Ukrainian troops train with the latest British weapons amid tensions with Russia

Ukrainian troops train with the latest British weapons amid tensions with Russia. 

YAVORIV, Ukraine: The Ukrainian soldiers wearing furry black-and-white winter camouflage gathered on Friday to practice firing anti-tank launchers supplied from Britain in the context of Western efforts to assist Ukraine to protect itself against any Russian incursion.

Russia has made it difficult for the West to discuss Russia’s demands for new security measures throughout Europe by collecting over 100,000 soldiers in the vicinity of its border with Ukraine, an ex-Soviet republic seeking to become a member of NATO.

In the middle of this month, Britain declared that it would provide Ukraine with anti-armor light defense weapon systems and personnel to conduct instruction. 

However, the report said they’re not designed for strategic use and were designed to defend themselves.

“It is enough to shoot one round to destroy the enemy vehicle,” Zinovy Luzhansky, a soldier from the Ukrainian army, said during the training exercises on the windy military training facilities in the western part of Ukraine.

“It will be much easier to fight against the Russian Federation because this weapon can easily destroy any kind of enemy armored military equipment.”

While Britain and the United States have stepped up the supply of arms for Ukraine in the last month, they’ve also caused a stir in Kyiv by removing their diplomats.

On Friday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was not ruling out a full-on war with Russia. However, he said he was accusing Washington and the press of creating a panic that had weighed down the economy, despite “no tanks in the streets.”

He made the remarks after Russian president Vladimir Putin said the United States and NATO have not yet addressed the Kremlin’s principal security concerns in the conflict between East and West in Ukraine However, he said Moscow was prepared to continue in contact.

Russia acquired Crimea to Kyiv in 2014 and later supported rebels who fought government forces in the eastern region of Ukraine. 

This unresolved conflict has claimed the lives of 15,000 up to now.