A Norwegian-led training camp for Ukrainian soldiers was officially opened in southeastern Poland on Wednesday.
Poland’s defense minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, was joined at the launch ceremony by his Norwegian counterpart, Tore O. Sandvik, as well as Estonia’s defense minister, Hanno Pevkur, and senior officials from Lithuania, Latvia, Sweden, Iceland and Ukraine.
Kosiniak-Kamysz hailed the initiative, based at the Nowa Dęba-Lipa Land Forces Training Center near Poland’s southeastern border with Ukraine, as having “the ability to train Ukrainian service personnel on a vast scale in a good location… near Ukraine.”
“Right next to us is a drone launch runway,” the defense minister said, adding that Poland and its allies would benefit from Ukraine’s battleground experience.
“This is a place to study experiences from the ongoing war in Ukraine, to implement the army’s best counter-drone solutions and the drone capabilities possessed by the Ukrainian army,” he said.
The center, called Camp Jomsborg, earlier functioned as a Norwegian training facility for Ukrainian military instructors.
It has been under development since the summer, with construction involving the felling of tens of thousands of trees to make room for the huge project, which will be able to accommodate up to 1,200 troops at once.
The number of trainees present at any one time will depend on the type of instruction being given, with more specialized courses having fewer participants.
Camp Jomsborg is one of Norway’s biggest ever overseas missions of its type.