The key facts

  • The Koalicja exercise will take place in Poland from 9 to 22 November, with about 2,800 service members from 11 countries taking part
  • France and the United Kingdom jointly command the exercise; participants also include Turkey, Germany, Poland and others
  • The Multinational Force for Ukraine (MNF-U) is to deploy only after the end of hostilities and at Kyiv's request, without peacekeeping functions

The coalition's first major exercise

The 'Coalition of the Willing' — an informal group of countries committed to providing Ukraine with military, economic and diplomatic support — will hold its first major joint military exercise in Poland next week, the UK Ministry of Defence announced on Tuesday, Anadolu reports. The exercise, named Koalicja, will run from 9 to 22 November.

Participants and objectives

About 2,800 service members from 11 countries will take part in the manoeuvres. France and the United Kingdom exercise joint command; in addition to them, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey are also taking part. The exercise is designed to test command structures and logistics procedures for transporting, protecting and supplying troops and equipment in support of Ukraine after the end of hostilities, as well as the interoperability of the Multinational Force for Ukraine (MNF-U), the coalition's military component.

The force's mandate and the naval component

The British defence ministry clarified that the force would deploy to Ukraine only after hostilities have ended and at the request of the Ukrainian government; peacekeeping functions and ceasefire monitoring are not part of its tasks. In parallel, the Turkish military will hold naval exercises in Istanbul, practising mine-clearance procedures to enable the safe return of commercial shipping to Ukrainian ports. This is the coalition's first exercise of its kind: until now the grouping has operated as a political platform, and testing the actual deployment mechanisms of the MNF-U marks a shift from declarations to practical rehearsal — albeit of a purely hypothetical scenario, since, as stressed, deployment is possible only after the fighting has stopped.