Posted on 03/30/2015 10:16:32 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
MARIUPOL, Ukraine—As part of a joint Department of Defense-State Department effort to bolster Ukraine’s internal defense capabilities, the United States will be sending Army paratroopers to train Ukraine’s National Guard, a U.S. Army Europe spokesman confirmed to The Daily Signal Monday.
U.S. Army Europe spokesman Donald Wrenn said paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade, which is based in Vicenza, Italy, will train six Ukrainian National Guard companies on internal security and territorial defense beginning at the end April.
“There will also be some training for headquarters personnel,” Wrenn said, “focusing on the continued professionalization of Ukrainian staff members.”
In mid-March, the United Kingdom announced it had sent 35 military trainers to Ukraine for a two-month deployment.
The joint U.S.-Ukraine event will take place at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in the western Ukrainian town of Yavoriv, near the border with Poland and more than 800 miles from the conflict areas.
The mission will be funded by the Global Security Contingency Fund (GSCF), which was created in 2012 to pool Pentagon and State Department resources “to carry out security and counterterrorism training, and rule of law programs,” according to a Congressional Research Service report.
While the U.S. has quietly been sending military advisers to Ukraine for months, the upcoming exercise marks the first large-scale deployment of U.S. military personnel to Ukraine since the separatist conflict began last year.
According to Ukrainian media reports, following the training exercise, the U.S. military trainers will hand over ammunition and communication equipment to the Ukrainian troops.
Wrenn confirmed that communication equipment would be given to the Ukrainians, but added, “[W]e at Army Europe are not aware of any ammunition being provided following the training.”
Both the EU and the United States have been reluctant to send weapons or ammunition to Kyiv for fear of escalating the conflict. NATO accuses Russia of sending weapons, ammunition, supplies and its own troops into Ukrainian territory to assist pro-Russian separatists. Moscow denies providing assistance to the separatists.
Monday’s announcement follows discussions last month between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, in which the U.S. agreed to send Ukraine military trainers.
The U.S. delayed plans to send troops to Ukraine in March, however, out of fear that the move could spur Russia to escalate its support for the separatists and derail the shaky cease-fire.
“The start of the training was delayed to try and provide some more space to see that the cease-fire and the full Minsk agreement could be successfully implemented,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said during a March 17 breakfast with reporters in Washington, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that the presence of U.S. and British military personnel on the ground in Ukraine, even as trainers, risks escalating the conflict.
“Provocateurs in Kiev and those who support the ‘party of war’ might attempt to cook something up in the hopes of inflaming world public opinion, resulting in weapons flowing into Ukraine. We must keep a close eye on this,” Lavrov said, according to a translated TV interview provided by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The U.S. recently delivered the first batch of 10 out of a total of 230 Humvees pledged to Ukraine in a $75 million military aid deal. The package also includes unarmed Raven drones, night-vision goggles and communication equipment.
While U.S. support for Ukraine has been mounting, some in Congress say it’s not enough.
>>>House and Senate Pressure President Obama to Send Military Aid to Ukraine
Both the House and Senate passed resolutions in March urging President Barack Obama to send Ukraine defensive military systems and weaponry.
“It is absolutely necessary that President Obama prioritize and expedite the provision of defensive lethal and non-lethal military assistance to Ukraine in light of the January attacks by Russian-backed rebels on the civilian population in Mariupol,” said the Senate resolution’s author Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., in a statement.
Underscoring the stakes of the upcoming U.S. training mission, Monday’s announcement comes as worries rise in Kyiv about the durability of the Feb. 15 cease-fire and whether Russia is staging for a large-scale intervention in Ukraine.
Andriy Parubiy, first deputy chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, said on Ukrainian TV Saturday that Russia had amassed 60,000 troops on the Ukraine border.
“The likelihood of a full-scale attack by Russian armies is high and remains high,” he said. “All our intelligence indicates it. There is a concentration of Russian troops on the border and not only in Donetsk and Luhansk but extending up to Kharkiv. A huge expansion of Russian troops is taking place.”
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
The US Congress should override Obama’s veto and force him to send weapons to Ukraine and impose crippling sanctions on Russia. There is bipartisan support for doing so. They should also stop Obama from inking an Iran deal using Russia to do so.
RT (Russia Today) sez: “it’s not about Ukraine! It’s about Florida! Look at Florida! Your soldiers are against you! They’re against the Pope and the Mother Church of Russia!”
[Little Russian public affairs speech there.]
Today must be pseudo day for your medication.
Their country has been dominated by Russian puppets for a decade, now they are being invaded and chopped up by Russia’s desire for empire and you think Ukraine should do something for us??
Why cannot we simply stand on principle that what Russia did and is doing is wrong by all measures, without asking Ukraine for a bribe or whatever?
Ukraine needs tanks and heavy artillery, not training.
A recent report from the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for a New American Security, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs listed what they think Ukraine needs.
http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/ukraine
“Additional non-lethal assistance should include: counterbattery
radars, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),
electronic counter-measures for use against opposing
UAVs, secure communications capabilities, armored
Humvees and medical support equipment.
Lethal defensive military assistance should include light
anti-armor missiles, given the large numbers of armored
vehicles that the Russians have deployed in Donetsk and
Luhansk and the abysmal condition of the Ukrainian
military’s light anti-armor weapons.”
Yep, they need heavy weapons and intelligence gathering tech.
Leftists hate to give tanks to help. If Clinton had sent tanks to Somalia with the US Marines,during the latter days of his tenure, the jihad would have been stopped cold. Instead we now have a a coast full of pirates who are a curse on freedom of the seas, sand the spawn of hatred across North Africa.
Obama will never send Ukraine the heavy stuff.He is too busy eye balling his rancid ideology.
Ukraine would be happy getting Javelins as they are constantly bringing their own tanks out of conservation anyway and leftists would not have to pass their invisible “tank barrier”.
I have gathered Javelins and UAVs is what the fight is about now (because the third thing - secure radios are peanuts compared). Both the House and the Senate have passed votes wishing to send these to Ukraine and by now it is only Obama resisting. Sad, but the decision lies in the White House. It wouldn’t be even unpopular as by the poll it has support of both Republican and Democrat men and mainly opposed by Democrat women.
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