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Ukraine's State Guard Service receives armored personnel carriers

Armored personnel carriers have been delivered to Ukraine's State Guard Service.

By Richard Tomkins
A Soviet-era BTR-70 armored personnel carrier. (CC/Torin)
A Soviet-era BTR-70 armored personnel carrier. (CC/Torin)

KIEV, Ukraine, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Ukraine's state-owned Ukroboronprom has delivered 10 repaired and updated BTR-70 armored personnel carriers to the country's State Guard Service.

The defense company said the vehicles, with enhanced armor protection, were delivered earlier this month together with an armored medical vehicle. An additional BTR-70s are to be delivered "in the nearest future."

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Ukraine, formerly part of the now-defunct Soviet Union, is battling pro-Russian separatist forces supported by Russia, which annexed Ukraine's Crimea region. The move by Russia, its apparent material support for the pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, and saber rattling have set off alarm bells within NATO, who fear direct, large-scale Russian military intervention in support of the rebels.

"From our side, we express our sincere gratitude from the whole Guard Service of Ukraine," Anatoliy Sirko, a lieutenant colonel of the Guard Service's Kherson border regiment.

Lt. Col. Sirko, the person who accepted BTR-70s, said Ukrainian troops operating the vehicles received special training to do so at a Ukroboronprom plant and are "already formed and sent to protect state boundaries."

BTR-70s were developed in the 1960s in the Soviet Union and adopted by Moscow's Warsaw Pact allies.

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