WASHINGTON — Ukrainian sailors have arrived in the U.S. to learn how to operate two cutters. The small, speedy fighting vessels are gifts from America to the Ukrainian Navy.
The 34 sailors came earlier in July and will remain until the autumn learning the tasks that will enable them to efficiently man the craft when they arrive in Ukraine later this year.
The vessels were part of the the U.S. Coast Guard fleet until they were handed over in an official ceremony last September to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to bolster the strength of Ukraine’s Navy.
Since then they have been undergoing thorough re-fits at the Coast Guard base in the Atlantic port city of Baltimore, Maryland. America donated the vessels, but Ukraine has paid an estimated $10 million for their renovation.
The vessels are Island Class cutters, used by the U.S. to intercept smugglers, conduct defense operations, and for search and rescue operations. The 34-meter long vessels of between 154-165 tons each have two diesel engines enabling speeds up to 30 knots. They can patrol for 14 days without replenishment, sailing some 3,380 nautical miles.
When used by the Coast Guard, they were armed with one 25 mm cannon and two .50-caliber machine guns. But they may receive different armaments after they are transported from Baltimore to Odesa, the southern Ukrainian Black Sea port city of 1 million people. The craft were not designed for crossing the Atlantic Ocean, although they are capable of doing so. However, they will not make the journey under their own power, so as not to put excessive strain on their reconditioned engines.
The 34 sailors are being trained by their American counterparts. The Ukrainian military asked that, for security reasons, the Kyiv Post did not to use the sailors’ full names or write exactly how long they would remain in Baltimore.
One of the seamen, Mykola, who hails from Kharkiv, said that he and other members of the group had experience serving on other Ukrainian Navy vessels and all had at least working knowledge of English – the language in which instruction is being conducted – although he said there were interpreters on hand if needed to explain complex terms.
He said: “We’re being trained in a very professional manner within our different specializations. Everything is done to NATO standards and we have to apply those high standards to every part of the Ukrainian military.”
The sailors were brought by bus on the approximately 100-kilometer journey to the American capital. Their first stop was at the Ukrainian Embassy where they joined other Ukrainian citizens visiting or living in the U.S. who wanted to vote in the parliamentary elections.
They then returned to the bus for a short trip across the Potomac River which divides Washington D.C., from the neighboring state of Virginia, to America’s largest and oldest cemetery for military veterans at Arlington.
There they watched the half-hourly changing of the guard and visited the cemetery’s museum which tells its history and how it began operating in 1864, during America’s Civil War. Since then it has become a hallowed burial ground for more than 400,000 people (and their spouses, if desired) who have served in the country’s conflicts since.
Many hundreds, but likely thousands, of service people of Ukrainian origin lie in the graves of simple, neat white stone monuments laid in rows with military precision among the carefully-tended grass lawns. There are no full statistics on the ethnic backgrounds of the cemetery’s occupants as they all died as Americans.
But the group of sailors were taken to the graves of two who were always proud of their Ukrainian origins.
One was Samuel Jasilka, who was born in the U.S. in 1919 of Ukrainian parents, and served in the Marines during World War II, then from 1949 in the Korean War and in the 1960s in Vietnam, In 1975, he became assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and retired in 1978 as a four-star general. He died in 2012.
The other grave they visited was that of Roman Kupchinsky, who was born in November 1944 to Ukrainian parents fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. They emigrated to the United States and Roman grew up in New York and became intensely involved in helping those striving for Ukrainian independence – something that became his lifelong mission.
He headed up a diaspora organization called Prolog which worked to break through the information barrier erected around its Soviet and satellite colonies by the Kremlin. They smuggled out of the Soviet Union works written by Ukrainian dissidents and political prisoners and publicized them in the West. They smuggled back into Ukraine works, in miniaturized format, championing freedom. Later, Kupchinsky headed the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
He gained his right to be laid to rest at Arlington after serving in the Vietnam War as a lieutenant in the U.S. infantry. He was twice wounded in Vietnam and recognized for his bravery. He died in 2010 after retiring from RFE/RL.
The military attache at the Ukrainian Embassy, Colonel Andriy Ordynovych, told the stories of these two Ukrainian-Americans, saying that the values they died for — freedom and love of country — were the same ones Ukrainians were fighting for daily in the Russian-invaded east of their country.
The Ukrainian sailors stood for a minute’s silence at each of the gravesites. Ordynovcyh broke the quiet with a shout of “Slava Ukrajini” which the sailors responded to with “Herojam slava!”
The cemetery speaks volumes about the reverence and care of Americans for their military. Many Ukrainian sailors hoped that one day their nation would create a similar shrine.
The visit inevitably brought the thoughts of the sailors back to Russia’s war in Ukraine and their part in Ukraine’s defense. Mykola, who will be an officer aboard one of the cutters, was born in Sevastopol and served there in the Ukrainian Navy when the Russians invaded Crimea in 2014. He refused to join the Russian Navy and departed for Odesa.
He said that he knows many of the sailors imprisoned after the Russian Navy last November captured three Ukrainian vessels passing through the Kerch Straits that link the Black and Azov seas. “These are my shipmates and we all think about them every day,” said Mykola.
Mykola said that everyone is determined to learn their tasks well. He said: “We all know that our military will never be as large as that of the Russians in terms of men or resources and so we have to be better than them. Better at everything. So high standards and interoperability with NATO are very important for the future of our forces.”
