World News: EU Announces Ukraine Troop Training Assistance

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Tuesday, 20 June 2023 14:22

Written by Olivier Longhi

The announcement that the European Union will host the training of Ukrainian soldiers on its soil, the 27-block coalition is taking a further step in its assistance to Kiev, and with that strategy risks repeating history.

What if the Russian-Ukrainian conflict became the Vietnam of the Europeans? The analogy may seem audacious, even totally anachronistic, especially in view of the historical context because the sixties and seventies, decades during which the United States intervened in Southeast Asia, were marked by the Cold War between East and West blocs.

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To date, no opposition of this kind has been noted by political scientists even if the comparisons are tempting and easy. But why then evoke a form of possible Vietnamization of the conflict that has been tearing Ukraine apart since February 24, 2022?

By announcing on Tuesday (June 20th) that up to 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers would be trained by the European Union in 2023, Kiev is climbing a further step in the material and psychological war waged against Russia.

Assistance Mission

However, it is not so much Ukraine that seems concerned in this new stage of the conflict but the European Union which, as part of the assistance mission it has set itself vis-à-vis Kiev, is even more involved in a confrontation that it wanted peripheral to its area of influence without neglecting its scope.

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And the memories of the intervention of the United States in Vietnam in the early sixties, wanted by John F. Kennedy in the form of advisory missions and then take the form of a military intervention in the first sense of the term to resurface. Because by presenting itself as a geographical and technical reception and training area dedicated to Ukrainian soldiers, the European Union is taking another step towards growing involvement in a war that could last for years.

This analogy with the Vietnam War is all the more important because Ukraine knows it is destined to integrate in a future to determine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which gives it a new status of Eastern European power at the gates of Russia.

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Next Step

And the European Union, many of whose countries are also part of NATO, finds itself by its decision of June 20, doubly involved in an opposition that has become highly geopolitical and geostrategic. And what about Russia's position and reaction?

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Impenetrable as Vladimir Putin can be, it is reasonable to think that the decision of the European Union will obviously strain a little more relation already frosty. Finally, the last question that arises, after the material aid provided to Ukraine (Caesar guns, Tiger tanks,...), and the announced aid for the training of Ukrainian soldiers, is therefore to know what will be the next level of intervention by the Union in the conflict.

It escapes no one that this next step will have to be thought with great caution because the slightest diplomatic misstep could then generate consequences that would go beyond the simple Russian-Ukrainian confrontation.

Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist, recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, a press and publishing consultant, and a communications consultant.