Ukrainian Peacemakers Reunite in Kyiv
On October 24 Ukrainian servicemen who took part in UN peacemaking operations met with Defense Ministry top brass, the first such high-profile encounter so far. “The Ukrainian peacemakers have honorably and effectively fulfilled all their tasks. The army command is grateful to our peacekeepers for their dedication, patriotism, and commitment to the international community,” First Deputy Chief of the Land Forces Lt. Gen. Viktor HUDYM declared at the ceremony:
True, in the nine years of Ukrainian soldiers’ participation in UN peacekeeping operations they have demonstrated that they are true professionals. Recall that Ukraine’s first peacekeeping mission was in June 1992 when 550 servicemen of the 240th battalion were dispatched to Sarajevo, a mission for which Ukraine’s Defense Ministry had been repeatedly commended by the UN. In all, more than 19,000 Ukrainian soldiers have served in UN peacekeeping forces during the last nine years. To date, about 1700 Ukrainians are on peacekeeping missions in ten conflict areas. Presently, 1528 soldiers and officers are stationed as part of UN peacekeeping missions in Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and Kosovo. “They are Ukraine’s pride,” Lt. Gen. Hudym says. However, many of the rank-and-file peacekeepers will most probably know about their generals high esteem of them from the media. Although all Ukrainian peacekeepers were invited to the ceremony, one of them, due to retire soon and speaking to The Day under condition of anonymity, said that meeting his friends, not being given lip service by top brass, was much more important to him.
“For us our get-together on October 24 means a great deal. All those who had been through UN missions are one family. We saw death and joy; we shared our problems and helped each other. The boys went through war areas and witnessed the deaths of their buddies. This cannot be put into words, you can only feel it,” Sergeant Andriy Kuzmenko, a veteran of Sarajevo, told The Day. “We remember so much,” he says sadly. And there is a great deal to be remembered, like the crossfire they were caught in while trying to mediate between warring sides, or the absurd death of serviceman Solokha, their munitions sergeant and Afghanistan veteran, from a sniper’s bullet, and horrible deaths of civilians and attacks by drunken killers, shelling of humanitarian aid convoys, nights spent wearing bulletproof jackets, and a frustrating moment of seeing a Serbian woman with a baby holding out her hand to beg.
“It is because thousands of its dedicated soldiers, regardless of their owns safety, and, most importantly, risk to their lives, were on this noble peacekeeping task, that Ukraine must surely be named among the most active member states of the United Nations,” Chief of the UN Mission in Uraine Douglas Gardner proclaimed. In the nine years of service on UN peacekeeping missions, nineteen Ukrainians lost their lives and fifty were wounded. Literally won with blood, the price of their reputation is very high, but it now seems to be buried under the debris from the ill-fated Tu-154 hit by a stray Ukrainian missile.
“One should not think we had a bad life there,” Yury Shevchenko, soldier of the 204th Battalion told The Day with a melancholy smile. “We risked our lives but we lived better than servicemen in Ukraine do. We were fed like prize turkeys,” he admitted openly (something which some generals of the Ukrainian army are loath to do).
For an extra $60 any soldier could get a UN ration card buying him four boxes of Marlboros or Camels, six cases of Coca-Cola, six boxes of beer, six bottles of wine, and six bottles of hard liquor a month. “The salaries we earned there, $500 for enlisted men, any officer in the Ukrainian army could only dream about. Incidentally, the French soldiers were paid five times more,” Shevchenko notes. Maybe the real value of Ukrainian Armed Forces’ hard won international reputation (but tainted by the stray missile) could be found in these words of the embattled junior sergeant who made it home unscathed and was spared the harassment of older buddies, a nightmare of domestic units’ life.
