Reuters reports:

The White House is reviewing whether $250 million in military assistance should be sent to Ukraine in keeping with President Donald Trump’s view that U.S. foreign aid must be justified, two senior administration officials said on Thursday.

The money is intended for use by Ukraine in its struggle with pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow.

“The president has made no secret when it comes to foreign assistance that U.S. interests abroad should be prioritized and other foreign countries should also be paying their fair share,” said one of the officials, who shared details of the plan on condition of anonymity.

The officials said chances are the money will be allocated as usual but that the determination will not be made until a policy review is completed and Trump makes a final decision. The federal fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

“Agencies are under no restrictions from preparing to obligate those funds, and agencies still have adequate time to obligate those funds prior to the end of the fiscal year,” the official said.

Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014.

An interesting text is making rounds online, and it is not the first of its kind since 2014, painting Ukrainian soldiers in not so favourable light…

I quote:

My soldiers’ efforts are focused on boosting Yavoriv Combat Training Center and training instructors to see the defense capabilities of the Ukrainian Ground Forces getting stronger each day.

For reference, Yavoriv is in the extreme West of the country, very far from the Russians. The author quickly moves to the quality of his trainees:

Firstly, they don’t speak English. The truth is, they don’t truly care about actually learning it. Given the amount they seem to care about English, my instructors need an extra platoon of interpreters during training. But it doesn’t work in all cases. Thing is, they don’t have a complete understanding of each other! They are kind of a mishmash of different folks being trained here. Some of them speak only Ukrainian or only Russian, whereas others can only speak Romanian or Hungarian.

If they get people, who only speak Hungarian or Romanian, that means they are recruiting in the most remote villages of Western Ukraine. The other possibility is, this is a form of sabotage by some of the recruits. These dudes must be some complete unfortunates that were caught up in a mobilisation wave, and lacked the funds to buy the recruiter off. The latter is sort of confirmed further in the text…

Secondly, Ukrainian soldiers are lazy slackers who are reluctant to work, they tend to intentionally sabotage any move of their U.S. instructors. Taking into account their greed for money, one has to be aware that Ukrainian military tend to steal and sell anything once they think they have found a good deal.

I am guessing, these people are not entirely voluntarily in the training center.

Thirdly, heavy consumption of alcohol is a common event. All Ukrainian soldiers at Yavoriv Combat Training Center drink dangerously high levels of alcohol. With that in mind every time we had to start training with a BAC test. But that was of little help. Drunk Ukrainian soldiers who even couldn’t stand up straight because of the booze were banned from training. Some of the training activities were either canceled or rescheduled. What struck me most is their commanders’ omission with regard to that improper behavior. Their unwillingness to tackle alcohol abuse suggests that they could be immersed in a culture of booze together with their subordinates.

Sounds like they are really enjoying their time at the training center.

Fourthly, most of Ukrainians are poorly educated and of low intellect. The easiest tasks seemed challenging for them. It’s no wonder taking into account that the majority of soldiers come from disadvantaged backgrounds whereas the best part of the population left the country for a better life abroad.

The irony of the whole thing is that the labour migration has only been exacerbated by the US supported coup d’etat of 2014, and Ukraine’s subsequent economic decline. Unfortunately, the US military presence only perpetuates this toxic situation Ukraine has found itself in. Utterly meaningless endeavours like this one in Yavoriv, or the Sea Breeze Naval Exercise, perpetuate the myth, on a more or less symbolic level, that the civilised World supports Ukraine.

However ultimately, the country needs Russia…