A team of enlisted men and officers of the 3rd Separate Special Forces Regiment from Kropyvnytskyi has flown home from Britain, having won the honorable silver medal at the prestigious annual Cambrian Patrol competition! The Ukrainians triumphed at an event involving 131 teams and almost three dozen countries. This was reported by civil volunteer Roman Synitsin on his Facebook page.
The Cambrian Patrol is considered an extremely difficult competition, as it is basically a forced foot march through the Cambrian Mountains in Wales. The competition’s program included a 50-mile foot patrol in a mountainous area during stormy weather for two days without sleep, working with agents and local population, neutralizing terrorists and freeing civilian hostages, interrogating and working with prisoners, demining, forcing water obstacles in the mountains with water temperature standing at 6 degrees Celsius, provision of first medical aid to people with traumatic amputations, etc.
The gold was shared by Pakistani and UK soldiers, but their success can be explained by them having much more experience of mountain warfare and good knowledge of the area. The Ukrainian team had soldiers who participated in many battles in the Donbas.
Following the Invictus Games in Toronto, this is the second demonstration of the high level of training and morale of our soldiers: on that earlier occasion, a Ukrainian team of active-duty servicemen and veterans who had been injured or wounded in the line of duty won 14 medals (8 gold, 3 silver, and 3 bronze ones). Then, The Day used a photo to specially emphasize the intersection of two histories: the picture showed the founder of the competition, Prince Harry of the House of Windsor talking to the Ukrainian descendants of the “Monomakhs.” That was what our editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna called the Ukrainian servicemen, noting the deep historical subtext and meaning. And it was not just about the truly aristocratic endurance of our soldiers, but also about symbolism of images. The “galaxies” of the ruling dynasties of Ancient Rus’-Ukraine and Britain first met back in 1074 (!), when the daughter of the last lawful Anglo-Saxon King of England Harold II, Princess Gytha, became the wife of young Volodymyr Vsevolodovych, later known as Grand Prince of Kyiv Volodymyr Monomakh. And now again, coming to meetings in Toronto and Britain, Ukrainian lads, who are descendants of Monomakh, show their colossal spiritual strength and self-esteem.
