Top Ukrainian security official Alexey Danilov claims a million citizens are gaining combat and military experience
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian fighters in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region, June 23, 2022. © Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
Ukraine has reached the state of “maximum militarization” in recent months, the country’s top security official says
Around a million Ukrainians are gaining “combat and military” experience in the conflict with Russia, Alexey Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, has claimed.
“In [four] months, maximum militarization took place instead of demilitarization,” Danilov wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.
“Ukraine is rapidly rearming according to NATO standards. Our Defense Forces are constantly accumulating and being saturated with Western weapons and technologies.”
He also added that about a million Ukrainians “[are getting] combat and military experience.”
Danilov was apparently referring to a speech Russian President Vladimir Putin gave in late February in which he explained the rationale for Russia’s military campaign. The president listed the “demilitarization” of Ukraine as one of the aims of the offensive in the neighboring country.
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Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
