As Ukraine celebrated its Independence Day with a military display of might on Monday, Russian prosecutors accused its troops and volunteers of fighting for Georgia in its war with Russia last year.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said several hundred Ukrainians participated in the five-day war last August, in which Moscow invaded the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia to drive out Georgian government troops.
“Soldiers from regular Ukrainian Defense Ministry detachments and at least 200 members of the UNA-UNSO nationalist organization took part in the armed aggression against South Ossetia,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Dozens of members of the UNA-UNSO paramilitary group fought for Chechen rebels against federal troops in the 1990s, but the organization has become less active in recent years.
Russian investigators said they had found uniforms and documents from the UNA-UNSO, as well as documents referring to Georgian-provided transportation.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Konstantin Sadilov said no Ukrainian troops fought in the war, though he did not exclude that other Ukrainians not with the military may have taken part.
The deputy head of UNA-UNSO also denied any involvement, saying: “Regrettably, UNA-UNSO squads and individual members of the organization did not take part in the Georgia-Russia war,” Interfax reported.
President Viktor Yushchenko, meanwhile, criticized domestic and foreign detractors and said Ukraine needed strong institutions to parry threats to its future prosperity.
Yushchenko, whose standing is at rock bottom as he seeks re-election in January, was celebrating the 18th anniversary of independence from Soviet rule as Ukraine’s most modern warplanes and cargo aircraft flew in formation over central Kiev.
Speaking in Independence Square, the focal point of Orange Revolution rallies that swept him to power in 2004, Yushchenko made no direct reference to Russia.
He spoke only briefly of foreign policy issues that have generated hostility in the Kremlin — including a drive to secure NATO membership. “I choose a strong state, strength and dignity, to put in their place not only our local feudal but also foreign overlords who want to set down how we should live,” he said in his 25-minute address. “I choose a full-fledged future for our country in the future of a united Europe.”
For the second year running, several thousand servicemen paraded down Kiev’s main thoroughfare, Khreshchatyk, and about three dozen aircraft, fighters, bombers and large military transports roared overhead.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent congratulations on the anniversary to Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. In an oblique reference to the election, Putin hoped that the two governments would “contribute to solving practical tasks of cooperation and create a favorable atmosphere for moving forward all aspects of relations between Russia and Ukraine.”
(Reuters, AP, MT)
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