EU Extends EUMAM Ukraine by Two Years and Adds a Coordination Cell in Kyiv — Two Training Centres, EUR 900M From the Peace Facility
Brussels, 28 September 2026
Key points
- Kaja Kallas, after the Foreign Affairs Council in defence format on 28 September: "Member States agreed on the first step of strategic review of EUMAM, extending our mission for Ukraine for another two years. We will also move ahead with establishing a coordination cell in Kyiv, focusing on the battlefield lessons and strengthening also military education"
- Two training centres inside Ukraine, which Kallas proposed funding earlier this year, are now financed: a Dutch contribution announced on the day "closes the gap", with Germany, Ireland, Denmark and Luxembourg. The Netherlands puts in EUR 10 million
- The Peace Facility split agreed on 25 September earmarks EUR 900 million to top up the mission. Kallas also asked states with Patriot interceptors in stock to give them to Ukraine now, against later replacement financed by the Ukraine Support Loan, and said "many" ministers called for front-loading part of the EUR 90 billion loan planned for 2027
- The mission has trained Ukrainian soldiers on EU territory since November 2022; the Council last extended it for two years in November 2024. No Council decision text was published on the day; the extension is stated by the High Representative
The mission that has trained Ukrainians outside Ukraine for four years now gets a cell inside it, which is the direction Kallas has pushed for and the member states had not taken until now.
EUMAM's founding constraint was location: training on EU soil, in Poland and Germany above all, so that no EU uniform stood in Ukraine. The two centres inside Ukraine and the Kyiv cell are the first structural move across that line, and both are being built on the cheap end of the mission's budget: a EUR 10 million Dutch cheque is what "closes the gap", and the cell's remit is lessons and education, not instruction. The EUR 900 million from the Peace Facility is the mission's operating money for the extension, not the centres'.
The extension came as the first step of a strategic review, which means the mission's shape is open while its mandate is not. What the ministers did not settle is visible around the edges of Kallas's statement: the front-loading of the 2027 loan came "without a figure", the Patriot plea is an ask to capitals, and the SAFE remainder she mentioned, up to EUR 20 billion that could benefit Ukraine, is money the states have not yet reassigned. Pål Jonson, Sweden's minister, said Stockholm was "open to any innovative solution" that let Ukraine use 2027 money in 2026.
Two years is the mission's standard renewal; the news is that the cell in Kyiv arrives through a strategic review under the existing mandate, so the constraint the mission was founded on, no EU uniforms in Ukraine, is being crossed without being rewritten. The staffing, the command relationship to the mission's headquarters and the date the cell opens are the three facts the review has to produce, and none has a date. Signal No. 155 carried the council's outcome; No. 154 has the EUR 900 million earmarked three days earlier.
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