"290 U.S. paratroopers will arrive on April 20 at the Yavoriv military zone" in the government-controlled western region of Lviv, near the Polish border, Avakov wrote on his Facebook account.
Soldiers from the U.S. 173rd Airborne brigade, based in Italia, will instruct around 900 troops from the National Guard of Ukraine (NGU) in three waves of training, each lasting eight weeks, followed by joint war games.
The NGU is made up of reservists, and was reformed in 2014 to bring volunteers and militia under government control following the Maidan protests that brought down the pro-Russian government of Victor Yanukovych, sparking conflict between those loyal to Kiev and Moscow.
U.S.-led maneuvers in a country neighboring Russia are likely to provoke anger in Moscow. President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...accuses the U.S. of fueling the Maidan protests.
The West counters that the Russian leader has supplied the separatists movement with weapons and troops during a near year-long conflict that has claimed over 6,000 lives, but Putin has always denied the claims.
Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday took delivery of ten U.S. armored vehicles, two days after American politicians voted to urge President Barack Obama
I bowled a 129. It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something...
to provide "lethal" aid to Kiev.
A shaky ceasefire is currently in place in Ukraine, but skirmishes continue on a daily basis.