Only experienced Ukrainian contract soldiers take part in exercises with American paratroopers at the Yavorov training ground. Unlike other exercises, regular units arrived here, not combined teams. In the same composition they will go to the ATO zone, reports Kommersant.
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Arsen Avakov, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, which includes the National Guard, told the publication that “There are only contract soldiers here who serve for a long time, not six months or a year. We took 300 people from each territorial command, who will then work as instructors.” The newspaper’s source in the Western Operational Command clarified: “Unlike other exercises at the Yavoriv training ground, where “combined teams” from all over Ukraine worked, full-time staffed units arrived here, which will learn to act as a single organism. These are three full battalions from Lvov, Uman and Zaporozhye, which will go in the same composition to the ATO zone.”
Lvov military expert Vladimir Gulima told the newspaper that “forty-year-old experienced fighters, infused like cognac,” are now gathered at the Yavoriv training ground. “They will be able to control fighters in the ATO zone, who do not really trust 20-year-old inexperienced patriotic volunteers,” says Vladimir Gulima and reminds: fighters from “Yavoriv” will be sent not only to the east of Ukraine, some of them will be selected for further training in USA.
Half of the American paratroopers from the 173rd Brigade who arrived for the exercises are serving in the city of Grafenwoehr in Bavaria, half in Vicenza, Italy. American paratroopers interviewed by the newspaper say that they previously served in Alaska and Hawaii. Sergei Skripnichuk, a sergeant of Ukrainian origin, said that the American contingent includes more than 30 “ethnic Ukrainians”: they “translate and adapt for the National Guard what the Americans explain to them.” Sergeant Carrera said: “We work on individual leadership skills and working in groups, taking into account everyone's individual level.” Another sergeant, Louis, says he teaches Ukrainians “to move with weapons in combat conditions.”
“If earlier Romania and Turkey were considered our conditional opponents, now Russia was named in this capacity for the first time. This is an element of Ukraine’s new military strategy and a signal to Moscow,” Vladimir Gulima explained to Kommersant.