Ukrainian peacekeepers to fight Russian military — RT

Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has issued an executive order summoning the country’s peacekeepers back home from their overseas missions. The military personnel are supposed to join the fight against the Russian army.

The order was published on the Telegram channel of the Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday. In it, Zelensky ordered the “national contingent and national personnel taking part in international peacekeeping operations” to return home so they could help “defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine.

Peacekeepers from the eastern European country have been deployed to dozens of conflict zones since 1992. Ukrainian blue helmets are, or were up until recently, stationed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Mali as well as Kosovo region among others.

Following the war in the Donbass in 2014-2015, there have also been calls from within Ukraine for UN peacekeepers to be deployed either in the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk republics or along the Ukrainian-Russian border.