Among 176 persons killed in the Jan. 8 missile downing of the Ukrainian Boeing-737-800 in the sky over Tehran, 11 were Ukrainians and 63 were Canadians.
The two nations with a special historical relationship are still mourning their heavy losses, and as the Canadian Army’s top commander Lieutenant General Wayne Eyre says, this shared grief now brings Ukraine and Canada even closer together, particularly in terms of their close partnership in defense.
In a Jan. 17 conversation with the Kyiv Post, the general offered his condolences to the Ukrainian people on behalf of Canada’s 40,000-strong ground force – and also reassured that Canada’s military will continue doing their best to help Ukraine build strong and westernized armed forces.
Eyre is now on his first visit to Ukraine in order to inspect his troops deployed as part of Operation UNIFIER, Canada’s 200-strong mission providing advanced combat training to Ukrainian soldiers and officers.
Similar to his predecessor, Lieutenant General Jean-Marc Lanthier, visiting the Starychi bootcamp in Lviv Oblast some 300 kilometers west of Kyiv left him with a quite positive impression of what Canadian military instructors do in Ukraine as well as of Ukrainian soldiers’ skills.
“Ukrainian troops that I have seen the other day are very professional,” General told the Kyiv Post. “And they also demonstrate good results in drills.”
Operation UNIFIER was launched in 2015 to help boost Ukraine’s military reform aimed towards gaining full compatibility with NATO benchmarks and increasing the combat efficiency of its Armed Forces amid the static war against Russian-sponsored militant forces in the country’s east.
Since the operation began, the Canadian instructors have trained over 13,000 Ukrainian defense and security personnel in aspects of leadership, engineering, explosives disposal, military police and battlefield medicine.
The Canadian mission currently constitutes the largest foreign military component currently deployed to Ukraine. In 2019, the mission was extended until 2022, and Ottawa officials remain happy with the results.
“We have already seen this mandate extended three times,” General Eyre said. “And I can tell you that both of Canada’s (principal) political parties (the Liberals and the Conservatives) openly demonstrated their support for Ukraine.”
The general also noted he notices considerable progress in Ukraine’s long-time development of a strong core of non-commissioned officers (NCOs) based on Western military models and particularly the trained Canadian sergeants.
But, as long as Ukrainians continue to be an earnest student, Canadian troops also gain a lot from combat veterans of Donbas, he noted.
“It is interesting, from my perspective, that our soldiers learn as much as they teach,” the general said.
“We are interested in the mutual sharing of experience. Ukrainian soldiers (who have seen combat in Donbas) were exposed to cutting-edge technology and tactics of modern warfare. Such as the use of information and disinformation in a battlefield that is constantly changing, as well as drone warfare, and many more.”
“That is the kind of experience that we heed, too.”
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