Tears for heroes: Spanish soldiers cry as they say farewell to Ukrainian troops they have been training and present a guard of honour as they return to fight Putin
- In a final farewell, the unit lines up to salute the departing soldiers
Spanish soldiers who have been training with Ukrainian troops grew tearful as they bid farewell to their companions.
In a video released on Twitter by Visegrad24, Spanish soldiers cry as they say goodbye to and salute the Ukrainian soldiers they have been training with over the past few months in Spain.
A group of the soldiers gather around a bus of Ukrainians as they head back home to battle the Russians – as one of the Spanish troops raises his fist in a show of camaraderie and another can be seen holding back tears as a fellow soldier pats him on the back.
In a final farewell, the unit then lines up to salute the departing soldiers as they drive away.
It comes as the last batch of two-hundred Ukrainian civilians graduated from their five-week-long basic military training at Toledo’s Infantry Academy in early April.
Spanish soldiers who have been training with Ukrainian troops grew tearful as they bid farewell to their companions
In a final farewell, the unit then lines up to salute the departing soldiers as they drive away
The 200 graduated Ukrainian soldiers, former civilians recruited from different parts of Ukraine and with an average age of 36 years old, had been trained on basic shooting, explosives, and first aid skills during intense 10-hour-long sessions for six days a week, ElPeriódico reported.
‘You are now part of the Spanish armed forces family,’ a commander said during the graduation ceremony. ‘Spain feels deeply united with Ukraine. Your cause is our cause too. You work and fight for peace, for freedom, for your country.’
‘You know that you are going to a difficult place, to a difficult destination, but it is your homeland. Every time you look at this diploma, know that your pain is our pain, and your families and your children are also our families and our children’, the commander emphasised.
With the 200 new graduates, Spain reached 639 soldiers trained under the European Union Military Assistance Mission Ukraine scheme (EUMAN UA), launched in October 2022 to offer training modules to Ukrainian soldiers on EU soil and provide military equipment to the Ukrainian army.
Spain will reach 2000 trained Ukrainian soldiers by the end of the year.
During the ceremony, the battalion’s chief took the chance to thank Spain ‘on behalf of the whole of Ukraine’ for the ‘help, preoccupation and attention’, and reminded them they are fighting ‘not only for Ukraine but for human values and for all peoples’.
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