KYIV. Jan 16 (Interfax-AVN) - The 3rd separate engineering battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces which accomplishes peacekeeping missions in Southern Lebanon started a planned personnel rotation on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry told Interfax-Military News Agency.
The battalion comprises 650 servicemen including 84 officers, 62 warrant officers and 504 enlisted men. As many as 290 of them will be replaced.
The rotation will have three stages. A TU-154B-2 plane which is to leave for Southern Lebanon from the Borispol airport on Wednesday will deliver an operations group of the Ukrainian Land Forces Command and over 140 servicemen to Lebanon. An IL-76 Candid military transport will airlift cargo for peacekeepers from a military airfield in the town of Sknilov in the Lviv region on Saturday. Another TU-154B-2 plane will deliver 145 servicemen to Southern Lebanon on January 22. The rotation will be supervised by Ukrainian Land Forces Commander Olexander Zatynaiko.
In general, over 1,300 Ukrainian servicemen have been involved in the peacekeeping operation in Lebanon since summer 2000. At present the Ukrainian battalion is led by Colonel Volodimir Spilnik, who is also commander of the 10th engineering brigade of the Western operational command within the Ukrainian Land Forces. The battalion is equipped with 15 pieces of tracked ordnance and some 170 automobiles. Its headquarters is located in the El-Izzi village.
According to the spokesman, Ukrainian sappers operating in Southern Lebanon have inspected 4,500 minefields and cleared the area of over 354,000 square kilometers from mines. They defused over 1,500 explosive devices including 1,100 antipersonnel and 36 antitank mines as well as 197 artillery shells.