YAVORIV MILITARY TRAINING FACILITY, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine staged a major NATO-led anti-terror and disaster relief exercise on Oct. 13, a step that this ex-Soviet republic hopes might improve its chances of joining the Western military alliance.
The four-day drill, held near Ukraine’s border with NATO-member Poland, finished with a simulated terrorist attack on a chemical facility. The maneuvers, officials said, provided important training for nations involved in the global war on terror.
Elite Alfa troops of the Ukrainian State Security agency parachuted from a helicopter, while a separate assault team set off stun grenades to subdue the pretend terrorist group that seized the dilapidated Soviet-era building, being used as the chemical facility for the drill.
Multinational emergency crews rushed to the scene to fight a giant plume of fire and smoke.
Hosting the Joint Assistance 2005 maneuvers is Ukraine’s latest effort in its bid to join NATO. The alliance has said its door remains open to this nation of 47 million, which shifted to a pro-Western course after last year’s Orange Revolution.
“This is an important step toward making our ties with Europe even closer, particularly in combatting such a serious threat as terrorism and the use of chemical weapons,” said Ukrainian Major Gen. Volodymyr Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s Security Service.
The exercises involved 12 countries and 30 observer nations, and included a major deployment of field hospitals, rescue equipment and reconnaissance armored vehicles. The NATO-led Department for Emergency Situations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were among the 1,000 personnel involved, including 250 Ukrainians.
NATO’s Assistant Deputy Secretary-General Maurits Jochems, who was the highest ranking NATO official to attend the exercises, said such multinational maneuvers would help bring Ukraine closer to NATO.
“One thing is to share values, objectives and political ideas,” he said. “But another thing is the performance, what do you do in practice and, in that sense, this is yet another contribution.”
NATO has stepped up cooperation with Ukraine, but has refused to speculate when it might offer Kyiv membership. NATO says Ukraine still must prove its democratic credentials, fight corruption and modernize its bloated military.
A NATO delegation headed by Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is expected in Ukraine next week, and Ukrainian officials hope to receive more clear signals about Ukraine’s possible membership then.
President Viktor Yushchenko made membership in both NATO and the European Union key goals for his nation, and many believe that Ukraine will follow a path similar to other former Eastern bloc nations, who were offered NATO membership years before the EU opened its doors.
Analysts say that Ukraine’s best chance of being invited to join NATO could be at the alliance’s 2008 summit. But opinion polls show that most Ukrainians remain suspicious of NATO, their old Cold War foe.
Mykola Sungurovskiy, a military analyst with the Kyiv-based Razumkov think-tank, predicted that Ukraine’s pro-NATO course was set.
“Too much effort has been employed, and it’s easier now to move forward than to turn the river upstream,” he said.
Ukraine already has started trimming its 285,000-person military, which Defense Minister Anatoly Gritsenko promised would be cut in half within the next six years.
Ukraine is a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, which includes many former Eastern bloc countries and is considered a stepping stone toward full NATO membership. A Ukrainian battalion is also deployed in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo.
But Ukrainian membership in NATO could complicate Kyiv’s relationship with its giant eastern neighbor, Russia.
Moscow, which sent just three observers to this week’s Ukrainian drill, has participated and even hosted past NATO exercises, but the Kremlin bristles at the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military is based on Russian military technology, as virtually all of Ukraine’s weapons and equipment are of Soviet-era design.
In the Oct. 13 exercises, French soldiers wearing airtight rubber coveralls and gas masks combed through the pretend chemical facility. A Ukrainian SWAT team seized surviving black-clad terrorists, throwing them to the ground and handcuffing them, while rescue teams from Georgia, Portugal and Latvia milled around inside the seven-floor structure evacuating casualties.
Shrill sirens went off as a misty rain fell over the training grounds. Emergency crews from multiple countries provided medical aide, while rescuers hosed each other off with a decontaminating liquid.
