As many as 45,000 Ukrainian military and civilian personnel have participated in 27 peace support operations all around the world since 1992 under the auspices of the United Nations and NATO, according to Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Fifty-five troops were killed during tours of duty overseas, according to Colonel Valentyn Levchyk, the deputy chief of the Department for Military Cooperation and Peacekeeping Operations of Ukraine’s General Staff.
As May 29 marks the International UN Peacekeepers Day, the military said that Ukraine considers its active participation in the peacekeeping activities as its key instrument of ensuring national security through helping to create a stable foreign environment.
In particular, the Ukrainian contingents have been deployed for combat missions in former Yugoslavia, Africa, namely Angola, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Liberia and Ivory Coast, and in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kuwait, and Iraq.
“They were engaged in keeping conflicting parties back, repairing roads and (other) infrastructure, minesweeping, the transportation of troops, mission personnel, and civilians, conducted medical evacuation, enforced the security during elections and many other things,” Colonel Levchyk said during a briefing on May 28.
In general, as he said, over the years of peacekeeping activities, Ukraine’s personnel have transported over 91,000 troops and over 200,000 tones of cargo in over 56,000 plane and helicopter flights.
Despite Russia’s war on Ukraineэs own territory continuing since 2014, Ukraine still remains an active peacekeeper, with 347 military personnel engaged in eight various UN and NATO international security operations.
Two Ukrainian contingents are deployed overseas constantly — namely the 250-strong force of the 18th Helicopter Detachment, which mostly operates Mikoyan Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters, conducting operations as part of the UN stabilization mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo embattled by destructive wars over past few decades.
Just as recently as on May 24, Ukraine’s Air Forces sent its 10th turnover to the African country since 2012.
The second biggest Ukrainian peacekeeping contingent consisting of 40 military engineers is deployed to Kosovo (kept there since 1999), the officer said.
Apart from that, Ukrainian civilian personnel participates in NATO, UN missions in South Sudan (10 persons), Cyprus (1 person), Afghanistan (21 person as part of NATO training and advisory mission). 10 Ukrainian military observers are still deployed to Transnistria, a breakaway eastern region of Moldova.
Until 2018, Ukraine also had a mission in Liberia, which had served as long as 15 years.
In the nearest time, Ukraine is also expected to put boots on the ground in Mali: In January 2019, former president Petro Poroshenko also signed a decree to send another peacekeeping contingent of 20 military personnel to the UN mission to the North African country embattled by the Tuareg rebellion of 2012.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on May 29 congratulated all Ukrainian peacekeepers on his Facebook page:
“The experience of many of our peacekeepers became extremely important in the time when peace in our own country had to be defended,” he wrote.
“We remember the sons and daughters of Ukraine who were killed while rescuing civilian population in their own country and overseas. Ukraine has always sought peace and security for its people and all other nations of the planet. I firmly believe there will be a day when Ukraine’s military servicepersons will be drawing only peacekeeping missions.”
