Ukrainian troops not yet ready to serve as peacekeepers in Kosovo (06/27/99)

Ukrainian troops not yet ready to serve as peacekeepers in Kosovo

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukrainian soldiers will join their NATO and Russian counterparts in a Kosovo peacekeeping force only after the proposed plan for Ukrainian involvement winds its way through the bureaucratic approval warrens of the government and gets a final nod in the Verkhovna Rada.

One hurdle was cleared on June 18 when Britain's Minister of Defense Joseph Robertson formally invited Ukraine to join NATO peacekeeping operations in Kosovo. "I fully expect that Ukraine will send its troops, with their high standard of training, to Kosovo," said Mr. Robertson during a one day visit to Kyiv.

The United Nations, however, has yet to extend an invitation, and many politicians here doubt that Ukraine, which has taken a position that it can only participate under the auspices of the United Nations or the Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe, will join NATO and Russia in Kosovo until such an offer is received.

Questions remain in Ukraine as to who will have command over the Ukrainian peacekeeping battalion, how it will be financed and when Ukrainian authorities will finalize the plan.

Although Ukraine has participated actively in the United Nations peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia and announced that it was ready to organize such a force for Kosovo even in the first days of the air campaign against rump Yugoslavia, the country has been slow to approve a peacekeeping contingent for Kosovo.

While the United Nations Security Council has approved the Kosovo peacekeeping operation, the council will not supervise the mission, as in Bosnia. That role is now planned exclusively for NATO, even though Russia has already demonstrated that it wants its own peacekeeping regime in the Yugoslav region.

Whether a majority of the Ukrainian Parliament, whose leadership has already shown its contempt for NATO in several failed resolutions to break all ties with the Atlantic Alliance, will approve a Ukrainian contingency under NATO's command is far from certain. Further speculation exists in Ukraine that the government is waiting for greater clarification of Russia's role in Kosovo.

In actions that some Ukrainian newspapers call evidence of the governments support for Russia's pre-emptive move into Kosovo's capital city of Pristina, Kyiv has granted Russia an air corridor through Ukraine to use in moving men and machines to the conflict area. Bulgaria and Hungary, have refused to heed Russian demands for such access.

However, Maj. Gen. Mykola Dziubak of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, the designated commander of the Ukrainian peacekeeping battalion, rejected such assertions at a press conference on June 14. He explained that Russian use of an air corridor through Ukraine had been agreed to years ago and is part of the Ukraine-Russia treaty on cooperation and friendship.

Others have raised questions as to why Ukraine cut short its annual joint military exercises with NATO in the Black Sea last week. On June 13 three Ukrainian naval vessels, the Sahaidachnyi, the Lutsk and the Slavutych were ordered to return to Sevastopol while on their way to join the joint exercises. A Ministry of Defense press spokesman explained that a plan was being developed for Ukraine's peacekeeping contingency to travel to the Kosovo region via waterways and that the three ships were needed to prepare for the voyage, according to the newspaper Den.

Both the foreign ministry and the defense ministry are downplaying the various rumors that are floating about, stating that the approval delay for a Kosovo force is merely due to bureaucracy and the need to develop the details of the peacekeeping operation.

Maj. Gen. Dziubak said the defense minstry has already proposed a plan that would send 1,400 Ukrainian troops into Kosovo, along with 40,000 tons of military hardware. The contingent would include an army hospital, a special helicopter company, a bridge brigade and a military police company. The plan also includes the activation of a Polish-Ukrainian joint battalion, which was recently created for just such humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts.

"But this will only take place after the appropriate decisions are made by the National Security and Defense Council and Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada," emphasized the major general.

The approval process that begins with proposals from the Cabinet of Ministers, chiefly through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense, and are then submitted to the National Security and Defense Council, an arm of the Presidential Administration. The president then submits his conclusions to Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada for ratification. A foreign ministry official could not state how far along the process the issue had proceeded and would only say that it still could take weeks before a decision was made.

In addition to political will, a substantial obstacle to Ukraine's involvement in the Kosovo peacekeeping force is money.

Because the Kosovo operation is under the command of NATO and not the U.N., who will pay is a question that has not yet been clearly answered. British Defense Minister Robertson noted in Kyiv that NATO has yet to budget money for participants in the peacekeeping operation, which Ukraine estimates will cost upwards of $15 million from its annual budget.

In Bosnia, Ukraine funded its troops from the national budget, which was then reimbursed by the United Nations. In seven years of participation in U.N.-sanctioned operations in such countries as Angola, Slovenia and Bosnia, in which some 8,000 Ukrainian troops have taken part, Ukraine has received $72.5 million in compensation from the world organization, much more than it has expended. The families of the 18 Ukrainian soldiers that have died and the 60 injured in those operations have received nearly $2 million. Ukraine's annual budget for its Bosnia peacekeepers is approximately $4.3 million.

On the matter of financing the Kosovo operation, Maj. Gen. Dziubak would only say that "the question is currently being examined and a decision will be made soon. A little later, however, he added, "Ukraine's peacekeepers make money for Ukraine." That may be a far more telling suggestion of where the Ukrainian government stands in the matter of a Kosovo force.

| Home Page |