Countries that support Ukraine this week pledge a vast effort to rebuild the countryand President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday night that he was working with the United Nations to send international observers to testify to the annihilation.
Since 2014, when the Kremlin instigated a separatist war in eastern Ukraine – an area where Moscow announced this year to merge — Ukraine has sought UN involvement in the conflict, but to no avail. Russia, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, has veto power over any action there.
Increasing support for Ukraine, the Biden administration is expected to announce soon that it will provide the country with a Patriot missile battery, this would be the most sophisticated weapon the United States has ever offered. Unlike other air defense missile systems, Patriot can not only shoot down aircraft and cruise missiles but also ballistic missiles much faster.
The Kremlin, in the face of Western concerns about a direct confrontation with Russia, has warned that sending Patriots to Ukraine would escalate tensions; it said similar things about HIMARS and other weapons. General Ryder, noting that Patriot is a defense system, dismissed such talk.
“It’s important to remember that Russia is the aggressor here and when it does escalate, they can de-escalate today by withdrawing,” he said.
The new training regime will take place at a US Army base in Grafenwoehr, Germany, where the Pentagon conducts its own combined weapons training. The United States and its allies have also conducted some training for Ukrainian troops there.
Between 2015 and early this year, American trainers trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian troops at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine, near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said. But the United States withdrew 150 of its instructors from Ukraine just before the war started. Ukraine then began sending troops to bases abroad for training, especially in Britain, Germany and Poland.
