On 17 October, the Foreign Affairs Council established the EU Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM Ukraine) in response to Ukraine’s urgent request for support. The Mission aims to help regenerate the Ukrainian Armed Forces through large-scale training.

The EU objective is to train on EU soil a first batch of 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers through both basic and specialised as well as individual and collective training in order to respond to the urgent short-term needs expressed by Ukraine. The Mission’s mandate is scalable, flexible and modular in order to adapt swiftly to the evolving Ukrainian needs. It will provide a long-term and sustainable platform for the support to the Ukrainian Armed Forces’.

EUMAM Ukraine will enhance the overall training coordination and scale, building on the existing training support, which Member States are already providing bilaterally to Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Mission also enables EU Member States that are not (yet) offering bilateral training to contribute to the overall effort.

The Council also adopted assistance measures under the European Peace Facility (EPF) that will allow the EU Member States to continue supporting the capabilities and resilience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to defend the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders of the country. A sixth tranche of support will add €500 million to the resources already mobilised under the EPF for Ukraine, thereby bringing the total amount to more than €3.1 billion. The scope of the equipment to be provided in the new support package is in line with the current priorities as expressed by the Ukrainian government.