Stars and Stripes
April 20, 2015
US paratroopers train Ukrainian forces to take on Russian-backed militants
By Matt Millham
YAVORIV, Ukraine: U.S. and Ukrainian troops rang in the start of a new training mission here Monday, an effort to beef up the capabilities of Ukrainian forces fighting Russian-backed militants in the country’s east.
The Fearless Guardian exercises are expected to run at least through the end of summer and turn out thousands of newly trained personnel to take on separatists trying to splinter off from the former Soviet republic.
The first batch of about 900 trainees have already fought on the front lines of the year-old conflict, said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who addressed the U.S. and Ukrainian troops in a mid-day downpour.
But the country’s armed forces, he said, need to be rebuilt.
Two companies from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade will lead the first round of training, which will start off with basic marksmanship and grow in complexity over the next 10 weeks to include operations at a company and platoon level.
The U.S. has so far declined to provide “lethal aid,” such as weapons, to Ukraine. The training plan aims instead to improve Ukrainian forces’ use of their own weapons, such as Kalashnikov rifles, said U.S. officials. A small number of Ukrainian troops taking part in a ceremony marking the start of the training wore U.S.-supplied body armor and helmets similar to those worn by American forces early in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Capt. Nicholas Salimbene, the 31-year-old commander of Company B, 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, said he hesitates to say the program is similar to basic training “because these guys are coming right from the east. They have real-life combat experience.”
His company was also the first to deploy to Lithuania last year as part of the U.S.-led Atlantic Resolve mission to reassure Baltic and Polish allies after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine near the start of the conflict.
Salimbene said the situation here is different because Lithuania has an established Army, “whereas these guys, the national guard, is relatively new to Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s national guard forces have been converted from volunteer militias that sprang up less than a year ago to fight Russian-backed separatists into units under the command and control of Ukraine’s armed forces.
Moscow has described the effort to train Ukrainian forces — in which Britain and Canada are also participating — as “counterproductive,” saying it will not help resolve the “fratricidal” conflict in Ukraine.
Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of sending its troops to help and arm the separatists — a claim Moscow denies.
Poroshenko said it was a Ukrainian government decision to have the guardsmen receive the U.S.-led training first, but hopes that regular army units will be able to get the training as well.
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