I will admit up front that I had no idea how extensive NATO’s presence in the Ukraine was until this week. I just had not paid attention. But Russia’s blistering attacks on Yavoriv, Delyatyn, Mykolaiv and Zhytomyr have caught my eye. If you are not paying attention you should.
My most recent article, Russia Exploits Ukraine’s Western Flank, should have been titled, Russia Exposes NATO’s Impotence. That piece addressed the attacks on Yavoriv and Delyatyn. My curiosity is fully piqued and I am now searching the internet for U.S. and NATO documents describing their activities at those sights.
Have you heard about Zhytomyr? Did you know that NATO carried out cybersecurity training for Ukraine at Zhytomyr in September 2018 and described Ukraine as a “NATO PARTNER.”
As part of the NATO Defence Education Enhancement Programme for Ukraine, experts from allied countries visited the Serhiy Korolylov Zhytomyr Military Institute (ZMI) from 24 to 28 September, 2018 to assist with the development of a new course on cybersecurity. Ukraine is one of the first NATO partners (together with Tunisia) to develop such a course.
The experts provided working examples of cybersecurity education in a military institute context (Canadian, Polish and Irish military academies), facilitated through the adaptation of the Generic Reference Curriculum on Cybersecurity. They also demonstrated a step-by-step process to develop a customized course for a specific national context. This included a walk through of syllabus development, and a presentation of detailed lesson plans and laboratory exercises. The exercise involved cyber operations, both defensive and offensive, in support of an overarching military mission scenario.
NATO was training Ukraine for “offensive” cyber operations. Russia did not have to task any intelligence operatives to find this out. All they needed was someone capable of doing a Google search. This is not an imaginary Russian fear. This is real. It is detailed at the link in NATO’s own words.
The Ukrainian base at Myolaiv also was hit yesterday (Saturday):
Mykolaiv has a history with NATO and the United States:
As tensions rise between Russia and Ukraine on the Black Sea, the US is upgrading several Ukrainian naval bases to give American and NATO warships the ability to dock just miles from Russia-controlled Crimea.
Centered at the Ochakiv Naval Base and the military facility at Mykolaiv — 40 miles east of Odessa and less than 100 northwest of Crimea — the American-funded effort includes reinforcing and upgrading existing piers and adding a new floating dock, security fencing around the bases, ship repair facilities, and a pair of brand-new Maritime Operations Centers from which Ukrainian and NATO forces can direct exercises and coordinate activities.
Russia has been worrying about this threat for a while. In July of 2018, Radio Free Europe reported that Ukraine was upset because Russia was naming some of its military units after Ukrainian cities:
According to the Kremlin, the renaming decrees are intended “to preserve glorious military and historic traditions, and to nurture loyalty to the fatherland and military duty among the military personnel.”. . .
Under the decrees, the 933rd Missile Regiment is now called the Upper Dnieper Regiment, after the river in Ukraine. The 6th Tank Regiment is now called the Lvov Regiment and the 68th Tank Regiment the Zhitomir-Berlin Regiment and the 163rd Tank Regiment is called the Nezhin Regiment.
The decrees all use Russian spellings of the Ukrainian names, which in Ukrainian are Lviv, Zhytomyr, and Nizhyn.
With the benefit of hindsight it would appear Russia was sending a very clear message about its strategic priorities in Ukraine.
Finally, it appears that NATO and EUCOM are busy scrubbing their websites of all references to bases in Ukraine that hosted NATO and U.S. forces. I found the following using DuckDuckGo, but the link is broken. Do you think that is a coincidence? I do not.
https://www.eucom.mil › topic › yavorivUnited States European Command Image. 3:19 PM 7/12/2016. A Ukrainian Armed Forces Chaplain and Ukrainian National Guard Soldiers finish a prayer at the closing ceremony for Exercise Rapid Trident 16 in Yavoriv, Ukraine July 8, 2016. The exercise is a regional command post and field training exercise that involves about 2,000 Soldiers from 13 …
I do not know if there were other bases where NATO and U.S. military forces provided training and/or materiel to Ukrainian forces. If the events of this past week are an indicator of future plans, I would not want to spend any time at those bases. Russia is being very clear–“we are going to demilitarize them.”
Now this is interesting stuff.
I guess it will be very hard to determine how just many NATO casualties there really were since then they’d be under a lot of pressure to retaliate, and, no matter what the propaganda says, I believe they recognize and are fearful of Russia’s military capabilities.
They should be afraid, for all these years, they´ve been poking the bear….now you gonna have to deal with it.
Larry,
WRT further info on NATO training of UAF, I think Scott Ritter (1:51pm 13-Mar-22) had a thread with a lot of links.
Believe NATO were effectively training and rotating 5 Bttns of UAF a year (since 2015 to NATO standard) from those NATO funded training areas, to effectively “increase their lethality”. UAF forces were then being rotated in/out of LOC opposite DPR & LPR.
Upto 40 Bttns since 2015
Lot of links from Scott’s thread to those below
defenceone.com/threats/2017
illiberalism.org/
dw.com/en/ukrainian
@NATOinUkraine official NATO twitter acct since 2015
Seems pretty obvious that NATO was indeed creating a UKRAINE ‘Ghost Army’.. to be fully integrated within NATO OOB and trained, equipped and supported accordingly.
2022 article http://dilyana.bg/pentagon-contractors-worked-in-ukrainian-biolabs-under-80-million-program/
2018 article http://dilyana.bg/the-pentagon-bio-weapons/
That’s before you even consider the Pentagon funded bio labs, throughout the country
WRT to the West’s (Zone-A and its EU Vassals) response to RF’s intervention in Feb-22, I was immediately struck by the complete OTT, disproportionate and almost demotic reaction to what was not actually a particularly unexpected turn of events by the RF.. and certainly nothing like NATO’s intervention in Serbia, Afghan, Libya, Iraq etc.
I thought at the time, that the RF must have seriously thwarted some very well financed and long term NATO (US) plans for the “spear” in Russia’s soft belly.
This Politico article gingerly addresses the subject of Russia having used hypersonic missiles. The anonymous DoD source characterizes it as “head-scratching”. Is it purposefully ignoring the possibility that the targets selected, so far west of the general focus of fighting, could be related to NATO infrastructure or NATO/US supplies and/or troop training.
Whistling past the graveyard?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/dod-official-russia-s-hypersonic-missile-boast-a-bit-of-a-head-scratcher/ar-AAVkzp7
Wonder what the earliest indication of this conflict was?
Obama’ sorry interference in Ukrainian elections must have gotten Putins attention?
Ukraine being used for all manner of corruption and thinking that the internet has not been scrubbed of much postings….
Hello LJ, thinking of Old Tree and the lesson he taught me.
Yavoriv – “In Ukraine specifically, the Tennessee National Guard’s 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment has troops on the ground helping that country run its Yavoriv Combat Training Center.” Rapid Trident # = Army circa 25 years.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-army/2021/09/16/army-gears-up-for-rapid-trident-exercise-in-ukraine/
https://www.europeafrica.army.mil/ArticleViewPressRelease/Article/2776365/
Clear Sky # = Air Force, since 2018. Key word interoperability.
https://www.usafe.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1667802/a-closer-look-at-clear-sky-2018-a-committed-relationship-between-the-us-and-ukr/
Sea Breeze # = Navy, “The small Marine contingent from Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, based out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, participated in the 18th iteration of exercise Sea Breeze, where they integrated with the Ukrainian military aboard the Shyrokolan Range north of Mykolaiv, Ukraine.”
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/07/19/russia-threatens-negative-consequences-over-marine-exercise-with-ukraine-in-the-black-sea/
US Marines amphibious landing in Ukraine…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP19rwyfI1k
Remember when the HMS Defender deliberately sailed into Crimea’s territorial waters last June? It was on its way for a signing of a $3 billon agreement with the Ukraine to upgrade its Navy with six war ships training and bases. I don’t know what you would call that but a provocation that may have decided the Russians to take the problem out. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-signs-agreement-to-support-enhancement-of-ukrainian-naval-capabilities
NATO involvement in Ukraine is kinda unsurprising considering its been a NATO partner since the late 90s.
Look, Ukraine’s military was a far way off from posing a serious threat to Russia and its sovereignty even before the war. The idea that Russia is invading Ukraine because it felt threatened by NATO expansion doesn’t really hold water when you look at the historical context either. Gorbechev himself debunked the myth of the “not one inch” promise allegedly given informally.
Here’s an excerpt from a great analysis a french think tank published in January:
“Moreover, up until recently the Kremlin never really complained about NATO enlargement. In 1997, Boris Yeltsin asked Bill Clinton to refuse any admission of a former Soviet Republic in the Alliance. Clinton declined. This would not deter Russia from signing the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Yeltsin later recognized that he failed to persuade Clinton and did not seem to make it a cause for crisis. In line with Yeltsin’s admission, Vladimir Putin did not make the second wave of NATO enlargement a casus belli with the West: when it was formally decided to invite the Baltic States to join in 2002, he stated that their entry would “not be a tragedy”. That same year, Moscow welcomed the creation of the NATO-Russia Council. In fact, Mr. Putin only started to complain about NATO enlargement after his return to the presidency in 2012, concurrently with the radicalization of his domestic policies.”
https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/ultimatums-and-ukraine-and-why-nato-enlargement-not-problem