British Defense Minister Grant Shapps has declared Britain’s government is planning to deploy military instructors inside of Ukraine in order to train Ukrainian forces.
In an exclusive interview with Sunday Telegraph Newspaper, Shapps stated, “I was talking today about eventually getting the training brought closer and actually into Ukraine as well.”
The British Defense Minister continued “Particularly in the west of the country, I think the opportunity now is to bring more things in country.”
In total, Britain has trained over 20,000 Ukrainians over the last year alone but those training exercises were conducted outside of Ukraine.
According to leaked documents, there were at one point close to 50 UK special forces inside of Ukraine.
BREAKING: The UK will be putting boots on the ground with troops in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/WjlIvYv8Dz
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 30, 2023
Per The Guardian:
The new defence secretary, Grant Shapps, said he has held talks with army leaders about deploying British troops within Ukraine for the first time for a training programme.
Shapps, who met Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for talks in Kyiv earlier this week, said the proposal being discussed would reduce the reliance on the UK and other Nato members’ bases.
The programme of training for Ukraine’s military, supported by 10 other nations, has taught skills to more than 26,500 recruits and is on track to have trained more than 30,000 soldiers by the end of the year, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
The United States has been training more Ukrainian troops in recent months as well, but instead of training them inside of Ukraine, the U.S. military has been mostly training them within the United States.
