NYT: NATO Prepares For Inevitable Sending Of Troops To Ukraineм

For a "quick" and "quality" task.

North Atlantic Alliance countries may send military personnel to Ukraine for "quick" and "high-quality" training of the Ukrainian army, which will have to repel a Russian offensive this summer, informed sources told The New York Times.

According to them, Ukrainian servicemen are now being trained in Europe - at training grounds in Germany and Poland. Sending them there and returning them to the combat zone via Lviv and Kyiv is time-consuming.

At the same time, due to the shortage of personnel in the AFU, which has reached a "critical point", Ukrainian officials have asked the USA and NATO allies to help train another 150,000 recruits.

Transferring the training to Ukraine will allow instructors to gather information about innovations on the front line more quickly and adapt training programmes accordingly, NYT sources said.

Sending NATO instructors to Ukraine "seems inevitable," said General Charles Brown, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

However, he said, such actions would now "put the lives of the instructors at risk," so the Ukrainian military would have to choose between using the air defence assets to protect NATO's military or the country's critical infrastructure.

The discussion about sending Western troops to Ukraine was started by French President Emmanuel Macron in late February. In early May, he named two conditions for this: the Russian army must break through the front line and Kyiv must send a corresponding request for help. He also said that Paris could take such a step if there was a threat of Russia seizing Kyiv or Odesa.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the initiative. According to him, foreign military personnel could train the AFU fighters and help with repairing equipment. At the same time, he stipulated that he could not publicly invite the armies of other countries to Ukraine to take part in combat operations because Russia "will do everything to stop military assistance to us".