[Ray Allan]

http://www.armytimes.com/story/milit...cises/25936285

MOSCOW--About 300 U.S. Army paratroopers on Friday arrived in Ukraine for training exercises with national guard units, a move criticized by Moscow and Eastern Ukraine's Moscow-backed rebels.

The troops, from the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade, are to spend several weeks training for a total of about 900 Ukrainian national guardsmen.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukasevich denounced the guardsmen as "ultranationalists...who stained themselves with the blood of women, children and the elderly during their punitive operations."

Although Interior Minister Arsen Avakov had said the guardsmen units could include the Azov Battalion, a far-right formation notorious for using an insignia used by many military units in Nazi Germany, U.S. Embassy spokesman James Hallock said Azov fighters would not be among those trained.

Though fighting has diminished substantially since a February cease-fire deal was signed in Minsk, Belarus, clashes continue and each side accuses the other of wanting to resume the conflict. Lukasevich said the U.S. troops' presence violates the section of the Minsk agreement that bans foreign "armed formations" from Ukraine.


...Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, also criticized the American move.

"The participation of instructors and specialists from a third country on the territory of Ukraine, where an unresolved intra-Ukrainian conflict remains, where problems persist in carrying out the Minsk agreement, is far from helping resolve the conflict. To the contrary, it enables destabilizing the situation," Peskov said.