Poland says thousands of Ukrainian refugees to join volunteer brigade

Thousands of Ukrainian citizens living in Poland have signed up to join a planned volunteer brigade, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said in Washington on Wednesday.

On the sidelines of the NATO summit, Sikorski said: "Many of them really want to serve and make a difference to their compatriots on the front line, but they say: 'We don't want to be sent into battle without the right training and equipment.'"

Poland, which has hosted almost 1 million Ukrainian refugees since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, is to train and equip the volunteers before their deployment in Ukraine, Sikorski said.

The volunteer brigade could prove a significant boon to the Ukrainian army, which has been struggling to mobilize sufficient recruits to reinforce its tiring troops on the front line in eastern Ukraine.

Sikorski said that the volunteers would be permitted to return to Poland after their deployment. "If every European country did this, Ukraine would have several brigades," he added.

The proposed Ukrainian legion in Poland is part of a security agreement signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday.

Poland, a member state of the European Union and NATO, has been one of Ukraine's most committed military supporters during the conflict.