Milley Confirms Ukrainian Forces Begin Expanded US Military Training

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Defense on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 3, 2022. Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The U.S. military’s new combat training of Ukrainian forces started in Germany this week, according to Gen. Mark Milley, who said that the goal is to get a battalion of 500 soldiers back in Ukraine to fight Russian troops.

Milley, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the training and new weapons will be key to helping the country’s forces take back territory that has been captured by Russia in the nearly 11-month-old war. And on Monday, Milley visited Ukrainians training with American troops in Germany, according to videos and photos.

“This support is really important for Ukraine to be able to defend itself,” Milley said. “And we’re hoping to be able to pull this together here in short order.”

While in Germany, he told the Washington Post that the training is “not a run-of-the-mill rotation.” He added, “This is one of those moments in time where if you want to make a difference, this is it.”

Elaborating, Milley said that it would “take a bit of time” to have the newly trained Ukrainian soldiers be combat-ready and on the battlefield. It will take “five, six, seven, eight weeks, who knows,” he said.

The goal, he said, is for all the incoming weapons and equipment to be delivered to Ukraine so that the newly trained forces will be able to use it “sometime before the spring rains show up. That would be ideal.”

A spokesperson for Milley said the training is an extension of a 2014 training regimen that the United States provided to Ukrainian troops. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula that year following a protest-turned-revolution that toppled a Russia-friendly government in Kyiv.

“The urgency was clear,” Col. David Butler told the Washington Post. “These soldiers are going off to defend their country in combat.”

The program will include classroom instruction and fieldwork that will begin with small squads and gradually grow to involve larger units. It will culminate with a more complex combat exercise bringing an entire battalion and a headquarters unit together.

Until now, the U.S. focus has been on providing Ukrainian forces with more immediate battlefield needs, particularly on how to use the wide array of Western weapons systems pouring into the country.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a 130 mm towed field gun M-46 on a front line near Soledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, in this handout image released on Nov. 10, 2022. Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the 93rd Independent Kholodnyi Yar Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters

The United States has already trained more than 3,100 Ukrainian troops on how to use and maintain certain weapons and other equipment, including howitzers, armored vehicles, and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS. Other nations are also conducting training on the weapons they provide.

Milley said the United States was doing this type of training prior to the Russian invasion last February. But once the war began, U.S. National Guard and special operations forces that were doing training inside Ukraine all left the country. This new effort, which is being done by U.S. Army Europe Africa’s 7th Army Training Command, will be a continuation of what they had been doing prior to the invasion. Other European allies are also providing training.

More Fighting

The new instruction comes as Ukrainian forces face fierce fighting in the eastern Donetsk province, where the Russian military has claimed it has control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting in the area, but if Moscow’s troops take control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.

“They’re getting hit every few weeks with really significant attacks, and they’re attacks on the civilian infrastructure,” Milley told the Post. “The Russians are consciously, as a matter of policy, attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure. That in of itself is a war crime.”

Russia also launched a widespread barrage of missile strikes, including in Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the reported death toll in one apartment building rose to 30.

At the same time, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told German news outlet Handelsblatt on Sunday that it’s likely more “heavy warfare equipment” will be sent by Western nations to Ukraine “in the near future.”

“We are in a decisive phase of the war,” Stoltenberg added, according to a translation. “Therefore, it is important that we provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to win.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.