At a meeting of EU defense ministers in Spain this week, Borrell has been urging member states to contribute toward reaching this target, which also includes an EU-sponsored training program with its own ultra-ambitious goal of training some 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers by year's end.

He said in statements issued Wednesday that the EU mission "has already trained 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers — some of them here, in Toledo, thanks to the Spanish army."

It "will reach the objective, which was programmed for the end of the year, at the end of October, [when] we will have reached the 30,000 soldiers trained by this mission," he detailed, before unveiling a new target: "I proposed to the ministers to raise the objective of the mission to 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers trained by the end of the year."