The 300 U.S. troops who entered Ukraine Monday to begin training pro-government forces are not in “any significant danger,” the Pentagon said, despite thousands of pro-Russian militias operating and training only several hundred miles away.
The U.S. troops arrived Monday to teach about 900 Ukrainian security forces combat skills, including small arms fire and counter-drone maneuvers. The U.S. says the skills are defensive in nature and in line with President Obama’s limitations of assistance of only non-lethal aid to Ukraine.
The U.S. troops, from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, are near the Polish border at the International Peacekeeping Center in Lviv, about 750 miles from known training centers run by the Russians in Yenakieyeve, in Eastern Ukraine. Last week the Pentagon confirmed that it knew about the training centers, where Russia is building up separatist militia forces and providing them with small arms and artillery training.
In a speech to the Atlantic Council in March, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and retired Gen. Wesley Clark said, based on information Ukrainian officials showed him on a recent trip there, Russia is preparing to start a new spring offensive in Ukraine to take more territory, despite the international agreement it signed earlier this year for a ceasefire and withdrawal of all heavy arms from Ukraine.
Clark said he thinks Russia has about 9,000 troops in Eastern Ukraine.
On Monday, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said despite the proximity of the two sides’ training centers, “we don’t believe there’s any significant danger or any real danger to American troops there.”
Asked what the U.S. military would do if attacked by Russian-backed militias as they train the Ukrainian forces, Warren said he would not speculate on a potential response.
