Lt. Gen. Serhiy O. Kyrychenko, chief of defense for Ukraine, and U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander for the U.S. European Command, met Wednesday at EUCOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

Kyrychenko, the new top military official in Ukraine, a former Soviet bloc country of 40 million people, was to discuss the status of military relations between the United States and Ukraine and look ahead to possible cooperative operations, according to Army Lt. Col. Rob Timm, EUCOM’S desk officer for Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine.

“This is one of [Kyrychenko’s] first trips abroad, so we’re happy he chose to visit EUCOM so early in his tenure,” Timm said. “The Ukrainian military is … in the process of conducting a very extensive program of defense reforms and turning themselves from a post-Soviet military into a modern, Western-oriented military.”

Ukraine, which has 1,600 troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, next summer will host Operation Peace Shield, a large, multinational exercise.