Getty US steps up Ukrainian combat training Training Ukraine’s army may be more important than providing weapons to fight Russian-backed separatists, some U.S. officials say.

Yavirov, Ukraine — The United States began combat training for Ukrainian Army forces on Monday, expanding its effort to help Ukraine defeat Russian-backed separatists.

Until now, U.S. trainers had only worked with Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, and officials say the shift to regular army training signals President Barack Obama's growing commitment to Ukraine's defense against the aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Obama remains dug in against the advice of many senior officials who favor sending weapons to Kiev. But the administration considers the training regimen an effective alternative that won't provoke a dangerous response from Russia, even as officials in Moscow denounce the program.

"This is arguably more important than any of the equipment we're giving [the Ukrainians]," said Evelyn Farkas, who departed as the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine this fall. "We're teaching them how to prevail against a further incursion of their territory."

In September, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the goal of the training as "to learn how to beat Russia."

In late October, POLITICO observed one training scenario for Ukrainian Interior Ministry forces, who are akin a national guard, at a site near Ukraine's western border with Poland — hundreds of miles from the conflict zone in the country's east.

A platoon of about two dozen Ukrainian soldiers wearing camouflage and body armor and carrying semi-automatic rifles walked through an open field when marksman's targets suddenly popped up in a tree patch, representing pro-Russian fighters. The men hit the ground and riddled the targets with fire. Fanning out, they soon discovered a plywood structure representing an enemy bunker. Soon they were firing mortars and what appeared to be rocket propelled grenades at the site, as an armored vehicle sprayed red tracer rounds through the air. Flares fired into the daytime sky signaled troop maneuvers, a means of avoiding friendly fire casualties. Finally, under the cover of yellow smoke grenades, the troops stormed the bunker, rendering it a smoldering wreck.

Overseeing the exercise was Gen. Mark Milley, the U.S. Army's chief of staff, who paid a one-day visit to the training site. "What they want — and what we want to help them achieve — is a higher level of training and skill in combined arms, and that's a part of what you're seeing here on this live-fire [exercise]," Milley said. The training has also instructed the Ukrainians in battlefield medical practices to save the lives of injured troops.

Milley added that the program, under the rubric of Fearless Guardian, "has direct impact on U.S. national security."

After mass protests brought down Ukraine's president in early 2014, Putin annexed the country's Crimean peninsula. Soon after, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine declared independence from Kiev, leading to fighting that has claimed about 8,000 lives. The fighting has slowed in recent months under the auspices of a fragile cease-fire brokered by European powers in February.

U.S. officials say the separatists are under the control of Moscow, and are bolstered by Russian forces and equipment inside of Ukraine.

About 300 U.S. Army paratroopers have been working with a mix of Ukrainian combat veterans and fresh recruits. Officials say they've seen clear improvement in the Ukrainians' combat effectiveness, and cite it as a reason why the pro-Russian separatists have made few territorial gains since summer.

"They've suffered severe casualties, and this was an acknowledgment that, at least in part, those casualties may have been because of insufficient military skill," Farkas said.

"We are working on small unit skills, leadership skills, the ability to employ as a team," Air Force General Philip Breedlove, NATO's top commander, said in a briefing last month. "And I must tell you that our soldiers are pretty impressed with their soldiers."

Russian officials say they're less impressed. "The U.S. trained [armies] in Afghanistan and Iraq," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in April. "How successful are they in the fight against terrorism?"

But while the program has drawn little attention in the U.S., Moscow-backed media outlets have closely covered the training. In March, a Kremlin spokesman called it "destabilizing."

Nearly 800 national guardsmen were trained during the first phase of the program. The U.S. Army plans to train up to five conventional Ukrainian army battalions, as well as one special operations battalion. (A battalion usually consists of several hundred troops.) Units will be trained in nine-week intervals. The program is currently scheduled to last one year, though Congress can extend it with more funding.

While Obama has declined to send lethal weaponry to Ukraine — the arms and ammunition used in the training exercise were not provided by the U.S. — he has delivered military equipment to Kiev that includes body armor, Humvees, night vision goggles and medical equipment. In recent months the Pentagon has also begun sending Kiev more sophisticated defensive radar systems, including ones that can track mortar fire back to its source allowing for highly accurate counter-targeting.

Analysts say that Ukrainian forces remain outgunned in the face of an enemy equipped with Russian tanks, rockets and artillery. Top Obama officials have pressed the White House to approve the transfer of lethal weapons such as Javelin anti-tank missiles. But president Obama has overruled those suggestions, fearing that they would provoke Putin to escalate and widen the conflict.