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The European Union will train 40,000 soldiers of the Ukrainian army by the end of the year instead of 30,000 as previously planned. Josep Borrell, head of European diplomacy, announced such a new goal yesterday following a meeting with EU defense ministers. According to him, 30,000 Ukrainian defenders will finish training by the end of October. MEPs also discussed the allocation of 50 billion euros to Ukraine for restoration and reforms, FREEDOM reports.
“In the European Parliament, in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, they discussed the establishment of a fund for Ukraine. The creation of this fund back in June at the forum on the restoration of Ukraine in London was announced by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. We are talking about 50 billion euros over the next 4 years,” said Vitaliy Sizov, a special correspondent for Ukraine’s foreign broadcasting channel FREEDOM in Europe.
“The new instrument, as we call it, facility, is indeed a very, very serious step forward, which gives stability for the provision of the assistance that the European Union has promised to Ukraine,” said MEP Andrius Kubilius.
The European Parliament wants this fund to be created with the expectation of the future European integration of Ukraine. That is, the task is not just to restore what was destroyed by Russia, but also to prepare the Ukrainian economy and the state apparatus for European integration.
“This assistance, firstly, covers the budgetary needs of Ukraine. Here, only the European Union creates its own special tool so that every year it would not be necessary to solve this problem again, as it was solved at the end of last year,” Kubilius said.
Much more than 50 billion euros is needed to restore Ukraine. While the fighting is going on, it is hardly possible to talk about the final amount, but in May this year, the United Nations report “The World Economic Situation and Prospects” talked about the amount of 411 billion dollars. Therefore, it is assumed that within the framework of the Ukrainian Fund a program for the restoration of Ukraine will be developed, under which it will be possible to attract funding not only from the countries of the European Union.
During the debate, there were calls to use the frozen Russian assets to finance projects in Ukraine. So far, European officials are only ready to use the percentage of these funds. We are talking about an amount of approximately 3 billion euros per year.
“I think this is missing. And here we need to talk about how all these 300 billion that are today frozen in the European Union, in other Western countries, so that all this money, all 300 billion would go to Ukraine as reparations for what Russia did during this war “, – says Kubilius.
While the economic issues of supporting Ukraine were being discussed in Brussels, the EU defense ministers were meeting in Toledo, Spain.
“Fellow ministers, Ukraine will again be at the center of our discussion today. First, we will receive up-to-date information from the Minister of Defense of Ukraine. He won’t be able to join us, but he planned to record a video message. We then focus on contributing to Ukraine’s security commitments,” said EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell.
The general theme of the meeting is the same – support for Ukraine, but now with the supply of weapons. Back in July, Borrell spoke about plans to turn the European Peace Fund into a fund to support Ukraine and provide 20 billion euros for the purchase of weapons for the Ukrainian army for the next 4 years.
In addition to this initiative, in March the EU committed itself to supplying more than 1 million shells to Ukraine over the next 12 months.
“We initiated the program of 1 million shells for Ukraine, and we must continue it. We still haven’t delivered, we’ve delivered too little, we need to do more. We must ask ourselves, can we do more? And my answer here is clear – yes, we can,” said Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur.
Officials evaluate the interim results of the program. They understand that this is a large amount, but still not enough.
“We need to dig into our stocks, secondly, we need to see how much we can recover old shells, and thirdly, if this is not enough either, then we should consider buying in third countries,” Pevkur said.
The issue of Ukraine’s defense for them is the issue of defense of the European Union.
“We said from the very beginning that 1 million is the minimum they need, because when we look at consumption, we talked about 6-7 thousand shells per day, but on the hottest days Russians use 60-70 thousand shells, then there are 10 times more. We all understand that even when we send 1 million shells, it will help Ukraine, and they, of course, need them. What are the advantages of our projectiles? They are more accurate,” said the Minister of Defense of Estonia
By the end of the year, Ukraine should receive 2 funding instruments from the European Union. One of them is for economic recovery, infrastructure and reforms worth 50 billion euros, and the second is for arms purchases worth 20 billion euros.
The creation of these mechanisms will make it possible to make support to Ukraine systematic and long-term, to ensure uninterrupted assistance for several years to come.
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