PRESS RELEASE
U.S. Training Mission to Ukraine To Go Ahead
March 21, 2015 (EIRNS)—The Pentagon announced on March 19 that the decision had been made to go ahead with the deployment of U.S. troops to western Ukraine to train Ukrainian regular army and national guard troops and it’s likely to begin in late April. When asked why the training was moving forward, Col. Steve Warren said, "As the situation in Ukraine continued to develop and evolve we put this training event under some review" and "the decision [was] made that conducting this exercise is a good idea." U.S. Army Europe commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, two days earlier, had indicated that the training mission was delayed but that he did expect it would go forward. "Beginning of the training absolutely does not signify an assessment that [the Minsk agreement] has failed," Hodges said.
The British, however, are already in Ukraine with trainers. According to a BBC report of two days ago, a group of 35 British military trainers are already in the southern city of Mykolaiv to train Ukrainian soldiers on tactics and battlefield medicine. "Deployment of U.K. military instructors in Ukraine unlikely to contribute to peaceful settlement of the conflict," Russian Ambassador to London Alexander Yakovenko tweeted out, yesterday.
