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Sweden to prepare Ukrainians for military service — Analysis

This UK-based program is a result of Sweden’s decision to leave centuries of neutrality in order to apply for NATO membership.

Swedish instructors will train Ukrainian civilians in the UK to prepare them for service in Kiev’s military, the Nordic nation’s Ministry of Defense said on Sunday. With the British hoping to prepare 10,000 Ukrainians for combat, the announcement suggests that Kiev’s conventional forces are depleted.

Stockholm stated that the Swedish Armed Forces would send 120 instructors to Britain between August 12th and December 31st. They will be instructed by “conduct basic military training for Ukrainian citizens, divided into several training courses,”The statement was continued.

Britain first announced the program in late August. Downing Street stated that courses will be offered. “train and drill the Armed Forces of Ukraine using battle-proven British Army experience,”The trainees will be all new hires.

“These guys are all civvies,” Sgt. Sgt. “These guys were truck drivers or they worked in quarries or they were shopkeepers.”

Sweden’s statement said that those trained would be given “basic military training to enable them to serve in Ukraine’s armed forces.”


Donbass fighting is ‘hell’ – Zelensky

“The aim is to make it possible for Ukraine to maintain and strengthen its defense capabilities,”This statement is explained.

This training program is a sign that Ukraine urgently needs manpower. Although Kiev doesn’t publish the casualty numbers, Mikhail Podoliak (an aide of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky) told BBC that Ukraine lost between 100-200 soldiers each day. This does not include those who were wounded. Around the same time, Zelensky said that  60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed in Donbass on a daily basis, with another 500 injured.

Zelensky claims that the losses have been slowed by his army, which had lost around 30 soldiers per day in late July. Russia does not publish regular updates on Ukraine’s losses, but claimed at the beginning of July that Kiev had lost almost 5,500 troops in the two previous weeks, including over 2,000 killed.

Moscow does not have any information regarding its military casualties since March, when they reported that 1,351 troops had been killed and 3,825 were wounded.

The fighting in Donbass – where Ukrainian troops face a numerically superior and better equipped Russian military – is “hell,”Zelensky stated last week. Even though they have Western weapons, the Ukrainian troops are still being “unable to break the Russian army’s advantage,”As Ukrainian journalists described Donetsk’s battlefield as “a battleground”, the president stated that it was a “senseless meat grinder, where huge numbers of our infantry are chewed up in one day.”

Britain is hoping to send around 10,000 Ukrainians to Britain every 120 days as a way to make up for these losses. It is notable that Sweden has been included in this program, since the Nordic country broke away from more than 200 years worth of neutrality.

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