The United States will expand its Ukrainian military training program from January, with the aim of training more soldiers and giving them broader skills, as kyiv expects a new Russian offensive, announced Thursday, December 15 the Pentagon.
While the United States has so far limited the training of Ukrainian soldiers to the armaments they supplied to kyiv, they will now organize joint maneuvers and teach them to coordinate infantry maneuvers with the support of artillery, Defense Department spokesman General Pat Ryder told reporters.
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500 Ukrainian soldiers trained per month
This program, which should begin “
around January
”, “
will train approximately 500 Ukrainian soldiers per month
”, he specified during a press briefing.
“
The idea is to give them advanced collective training that enables them to conduct military operations with combined arms and to maneuver on the battlefield
,” he added.
The training will be conducted at the battalion level (a few hundred soldiers) and will include instructions for officers.
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This training will be conducted in Germany and will be added to the specific training dedicated to the multiple weapons delivered to Ukraine, and to the more comprehensive training conducted for several months already by the allies, in particular the British army.
Some 3,100 soldiers have already been trained by the United States in the weapons it supplies to kyiv, and the allies have trained 12,000 more.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zaluzhny, said on Thursday he expected a new Russian attack on kyiv in the very first months of 2023, while the fighting has been concentrated for several months in the East and the South. from Ukraine.