Candidate for the Ukrainian presidency Arseniy Yatseniuk has said he is against the participation of Ukrainian servicemen in military operations abroad.
"The Ukrainian army [participates] in military operations [abroad] – so-called peacekeeping operations. There is a paradox in Ukraine participating in all of the peacekeeping operations that exist in the world. It has joined all of the operations led by NATO and the United Nations. Yes, it’s true that salaries are completely different there. Ukraine has not yet raised the question of the participation of Ukrainian troops in wars. But we should call it the way we see it – this is a war abroad. And, thank God, the loss of Ukrainian troops, compared to other countries in the world, is minimal," his press service quoted him as saying in Dnipropetrovsk on Monday.
Yatseniuk said that when Germany raised the question of increasing its military contingent for a military operation in Afghanistan, the country "immediately faced a huge confrontation between political forces and the people, because Germans do not want to travel abroad to be killed there."
"I do not want Ukrainians to fight abroad. I want our country to have a professional army in the form of rapid response troops," he said.
