A Ukrainian brigade armed with French tanks, artillery, and heavy weaponry is about to enter the fight

• France has trained thousands of Ukrainians for a brigade that’s about to enter the fight with Russia.
• The brigade is set to have French tanks, artillery, and missile systems.
• “Now they are able to fight, they are able to maneuver,” a French colonel told the Associated Press.

A Ukrainian brigade made up of thousands of soldiers trained in France and armed with French-supplied tanks, artillery, and heavy weaponry is about to enter the fight against Russia.

For more than two months, thousands of troops have been training in eastern and southern France, the Associated Press reported.

A French military task force named Champagne has conducted the training, and more than 2,000 soldiers are undergoing the final parts of training before they return to Ukraine, the AP report says.

The brigade — named “Anne of Kyiv” after a former Kyiv princess who became a queen of France — is expected to eventually have 4,500 members.

It’s also set to have 18 AMX 10 light tanks, 18 truck-mounted Caesar artillery pieces, 128 armored troop carriers, as well as anti-tank and antiaircraft missile systems.

Before they traveled to France, most of the soldiers had only a few weeks’ basic training, the French military said, according to the AP.

A French colonel told the outlet: “They have improved a lot. Now they are able to fight, they are able to maneuver. They are able to use the different specialists and to use the different equipment they will have on the battlefield.”

The Ukrainian military is also training other troops for the brigade back in Ukraine, French authorities said.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, groups of Ukrainian soldiers have undergone training by Western militaries in locations outside Ukraine.

Partly as a result, Ukraine’s forces are considered significantly better trained than Russia’s, though Russia has military advantages in other areas.

Western intelligence has pointed to Russian troops getting hardly any training before being sent to the front, and Russia’s strategy to win appears to be based on trying to overwhelm Ukraine’s much smaller military through sheer numbers of troops and equipment.

The new Ukrainian brigade is entering the war at a critical time.

Russia has been slowly inching forward in eastern Ukraine as Ukraine calls for more support from its allies. Ukrainian officials have also said that up to 11,000 North Korean troops are now in place to help Russia push back its forces in occupied Kursk.

At the same time, Ukraine is anxiously awaiting US President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to return to the White House in January and has repeatedly criticized the levels of US support sent to Ukraine.

Depending on Trump, the help that Europe is giving Ukraine, such as France training one of its brigades, could become even more critical to Ukraine’s ability to fight on.