EU Launches Military Assistance Mission for Ukraine

In October 2022 the European Union (EU) launched a Military Assistance Mission (EUMAM Ukraine) to continue support of Ukraine against the ongoing Russian war of aggression.

The EU’s Military Planning and Conduct Capability (MPCC) in Brussels is the Operations Headquarters and ensures the overall coordination and synchronisation at the strategic level. The Mission Commander is the Director of MPCC, Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean.

EUMAM Ukraine will provide basic, advanced, and specialised training to the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including medical assistance, CBRN, demining, logistics and communications, maintenance, and repair. It will also train junior leaders at section/squad, platoon, and company level. Furthermore, operational training is provided: preparing companies, battalions and brigades for joint manoeuvres and tactics up to battalion level, as well as advising on the planning, preparation and conduct of firing exercises. All mission activities are located on EU soil. The training will be supported by the provision of equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This equipment will be supplied by Member States and funded by the European Peace Facility

The merging of the training components into units takes place in a multinational Combined Arms Training Command (CAT-C) in Poland. A multinational Special Training Command (STC) will coordinate the training activities in Germany to further improve the training.

In total, a brigade of up to 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers could be trained in Germany in the coming months. The number will depend on how many soldiers the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence can send for training in view of the ongoing war.

The German Bundeswehr is planning tactics exercises for a brigade staff and the subordinate battalion staffs at the German Army Combat Simulation Centre (GefSimZH) in Wildflecken. Combat training for companies will be performed at the German Army Combat Training Centre (GÜZ). Here combat troops practise combined arms combat in open terrain under near-operational conditions, but also train for urban operation. The combat training centre is equipped with state-of-the-art training technology.

Ironically, the GÜZ trains with technology similar to that available to the Russian armed forces. In 2011, the German company Rheinmetall had signed a contract with Russian Defence Ministry to build a high-tech combat training centre for the Russian Army in Mulino near Nizhniy Novgorod on the Volga. Apart from the Russians and Rheinmetall, no one was happy about this. Yet it was entirely in line with NATO's 2010 Strategic Concept, which stated that "a strong and constructive partnership with Russia, based on mutual trust, transparency and predictability, can best serve NATO's security". In 2014, after the Russian invasion of Crimea, Rheinmetall broke off the cooperation. However, the CTC was almost finished at that time.

Given the glaring deficiencies in training that became evident during the war so far, the high-tech CTC did not help the Russians much.