BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers agreed to set up a mission to train some 15,000 Ukrainian troops from next month and to provide an extra 500 million euros worth of funding for arms deliveries to Kyiv at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
“Today, we step up our support to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s illegal aggression,” the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.
The mission, initially set up to last two years, will “train the Ukrainian armed forces so they can continue their courageous fight”, he added.
The ministers also agreed to provide another 500 million euros worth of funding for arms supplies to Kyiv, bringing the total amount earmarked for arms delivered to Ukraine to over 3 billion euros.
(This story has been refiled to fix typo in headline)
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold, editing by Marine Strauss)