Britain pondering troop deployment to Ukraine — The Times

London could potentially send small groups of instructors to train Kiev’s forces in “secluded” locations

The British military is considering deploying troops to Ukraine to train Kiev’s forces in “secluded” locations, The Times reported on Thursday, citing sources.

Sending instructors instead of training Ukrainian servicemen on UK soil could be “cheaper for us and better for them,” a British military source told the newspaper, brushing off concerns that the trainers could be killed.

“We could do [the training] quicker out there and it would be very far away from the front line, in secluded locations, so the risk would be much lower,” the source said.

Kiev appeared appreciative of the idea, with a Ukrainian military source telling The Times that such a deployment would send a “powerful military-political signal” to Moscow and elsewhere. Apart from that, it would mark the beginning of a “de facto” deployment of NATO’s military infrastructure in the country and supposedly work as a “deterrent” to Russia.

The British instructors would also supposedly be able to “learn battlefield skills from” Kiev’s military and “test” the latest weaponry developed amid the conflict with Russia, the Ukrainian source added.

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The report comes amid Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s ongoing tour of several European capitals. On Thursday, Zelensky visited the UK and met Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said it was “very important we’re able to show our continued commitment to support Ukraine.”

More than 100,000 Ukrainian servicemen have been trained overseas by Kiev’s Western backers amid the conflict, with nearly half of them (over 45,000) receiving instruction in Britain. The extensive training of Ukrainians has left “capability gaps” in the British military itself, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces Luke Pollard admitted back in September. For instance, the British Army was stripped of “nearly all” of its AS90 self-propelled howitzers, the official said, while defending the decision as being the “right thing to do.”

Separately, a recent Ministry of Defense report compiled by its spending watchdog revealed that training bids by the British Army units were rejected eight times more often in 2023 compared to the previous years. The training facilities kept being unavailable due to Ukrainian servicemen receiving basic infantry training there, the report said.