sure the different training programmes add value”.

Since June Britain has trained 5,000 Ukrainians and 5,000 more are due to complete training in the next 120 days.

The existing programme is the successor to Operation Orbital, which trained more than 22,000 between 2015 and May 2022. The Dutch and Baltic and Nordic nations have helped to provide trainers to the British programmes in an example, British diplomats said, of “European co-operation without having to have the EU”.

During the summer France ruled out large-scale training of the Ukrainian military and it is not clear what role the French will play in the new mission.

The combined training programmes still fall short of Ukrainian demands. In an internal letter to the EU last month Kyiv asked for the training of up to nine brigades, each of which can consist of up to 5,000 people.

Germany is investigating who was behind sabotage on its railway network after travel chaos on Saturday caused by cut communications cables.

Leaked internal documents of the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the federal police, do not exclude a Russian attack after the sabotage of Nord Stream gas pipelines, for which no one has claimed responsibility, a fortnight ago.

A BKA analysis, seen by Bild newspaper, warned that “critical infrastructure facilities, in particular the transport sector with rail traffic, are subject to a risk of becoming the target of attacks and sabotage actions”.

“In connection with the proximity in timing to the leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, a state-controlled sabotage is at least conceivable,” the BKA analysis said. Deutsche Bahn, the German rail operator, had to suspend services in northern Germany on Saturday morning for about three hours “due to sabotage on cables that are indispensable for rail traffic”.