UK military trainers are to be deployed to help Ukraine forces stave off further Russian backed incursions into its sovereign territory, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday.
Downing Street said some personnel would be leaving this week as part of the training mission. Initially 30 trainers will be despatched to Kyiv with 25 providing advice on medical training, logistics, intelligence analysis and infantry training. A bigger programme of infantry training is expected to follow soon after taking the total number of trainers to 75. They will not be sent to the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine.
Cameron said there would be ‘deeply damaging’ consequences for all of Europe if the EU failed to stand up to Putin on Ukraine, predicting that the Russian president could turn against the Baltic states or Moldova if he was not reined in now.
He said there was no doubt about Russian support for the rebels.
“What we are seeing is Russian-backed aggression, often these are Russian troops, they are Russian tanks, they are Russian Grad missiles. You can’t buy these things on eBay, they are coming from Russia, people shouldn’t be in any doubt about that,” The Guardian quotes Cameron as saying.
The country rules out the possibility of providing military aid to Ukraine, Cameron said, but if Russia fails to quit the conflict in Ukaine the EU may impose another sanctions package on it.
Moreover, Pentagon is about to send up to 10 military trainers to Ukraine.
As Belsat reported earlier, Ukraine and the UAE reached an agreement on supplies of ‘certain types of weapons and military equipment’ on Tuesday. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser of the Interior Minister, states that Ukraine has to buy weapons from Arabs as they ‘are not afraid of Putin’ while the EU has put a covert embargo on providing Ukraine with weapons.
www.belsat.eu/en, following The Guardian
