Anthony Albanese is considering offering training to Ukrainian troops after telling Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a phone call that Australia stands “with the courageous people of Ukraine”.
The Australian defence force would not carry out the training on Ukrainian soil. A number of countries including New Zealand, Sweden and Finland have sent trainers to the UK, where new Ukrainian troops have travelled for training.
The Australian prime minister spoke to Ukraine’s president late on Tuesday and Zelenskiy described the conversation as “fruitful”.
He said he had briefed Albanese on “Russia’s missile terror” and thanked Australia for its security assistance to date but “called for its strengthening”.
Albanese said he had conveyed to Zelenskiy “the condolences of the Australian people for the quite horrific actions that were taken against civilian targets by Russian forces in recent days” and assured him of “our ongoing commitment to give every support that we can to Ukraine”.
The prime minister confirmed that his government was considering a request from Ukraine to join the effort to train Ukrainian troops.
“Well, the request is about training, and we’ll give consideration to that and make an announcement at an appropriate time,” Albanese told ABC Radio National on Wednesday.
“But what we know is that the Ukrainian people are not going to give up. I regarded it as a great honour to speak with [Zelenskiy] at this very difficult time for his country.”
Later, on ABC News Breakfast, Albanese made clear Australian troops would not be going into Ukraine. “The suggestion is whether Australians could provide support for training outside of Ukraine in Europe, and we’ll give consideration to that as we’ll give consideration to the other requests,” he said.
The defence minister, Richard Marles, flagged the possibility that Australia might join a training mission during his visit to the UK early last month. The UK operation to train Ukrainian military recruits has been backed by Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Lithuania and the Netherlands.
Australia’s opposition leader, Peter Dutton, said on Tuesday that the Coalition would support Australian trainers going to “adjoining or adjacent countries or third countries”.
Dutton said that would allow Australia to “deliver assistance to Ukraine soldiers and to those on the ground to help them get the most out of the equipment that we are delivering to try and keep people safe in that part of the world”.
Richard Fontaine, a former US foreign policy official, said the US would welcome Australia stepping up into the role of training Ukrainian troops.
Fontaine, the chief executive of the influential Washington-based thinktank the Center for a New American Security, said further Australian contributions “would be welcomed in a significant way”.
“Every country really has a dog in this fight,” Fontaine said. “What we’re talking about here is a violation of the fundamental rules of international order, the cardinal element of which is the prohibition against territorial conquest by force.”
During a visit to Canberra, Fontaine weighed in on President Joe Biden’s comments that the world could face “Armageddon” if Vladimir Putin used a tactical nuclear weapon to try to win the war in Ukraine.
Biden said last week that the Russian president was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming”.
Fontaine said he doubted “that anybody handed the president a set of written talking points that had the word Armageddon on it”.
“On the other hand, there is very grave concern about the rattling of the nuclear sabre, because the chances, I think, of Russia using even a tactical nuclear weapon are small, but they’re higher than they were,” Fontaine said.
