"Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion... to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that's taking place," stated US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC on Monday. Despite earlier warnings from Russia (and claims that NATO had not agreed to any such foreign 'boots on the ground' action') [3], Sputnik News reports [4], Foster added, "what we’ve got laid out is six United States companies that will be training six Ukrainian companies throughout the summer."
This comes a week after PM David Cameron confirmed [5] Britain will be sending 75 military personnel to help combat Russian military aggression.
Despite earlier reports from Russia's NATO envoy that, as TASS reports, [6]
NATO has taken no decisions on sending British or any other instructors to Ukraine, Russia’s Ambassador to the North Atlantic Alliance Alexander Grushko said on Monday.
"NATO has taken no decisions on sending instructors," he told the Rossiya 24 television channel. "NATO is implementing the decisions that were taken at the political level at the Wales summit in September 2014."
Moscow will take all measures, including military-technical, to neutralize possible threat from NATO presence in Ukraine, he added.
It seems it is happening, as Sputnik News reports [4],
The United States will deploy personnel by the end of this week to train the Ukrainian national guard, US 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Colonel Michael Foster said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC on Monday.
“Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion minus… to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” Foster stated. “What we’ve got laid out is six United States companies that will be training six Ukrainian companies throughout the summer.”
...
The current plan is for US forces to stay six months, he said, and noted there have been discussions about how to increase the duration and the scope of the training mission.
The current channels for military training set up between Ukraine and the United States would not be used for transferring defensive lethal aid if the United States decided to provide arms to Ukraine, Foster told Sputnik on Monday.
“It would go through something separate... We would not funnel the lethal aid or arms through that [training] event, we would use a secondary method for that,” Foster said, adding that a completely separate process is preferable.
* * *
Here is the full interview with Colonel Foster: "If Russia will invade Ukraine, why would we not think they will invade the US next?"
At 14:45, Colonel Foster discusses the deployment of US troops to Ukraine...
* * *
Of course, we already knew American military boots were on the ground in east Ukraine... [7]
But this seems like a direct aim at Putin after the war-mongery rhetoric this morning:
