Ukraine to deploy US anti-tank missiles in defiance of Russia

Kiev takes delivery of Javelins but Moscow says move threatens to escalate proxy war

Ukraine’s defence minister said he would waste no time in starting to train his troops to use sophisticated Javelin anti-tank weapons supplied by the Trump administration, in defiance of Moscow’s warning that their sale to Kiev could escalate a four-year smouldering proxy war in the country’s far east.

General Stepan Poltorak thanked US president Donald Trump for a “positive decision which helps to significantly increase Ukraine’s defence capability and provide Ukrainian servicemen with modern weapons”.

Training would start on Wednesday, Gen Poltorak said late on Monday, after US officials and Petro Porosohenko, Ukraine’s pro-western president, confirmed the US had provided Ukraine with an undisclosed number of Javelins.

“The Ukrainian army has received the long-awaited weaponry,” Mr Poroshenko said on Monday.

The shipments are part of a $47m US Congressional military aid package, adopted in 2017, that envisages Ukraine being supplied with 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 launchers.

There was no immediate reaction from Russia, where officials last year warned that Mr Trump had “crossed the line” in breaking with Obama administration policy by arming Ukraine.

Stepan Poltorak, Ukraine's defence minister, plans to start training Ukraine troops to use the Javelin system immediately © Reuters

Long coveted by Kiev, the handheld fire-and-forget precision Javelin systems are intended to help Ukraine’s army repel any attacks by Russian-backed militants, who seized control over eastern industrial regions in 2014 after Moscow occupied the Crimean Peninsula.

US and Ukrainian officials say Russia has funnelled artillery and hundreds of tanks and Grad rocket launchers into eastern Ukraine, making what they describe as a combined Russian and hybrid separatist proxy force in the Donbas one of Europe’s largest conventional armies.

Moscow denies the claims.

The US has provided almost $1bn in non-lethal military assistance to Ukraine since the war erupted, including night goggles, body armour and Humvee vehicles. But the Obama administration refrained from providing lethal equipment, fearing Russia would retaliate by supplying more advanced weapons to proxy forces in eastern Ukraine and so escalate the conflict.

But Mr Trump’s administration last year formally approved the provision and sale of Javelins and other lethal weaponry to Kiev.

Recommended Interview Bribery and corruption Poroshenko fends off IMF demand for anti-corruption court Along with additional sanctions on Russia unveiled last month, the shift adds weight to Mr Trump’s claim that he has been tougher on Moscow as he faces domestic questions about his connections and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the country’s alleged involvement in the 2016 US election.

Mr Poroshenko has pleaded with western backers to supply Kiev with arms since the early days of the conflict in the east, which has claimed more than 10,000 lives — making it Europe’s bloodiest since the Balkan conflict.

Addressing a joint session of the US Congress in September 2014, Mr Poroshenko reminded US officials the independent Ukrainian state that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union surrendered “the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances” from the US, UK, France, China and Russia.

Though full-scale battles in the Donbas have been avoided since early 2015, daily gunfire and frontline shelling continue to claim combatant and civilian lives.

Caught flat-footed and under-supplied in the conflict’s early days, Kiev has improved its military capabilities, even developing a precision anti-tank rocket.

The more advanced Javelins are intended to supplement those capabilities.They also demonstrate the depth of US support for Kiev.

"The provision of Javelins, as well as the tightening of sanctions against Russia, provides essential leverage . . . to achieve a negotiated solution,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former US state department official at the Atlantic Council.

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