UK Foreign Secretary Hammond to Visit Ukraine
U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond is due to arrive in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv for an official visit Thursday.
During his visit, Hammond is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk. The leaders are expected to discuss bilateral relations and the current conflict in Ukraine.
On Feb. 24, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said the United Kingdom would send military advisers to Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops.
Hammond’s visit coincides with an increasing presense of NATO armed forces around the Russian border, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Thursday.
“We’ve noticed that NATO member states are using the situation in southeastern Ukraine as a pretext to discard all diplomatic conventions, tricks and slogans and push forward, closer to the Russian border,” sid Antonov.
Meanwhile, 300 U.S. army military personnel arrived in the Ukraine Thursday to conduct a joint training mission with the Ukrainian army.
“American servicemen (sic, and women) have already been transferred to the Lviv region to train Ukrainian soldiers,” the Russian foreign ministry’s official spokesperson, Alexander Lukashevich, said.
He explained that these soldiers will train Ukraine’s troops to use newly arrived military equipment sent to help Kyiv’s fight with rebels in the eastern part of the country.
“Therefore the U.S. military are already in Ukraine. It is evident that they are not trying to bring peace to the country,” Lukashevich said.
In 2014, the United States provided US$118 million in security support alone to the Ukrainian government.