Hungary will not support the European Union’s plan to send instructors and advisers to Ukraine to train the country’s Armed Forces, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó announced in an address on his official Facebook page.
He notes that the EU training mission on the territory of the Community countries, which started in November 2022, will soon expire. The EU is currently discussing a proposal not only to extend it by two years, but also to expand it, which includes sending instructors and military advisers to the territory of Ukraine “to participate in coordinating the preparatory mission and increasing its effectiveness.”
“We consider this an extremely dangerous step in terms of military escalation. The proposal would greatly increase the risk of an escalation of the conflict… So we say no to this proposal. We told the EU Foreign Affairs Office in Brussels that we cannot support the proposal in this form, we asked them to revise it,” explains Szijjártó.
A final decision on the plan to send European military instructors to Ukraine must be made by November at the latest.
Kiev requested such action in a letter to the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, in May.
It is in the middle of November that the mandate of the current European mission to train Ukrainian soldiers (EUMAM UKR), which until now was exclusively on the territory of the European Union and mainly in Germany and Poland, should be extended by another 2 years. It can be extended to include training in Ukraine as well.
During the first informal debates on the topic in Brussels, even before the summer vacation in July, two fronts emerged. France is urging the Europeans to comply with Kiev’s request, with the support of the Baltic states, Poland, Denmark and Sweden. Germany has spoken out against the training of Ukrainian soldiers on the ground, supported in this thesis by Malta, Austria, Slovenia and Hungary. The main concerns are further escalation and unpredictable risks, as well as a reaction from Moscow.
“In case of training on Ukrainian territory, the overall threat to EU military personnel is ‘critical’. The fact that Russia can reach anywhere in Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones will result in the highest level of threat to EU troops,” the EU diplomatic service analyzed months ago in a report cited by Welt.
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