EU, Ukraine to discuss military training and cyber threats

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is considering providing a military training mission to Ukraine amid lingering tensions between Russia and the Soviet ex-republic, officials said Monday.

Acting on a request from Ukraine for help in the “professional military education," the EU has already sent a fact-finding mission to the country last month.

The topic will be discussed during a summit scheduled on Tuesday in Kyiv, the officials said on condition of anonymity in accordance with EU practices.

The results of the mission have yet to be analyzed in order to define how the bloc could help in the best way, and how the support could look like.

One official said the EU's political and security committee, which is responsible for the bloc's common foreign and security policy, will go back to the issue in November.

“What we are looking at this moment is to explore the possibilities to further support more broadly what I would describe as Ukraine resilience, and that obviously includes in the area of professional military education," one official.

This summer, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged closer ties between his country and NATO and the EU. Ukraine is locked in a bitter tug-of-war with Russia, which in 2014 annexed Crimea and has since been backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and Kyiv’s efforts to shore up support among Western nations.

The EU has imposed economic sanctions against Russia and targeted several individuals and entities with restrictive measures in response to the annexation of Crimea and what it calls the “deliberate destabilization of Ukraine."

The annexation and Moscow’s backing of rebels in the east of Ukraine, where more than 14,000 have been killed since 2014 in the fighting between separatists and Ukrainian forces, plunged...