Inadequately Trained Troops Being Deployed In Ukraine As The Country Drifts Towards Civil War

Members of the Donbas volunteer battalion take part in exercises in their camp on the border between Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images

Tensions in Eastern Ukraine are being exacerbated by the deployment of ill-trained  volunteer troops, mobilized to deal with pro-Russian separatists.

According to The Guardian:

“Arming troops with almost no real training and sending them into extremely sensitive situations where they may be shot at with weapons from within crowds, largely made up of angry but unarmed civilians, sounds like a recipe for disaster,”

” While they say the Russian claims of the entire Ukrainian government being fascist are false, “there are certainly far-right elements involved in the fight in the east.”

“no doubt that radicals have been the people most willing to fight, and this has led to a number of situations which appear to be well beyond the bounds of normal military behaviour.”

Feelings are running high and the body count is mounting with Anna Neistat, associate director of Human Rights watch saying:

“This whole situation is completely out of control,”

Vladimir Putin has called for the Ukraine government to withdraw its troops, enlisted and otherwise, from the area. He has also stated that Ukraine will now have to pay in advance for gas piped in from Russia from next month.

Radical Ukraine politician Oleh Liashko has called for war.

“We need a people’s war, like in the second world war when people rose up to fight fascism, that’s what we need to do now,” Liashko said to the Guardian.

Liashko campaign posters calling for  ‘death to the occupiers’ have appeared in cities across Ukraine.