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BRITISH military advisers have arrived in Ukraine, Kiev’s Defence Ministry announced yesterday.
A number of instructors will run courses on first aid, “tactical training” and “psychological rehabilitation” for Ukrainian troops.
The precise detail of such training was not revealed and nor was it clear if the assistance would be provided only to regular soldiers or would include neonazi paramilitaries deployed on the front line of the war to crush resistance in the country’s east.
The move marks the first direct military support for Kiev from a Nato power and is expected to be followed by the arrival of US advisers.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk ratcheted up the anti-Russian rhetoric, calling on EU leaders meeting for a two-day summit not to relax sanctions on Moscow.
He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to divide Europe and said victory for the anti-fascist forces in Donetsk and Lugansk would be “a disaster for the free world.
”Mr Yatsenyuk has previously enraged Russian opinion by claiming the Soviet Union “invaded Germany and Ukraine” in the second world war.
His government is allied with the far-right Svoboda and Right Sector parties, which honour nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
Although the ceasefire agreed between Kiev and resistance leaders has largely held, the Ukrainian PM has thrown doubt on a negotiated solution to the conflict, arguing that it will not be resolved “in a year, in two years or even five.”
Communist Party of Ukraine Odessa secretary Yevgeny Tsarkov denounced his remarks, arguing that “the return of peace is the main condition without which you cannot even hope for economic recovery and growth in living standards.
”Indefinite extension of the war would be used as an excuse for poverty caused by the government’s neoliberal policies, he said.
“In the 1990s we were promised prosperity after five or 10 years of pain. Instead we got 24 years of plundering by the oligarchs.
“The most prosperous Soviet republic became the country with the lowest wages in Europe.”
