The UK has offered three-year cadetships to Ukrainian seafarers as part of multibillion-dollar efforts to help rebuild Ukraine.
The Department for Transport said it would offer an undisclosed number of places at centres in the UK. It will also offer virtual reality headsets to help train cadets within Ukraine.
Financial terms were not revealed and the department said discussions are continuing with its Ukrainian counterpart.
The cadetships would be the first for Ukrainians in the UK who have been forced to stop their training because of Russia’s invasion in February 2022 that has hit key maritime centres hard.
Ukraine has called on port state authorities to detain vessels crewed by Russian seafarers with documents issued in its ports and cities since the 2014 occupation of Crimea.
A group of 50 Ukrainian cadets were last year given dispensation to complete their fourth and final year of training at the Lithuanian Maritime Academy in Klaipeda under a scheme arranged between the maritime institutions of the two countries, union officials and a seafarers’ charity.
The 2021 seafarer workforce report by Bimco and the International Chamber of Shipping said that Ukraine contributes 4% of seafarers to the global maritime workforce of 1.89 million.
The majority of them are trained officers. The industry expressed concerns about a shortfall in officer ranks even before the war.
The cadetship offer was made during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London, where delegates from more than 60 countries addressed the vast undertaking of rebuilding the nation after the war.
The World Bank has estimated the cost of reconstruction at more than $400bn and climbing.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed delegates by video, said his country needs action, not just pledges. “We must move from vision to agreements and from agreements to real projects,” he said.
