Report: Pentagon Plotting to Give Ukrainian Militants Patriot Missile Training at Bases Within US
Ukrainian soldiers move a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer into position to fire at Russian positions in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region Saturday, June 18, 2022
Washington’s announcement that they’re planning to take their patronage of Kiev regime forces to the next level is likely to further inflame tensions with Moscow.The Defense Department is considering training Ukrainian soldiers on how to operate Patriot missiles at bases located within the US, according to media reports.As the Pentagon’s most advanced missile defense system, a single Patriot missile battery reportedly costs a jaw-dropping $1 billion. Operating the system reportedly requires around 90 soldiers and training is apparently expected to last for several months, according to the US Defense Department.To date, most of the training that Ukrainian militants have needed to operate US-manufactured weapons has taken place in European countries like Germany and Poland.The CIA has reportedly been operating a “secret intensive training program in the US” for Ukrainian nationalists “at an undisclosed facility in the Southern US” since 2015, but any decision to openly train Kiev regime forces in the US would represent a significant escalation in the ongoing NATO proxy war against Russia.On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden announced the US would be sending a Patriot battery to Ukraine ahead of a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who thanked the US for military hardware but insisted it was “not enough.”In March, a senior US military official claimed there was “no discussion” about putting a Patriot battery in Ukraine, noting that in order to do so, the Pentagon would “have to put US troops with it to operate it.”“It is not a system that the Ukrainians are familiar with and as we have made very clear, there will be no US troops fighting in Ukraine,” the official reportedly stated.There’s been no public explanation as to what (if anything) has changed since then, but serious issues remain for the Kiev regime. The Patriot’s complexity, a lack of English language familiarity, and problems with integrating a US-manufactured missile system into a largely Soviet-built force all suggest Ukrainian militants will have their work cut out for them in the coming months.