On March 25 two first Il-76 military transport aircraft with personnel and equipment of the 19th detached nuclear, chemical, and germ warfare defense battalion of the Western Operative Command left for Kuwait from the Sknyliv military airfield in Lviv. Two weeks earlier, a quartermaster corps headed by First Deputy Commander of the Western Operative Command Lieutenant General Valery Frolov left for Kuwait to make preparations for the quartering of the personnel in the place designated by the Kuwaiti authorities. The battalion numbers over 500 officers and men selected on a competitive basis (there were ten applicants per opening) and over 150 pieces of various special military equipment.
According to Mykola Hutsuliak, chief of the Western Operative Command press center, proper living conditions have been created for the Ukrainian battalion. They will live in tents with 28 beds in each. Meals will be provided by the host country. According to him, safety measures have been taken in the place of deployment. It will be thoroughly protected, including by the local air defense forces. Lt. Col. Hutsuliak also denied rumors that the mother of one of the servicemen took him home days before deployment in Kuwait. As he put it, “It is a matter of conscious choice for everyone. After all, the average age of soldiers is 30 years. Thus everybody understands pretty well what he is doing.”
On the whole, it will take eighty flights to fully deploy the battalion in Kuwait. Understandably, the soldiers were worried before boarding the plane, but none spoke of any possible threat to their life in a foreign land. However, they must have mentally considered such a possibility. One could especially feel it the Sunday before last when the soldiers were for the last time visited by their parents, wives, and children in Sambir, where the battalion is currently stationed. Understandably, there were tears, but they were not tears of despair. Evidence of the soldiers’ anxiety was the fact that in the last weeks many of them frequented one of the Sambir churches, obviously to pray for their welfare in a foreign land in a state of war. However, they did not let their feelings show. They said only that they were going to Kuwait primarily because this was their orders and, secondly, to make a little money.
