Thread by @ClintEhrlich

Today, many people were shocked to discover that the CIA is training anti-Russian militias inside Ukraine.

To me, it's a non-story: The U.S. military is *already on the ground* training Ukrainians to kill Russians.

A quick thread. 🧵

news.yahoo.com/cia-trained-uk…

The CIA claims its paramilitary training is only "defensive."

That argument does not work for the training performed by the DoD.

U.S. soldiers are inside Ukraine right now, preparing the Ukrainian military for combat – both with separatist militias and the Russian army.

Officially, U.S. troops are not supposed to follow the Ukrainian troops that they train into combat.

This is similar to how the U.S. started out deploying military "advisors" to South Vietnam.

We all remember how that worked out....

You might assume that the training is being performed by U.S. Special Forces.

And you'd be right – green berets are certainly the tip of the spear for this kind of operation.

But there are also 165 National Guard troops from Florida there now.
taskandpurpose.com/news/florida-n…

"Task Force Gator" – named after, you guessed it, Florida gators – are mentoring Ukrainian forces.

They are manning the "Joint Multinational Training Group - Ukraine."

It's all done at the "Combat Training Center," located near Yavoriv, Ukraine.

Every 2 months, a new Ukrainian military battalion cycles into the training center.

Once their training is complete, they do a field exercise with U.S. forces.

That's a polite euphemism for rehearsing combat against the Russians.

defenseone.com/threats/2017/1…

National Guard soldiers from California have also been deploying to Ukraine since 1993.

It's part of the "State Partnership Program," in which a National Guard unit from a designated state partners with a foreign military.

Ukraine and California are "buddies" in this system.

Even though Ukraine is not a member state, NATO militaries (along with the EU + Switzerland) also perform joint training operations with Ukrainian forces.

It's part of a program called the "Partnership for Peace."

The idea being, you preserve peace by preparing for war...

The question becomes: What if the plan to deter Russia fails?

If the RU military comes across the border, will foreign militaries inside Ukraine fight?

The answer is almost surely "no," but when you have forces on the ground in a war zone, there's always a risk of escalation.

When asked about this directly, Lloyd Austin would *not* guarantee that U.S. advisors would stay out of combat if Russia invades.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The U.S. Secretary of Defense is NOT ruling out open combat against Russia in Ukraine.

Realistically, I do not believe that U.S. trainers would intentionally be used in combat against the Russian military.

But that does not mean that U.S. troops will automatically be out of harm's way.

There's a non-trivial risk they could be killed in a Russo-Ukrainian war.

If American soldiers die in Ukraine, how will the Biden administration respond? Will the U.S. retaliate?

Those are the kinds of hard questions that get raised when you maintain a troop presence in a volatile conflict zone.

They're questions that should keep us all up at night.