U.S. defense officials said on Wednesday that the military is ramping up weapons training for Ukrainian forces, a process that involves temporarily taking them out of their country to train in various sites in Europe, The Hill reported.
Lately, more than 220 Ukrainians have been trained for advanced artillery, a dozen on Switchblade drones, and 20 on the new Phoenix Ghost unmanned aerial system.
And more than 50 Ukrainians will arrive at one of the sites to begin their training later this week, a senior defense official told The Hill.
''We are running them through a streamlined course here on the new equipment that they’ll be receiving. The goal in all of this is to get them back as soon as possible so that then they can train others within their army on the equipment,'' Gen. Joseph Hilbert, head of the 7th Army Training Command in Europe, told reporters on Tuesday.
''They understand how to operate it and employ it as effectively as they can on their own and in accordance with their own tactics and their own doctrine,'' Hilbert said of the weapons and equipment. ''The soldiers that we are receiving here are absolutely motivated, incredibly professional.''
According to Hilbert, the U.S. has trained close to 23,000 Ukrainian soldiers and conducted more than a dozen large war drills with U.S. troops in Germany since 2015, costing the government $126 million.
The training began a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimea Peninsula and during the Ukrainian war over the Donbas against pro-Kremlin separatists.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.