MOSCOW - Moscow is concerned about the arrival of U.S. paratroopers in Ukraine, believes this is in direct conflict with the Minsk agreements and views this as a first step toward shipments of modern U.S. weapons to Kyiv, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement on April 17.
“As far as is known, the training program includes instructions on the handling of Western-type weapons and equipment. This can be seen as a first step toward shipments of modern American weapons to Ukraine, which the Kyiv ‘war party’ so eagerly wants to receive. Washington’s encouraging attitude toward its revanchist plans is fraught with the resumption of mass bloodshed in the neighboring country,” Lukashevich said.
“These actions by the U.S. are in direct conflict with the agreements reached in Minsk on February 12, which the Kyiv authorities signed and which, as we understand, were welcomed in Washington. Clause 10 of the Package of Measures agreed upon as a result of the Minsk talks envisions that ‘all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and mercenaries shall be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory under the OSCE supervision.”
“Instead of this, a U.S. airborne unit has landed near Lviv and intends to settle there for a long time. Hence, this constitutes a clear violation of the obligations undertaken by Kyiv, and the Barack Obama Administration, which favors the settlement of the Ukraine crisis in word, is advancing the disruption of the Minsk agreements in deed,” Lukashevich said.
“The U.S. is trying to distract attention from its military deployment in Ukraine by a smokescreen of empty allegations on the virtual presence of Russian troops in Donbas, which nobody has seen, unlike the Pentagon paratroopers in the Lviv Oblast,” he said.
“Obviously, the American soldiers on Ukrainian soil won’t bring peace to it,” he said.
The reports on the arrival of 290 servicemen from the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Italy at the Yavoriv training center in the Lviv Oblast could not but have caused Russia’s serious concerns, he said.
“The American paratroopers, along with their British colleagues already staying in Ukraine and Canadian instructors planning to go there, are supposed to retrain fighters from the so-called National Guard. It begs the question: Do Washington, London, and Ottawa actually understand who are these people? After all, it’s those very Ukrainian ultranationalists from volunteer battalions sporting Nazi emblems on their uniforms who have stained their hands with women’s, children’s, and old people’s blood during punitive operations in Donbas. Will the foreign military specialists train them further to kill those speaking Russian?” Lukashevich said.
