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Defense Minister's response whether Canada plans to send instructors to Ukraine

Defense Minister's response whether Canada plans to send instructors to Ukraine Photo: Bill Blair, Minister of Defense of Canada (facebook.com/CanadianPoliceAssociation)
Author: Daryna Vialko

Canada believes that now is not the best time to send military instructors to Ukraine, according to Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair.

"There was discussion of a NATO mission to enhance the training (of the Ukrainian soldiers - ed.). At the present time, the circumstances are not right to deploy - in my view - the Canadian trainers in Ukraine," he said.

He added that there are "understandable" concerns about the expansion of the training program for Ukrainian defenders.

It is worth noting that since 2015, Canada has helped train more than 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Before the start of the full-scale war, it withdrew its instructors from Ukraine.

What happened before

Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron said that his country wants to create a coalition to send military instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers.

This happened after the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, revealed Paris' plans to send its instructors to Ukraine.

Against the backdrop of this information, threats were made in Russia. In particular, the spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in France, Alexander Makogonov, said that French instructors would be a "legitimate target."