(MENAFN- Arab Times) US troops will begin training regular Ukrainian military forces later this year in an expansion of their current mission, which so far has been limited to instructing Interior Ministry national guard units, the State Department said on Friday.
"This training is part of our longrunning defense cooperation with Ukraine and is taking place at the invitation of the Ukraine government. This additional program brings our total security assistance committed to Ukraine since 2014 to over $244 million," State Department Mark Toner said. Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, head of US Army forces in Europe, said earlier this month that US officials were discussing expanding the military training to include regular Ukrainian troops under the Defense Ministry.
The training is part of US efforts to strengthen Ukraine's security following Russia's seizure of the Crimea last year and the spread of separatist unrest in eastern, Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine. Hodges said officials were looking at training army and special operations troops, likely focusing on skills like tactics and combat medicine. He said the expanded training mission did not mean the administration would be providing Ukraine with lethal arms. The United States has provided Ukrainian forces with non-lethal aid to help them battle Russian-backed rebels, but the administration has resisted providing lethal arms in hopes of preventing an escalation of the conflict.
Some US officials have called for giving Ukraine more sophisticated counter-battery radar to help them fight back against artillery and mortar fire from the rebels. Toner said he had nothing to announce on any new weapons for Ukraine and that the focus was on providing non-lethal aid. "There's no plan to change that," he said. He said the training would begin in western Ukraine near the Polish border later this autumn. The Pentagon said the training offered to regular Ukrainian military troops would be similar to that given to the national guard forces. US forces in Europe have been training the Ukrainian guard since this spring, focusing on strengthening internal defense capabilities.
Welcomed
US Vice-President Joe Biden on Friday welcomed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's proposal to create a 30-km (17-mile) zone free of tanks, artillery and mortar systems along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine, the White House said. Biden and Poroshenko, who spoke by telephone, agreed that Russia and Russian-backed separatists had still failed to implement the Minsk agreement calling for a ceasefire and the removal of heavy weapons from the line of contact, the White House said in a statement. Meanwhile, Ukraine on Friday reported a soldier had died in clashes with pro-Russian rebels in the east of the country, despite another international bid to find a solution to the 15- month conflict.
Wounded
Ukrainian army spokesman Andriy Lysenko said three servicemen were also wounded across the separatist east of the former Soviet state. Despite a "certain de-escalation", the insurgents are still firing heavy weapons prohibited under a fivemonth truce accord, Lysenko told reporters. The rebels, in turn, accused Kiev's forces of violating the shaky ceasefire on nearly 50 occasions, but reported no casualties on their side. More than 6,500 people have died and nearly 1.5 million have been left homeless since the conflict broke out after the February 2014 ouster of a Russian-backed president and his replacement by a pro-Western leadership. A February truce agreement signed in Belarussian capital Minsk in the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande helped contain some of the violence but failed to halt daily shelling attacks.
In another development, protesters in the rebel-controlled eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk have vandalized cars from the Organization for Security and Cooperation and Security in Europe, the group said Friday. Russian television on Thursday showed several dozen protesters outside the hotel where OSCE observers are staying to monitor a truce between the Russia-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. Some of the protesters, mostly young men wearing sunglasses, spray-painted the cars of the OSCE and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Also:
UNITED NATIONS: A UN Security Council resolution to try those responsible for shooting down flight MH17 over Ukraine will likely be met by a Russian veto, Western diplomats said Friday. Malaysia the Netherlands, Australia, Ukraine and Belgium have asked for an international tribunal to investigate the downing of the Malaysia Airlines aircraft that killed 298 people in July of last year. Malaysia has circulated a draft resolution to that effect and called for a vote next Wednesday, diplomats said
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