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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

"Forward March!" to Peacekeepers, "Full Astern!" to Ships

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Ukraine, unlike Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary, has granted
an air corridor to Russia so that the latter might deploy warplanes to
reinforce its peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo, representatives of the
Ukrainian General Staff announced. The Kyiv generals themselves are now
busy working out in detail various versions of Ukrainian military participation
for a new peacekeeping operation in the Balkans.

Major-General Mykola Dziubak, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of Ukraine
for Military Cooperation said that the strength of Ukrainian peacekeepers
in Kosovo might reach 1400. Earlier, the figure was put at 1300. The General
Staff has made its choice not only about the numerical strength but also
about the qualitative parameters of its peacekeeping force. "It could include
a military hospital, a detached special-purpose company, a helicopter force,
a detached pontoon-bridge-laying railway battalion for crossing the Danube,
and the Ukrainian part of the joint Ukrainian-Polish peacekeeping battalion.
But sending them is only possible on the basis of legislative decisions
by the UN Security Council and Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine," General Dziubak
stated.

The general explained Ukraine's slowness in making a Balkan peacekeeping
force decision by the fact that today there are no clearly-stated tasks
for peacekeepers, the UN has not yet identified the joint command of this
operation, nor has it formally requested Ukraine to detail its peacekeepers.
The major-general dodged the question about the specific Kosovo area where
the Ukrainian contingent might be stationed and whether Kyiv would in this
case find itself at the crossroads between NATO and Moscow.

As we know, Moscow does not accept the NATO plan of dividing Kosovo
into five zones of responsibilities, with none of them entrusted to Russia.
This is why Moscow decided at its own discretion to take control of Pristina,
where the Russian paratroopers are today holding the airfield, keeping
the British at bay. Should the Russians stay and reinforce their presence,
Kosovo will in fact be divided not into five but two parts: one under NATO
control and the other under the Russians and Serbs. This is why Hungary
and Bulgaria, as supporters of the NATO actions, declined Moscow's request
to use their air space to airlift, if necessary, Russian forces. Ukraine
had no reservations about Russia. For "every state has laws of its own,
which fix such procedures," according to General Dziubak.

Of course, this is so. But another detail is worth noting. It became
known the Monday before last that three Ukrainian warships, which were
to have joined on June 14 other participants in the Cooperation Partner
1999 sea peacekeeping exercise, had returned to their bases in Sevastopol.
The exercise is being held near Varna at NATO expense and participated
in by ships of the alliance and other Black Sea littoral states. Russia
at once turned down this exercise, while, as far as the Ukrainian Navy
is concerned, this was part of the international military cooperation program
for 1999. No official explanations of unexpected changes in the Ukrainian
Navy's plans have been made public. In any case, this is the first time
the Ukrainian military has stayed out of a NATO funded exercise.

 

Kyiv determines the watershed between NATO and Russia
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