The official website of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence has announced that “Portugal is ready to provide treatment and rehabilitation for Ukrainian wounded soldiers”.
According to the short statement, the two countries’ defence ministers have discussed “cooperation in military medicine” and the treatment and rehabilitation of Ukrainian servicemen “wounded in the east of Ukraine” – Europe’s almost glossed-over conflict with Russian-backed separatists.
The soldiers will be treated in Portugal, claims General Poltorak, the country’s defence minister and military commander-in-chief.
Poltorak was on an official visit to Portugal this week, meeting yesterday in Lisbon with the Armed Forces Chief of Staff Artur Neves Pina Monteiro, and visiting the capital’s Naval base.
It was a seemingly relaxed interlude in a landscape that is otherwise fraught. The Ukrainian website refers this morning (January 17) to “the enemy” having violated the ceasefire in the Ukraine “41 times over the past 24 hours”, with four locations being hit by grenade launchers manned by “Russian occupational troops”.
