The Yavoriv military base is a military training facility of the
Armed Forces of Ukraine
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, ranks = Military ranks of Ukraine
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The Armed Forces of Ukraine ( uk, Збро́йні си́ли Украї́ни), most commonly known ...
in the city of
Yavoriv
Yavoriv ( uk, Яворів, ; pl, Jaworów; yi, יאַוואָראָוו , translit=Yavorov; german: Jaworiw) is a city in the Lviv region of western Ukraine which is around 15 kilometers from the Polish border. It is the administrative centre o ...
in western Ukraine, some 10 km from the border with Poland and 30 kilometers northwest of
Lviv
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...
in Yavoriv district. The facility houses an International Center for Peacekeeping and Security within the framework of the Ukraine–NATO
Partnership for Peace
The Partnership for Peace (PfP; french: Partenariat pour la paix) is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) program aimed at creating trust between the member states of NATO and other states mostly in Europe, including post-Soviet states; ...
program and the National Military Academy Hetman Petro Sahaidatschnyj. The base covers an area of around 390 sq km (151 sq miles) and can accommodate up to 1,790 people. The course covers an area of 36,153 hectares; until the creation of the Yavoriv National Park, it was 42,000 hectares in size.
View of the landscape in 2008
History
Modern Yavoriv military training area was founded in 1940. A former military training area, originally established under Austrian rule, and then occupied by the Polish army after their attack on Ukraine, was used. Therefore, this military training area had existed here before the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939 and the Soviet annexation of western Ukraine. Under Soviet occupation, on February 13, 1940, the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
passed a resolution on the evacuation of 30 villages, the area of which was needed for the expansion of the square.
A total of 125,000 people were forcibly resettled from the area, and 170 villages and
hamlets
A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. Its size relative to a parish can depend on the administration and region. A hamlet may be considered to be a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a lar ...
became deserts. The inhabitants were taken to southern
Bessarabia
Bessarabia (; Gagauz: ''Besarabiya''; Romanian: ''Basarabia''; Ukrainian: ''Бессара́бія'') is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Be ...
to villages that had recently become free during the evacuation of
Bessarabian Germans
The Bessarabia Germans (german: Bessarabiendeutsche, ro, Germani basarabeni, uk, Бессарабські німці) were an ethnic group who lived in Bessarabia (today part of the Republic of Moldova and south-western Ukraine) between 1814 ...
to the
German Reich
German ''Reich'' (lit. German Realm, German Empire, from german: Deutsches Reich, ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty ...
.
Germany occupation
From 1941 to 1944, the area was used by the German Wehrmacht as a military training area in Galicia named ''Truppenübungsplatz Galizien''. Later, the Red Army used the area again and from 1991 the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
IPSC
The International Peacekeeping and Security Centre (IPSC) was formed in 2007 to aid in the training of personnel from the
Ukrainian Armed Forces
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, exports =
, history =
, ranks = Military ranks of Ukraine
, country=Ukraine
The Armed Forces of Ukraine ( uk, Збро́йні си́ли Украї́ни), most commonly known ...
, particularly for peacekeeping missions. The IPSC also provides training to foreign state military units which provide forces to peacekeeping missions and in the fight against terrorism. In 2016, the JMTC’s Fearless Guardian II program trained soldiers in first aid, counter-unmanned aerial vehicle tactics and dealing with counter- IEDs.
In September 2015 NATO’s Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) and the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SESU) ran the
joint exercise “Ukraine 2015” with more than 1,100 participants, including first responders, search and rescue teams and experts dealing with the fallout from a chemical or nuclear attack.
Today, joint exercises with NATO forces are also being carried out on the square.
2022 Russian attack
During the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
, the Yavoriv military facility was hit by a Russian missile strike early on 13 March 2022. According to Ukrainian officials, 30 rockets were fired at the base, killing 35 and injuring 134 others. Ukrainian officials also reported that as many as 1000 foreign fighters had been training at the base as part of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. The
Russian Ministry of Defence
The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (russian: Министерство обороны Российской Федерации, Минобороны России, informally abbreviated as МО, МО РФ or Minoboron) is the govern ...
announced that it had destroyed "up to 180 foreign mercenaries and a large consignment of foreign weapons" and said that Russia would continue attacks on foreign fighters in Ukraine; the
Ukrainian Ministry of Defence
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* Som ...
said that it had not confirmed any foreigners among the dead. On 14 March, British newspaper The Mirror said that at least three British ex-special forces may have been killed in the strikes, with the total amount of dead volunteers potentially surpassing one hundred.
Ukraine's Defence Minister
Oleksii Reznikov
Oleksii Yuriyovych Reznikov (; born 18 June 1966) is a Ukrainian lawyer and politician who has served as the List of Ministers of Defense (Ukraine), Minister of Defence of Ukraine since 4 November 2021. Reznikov previously has served in sever ...
described the strike as a "terrorist attack on peace and security near the EU-NATO border". A
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
official said that there were no NATO personnel in Ukraine.
