US has no plan to send military trainers into Ukraine, top general says

The US is not planning to send military trainers into Ukraine and would only be likely to do so when the war there with Russia is over, the top US general said on Monday, after France opened the door to sending troops to train Kyiv’s forces.

“Right now, there are no plans to bring US trainers into Ukraine,” General Charles Q Brown, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

“Once this conflict is over and we’re in a better place, then I would suspect we would be able to bring trainers back in,” Brown added.

French diplomats said Macron’s idea was to stoke debate on the issue, but there were no concrete plans in that direction.

“We’re meeting in a moment of challenge,” Austin said, noting that Russia’s new onslaught on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, showed why the commitment was vital. Austin vowed to keep US weapons moving “week after week”.

Austin told reporters the group spent a lot of time talking about Ukraine’s critical need for air defence systems, which he said are helping stave off the Russian attacks.

“We’ll continue to push to ensure that Ukraine owns its skies and can defend its citizens and its civilian infrastructure far from the front lines,” he said after the meeting ended.

Brown said that he believed Ukraine had not used US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems inside Russian territory.

Additional reporting by Associated Press