U.S. in Ukraine: Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

By Greg Butterfield

As activists, students and workers gather in Washington, D.C., for the Spring Rising antiwar mobilization March 18-21, many are probably unaware that 300 U.S. troops arrived in Ukraine this month, with another 300 expected to join them shortly. 

The soldiers are stationed at the Yavoriv Training Area in Lviv, near the Polish border in western Ukraine. Their mission, according to the Pentagon, is to train divisions of the Ukrainian National Guard.

But their presence also establishes a provocative U.S. military “footprint” in this key agricultural and industrial country on the Russian Federation’s western border.

The first open and public U.S. military presence on Ukrainian soil comes amid a civil war raging in former southeastern Ukraine, now the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, also called Novorossiya. It’s accompanied by unprecedented NATO war games and military buildup threatening Russia.

All this despite a ceasefire agreement, negotiated by Russia, Germany and France, which went into effect February 15. And like previous ceasefires, the U.S. –backed government in Kiev routinely violates the terms and is using the “breathing spell” to rebuild its military forces in the embattled Donbass mining region. “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,” 173rd Airborne Brigade Commander Michael Foster told a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington on March 3. (Global Research, March 3)

U.S. forces are scheduled to stay six months. But discussions are underway about “how to increase the duration and the scope of the training mission,” Foster said, echoing remarks made in January by former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Derek Chollet. Meanwhile, in London, Prime Minister David Cameron told a House of Commons committee February 24 that up to 75 British soldiers would be sent to Ukraine to develop “an infantry training program with Ukraine to improve the durability of their forces,” the BBC reported.

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