Training Ukraine: Turning a Soviet Army Into a Modern Force
Training Ukraine: Turning a Soviet Army Into a Modern Force by Paul D. Shinkman, U.S. News & World Report
… In the years after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the need diminished in Ukraine and elsewhere for a state-of-the-art army following Western promises it would protect these new allies in exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons, through a set of agreements known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Ukraine's military atrophied and fractured into a series of disparate brigades that the central government in Kiev is desperately trying to stitch back together, now with the help of American and NATO support.
From the Ukrainian perspective, Russia seized that opportunity to use the military it's continually improved to back pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine who wish to break away, as punishment for Kiev's desire to develop closer ties with the West.
A war that settled along supposed cease-fire lines is once again ramping up, forcing added urgency on the men preparing here to return to the conflict zone.
Washington still balks at the idea of providing lethal weapons to Ukrainian partners. Instead, last year it began operating out of these firing ranges – alongside the U.K., Canada, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia – to train cadres of 500 Ukrainian troops at a time. The ultimate plan is to create enough Ukrainian instructors qualified to meet the NATO standard of training by 2020, when the NATO countries' mission is set to end and they'll turn the base over fully to the Ukrainian military.
And the irony is not lost on the Western forces that their trainees are using ammunition that was originally designed to kill them. They're learning, however, that conventional weapons are only part of the enemy's arsenal.
Danilo is particularly concerned with enemy propaganda, which has made liberating towns during his previous deployments that much more difficult. His countrymen, who have only been exposed to pro-Russian TV for months, now require convincing that defeating the separatists represents a victory…
