YAVORIV, Sept. 14 - A Ukrainian military band, accompanied by twirling dancers in traditional dress, welcomed 200 Royal Canadian Regiment soldiers participating in Operation Unifier, the Canadian military’s mission to help train Ukrainian army units for war against the Russian-backed separatists who control swaths of eastern Ukraine, The Globe and Mail reported.

Both the Ukrainian government and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allege that regular Russian forces have at times fought alongside the rebels, giving them a decided edge in combat.

Moscow denies direct involvement in eastern Ukraine, saying Russian citizens captured and killed in the fighting were there as “volunteers.”

The Canadian training mission is taking place 1,200 kilometers away from the front lines, but the Kremlin nonetheless sees the exercises as part of a NATO buildup on its doorstep. The Russian embassy in Ottawa has criticized the mission as “counterproductive and deplorable.”

Operation Unifier, which is expected to cost $32-million over the two-year deployment, is less controversial in Canada, with all three main political parties supporting the effort in principle. The deployment comes in addition to about $570 million in economic and non-lethal military aid – equipment such as uniforms and night-vision goggles – that Canada has provided to Ukraine in the 18 months since a pro-Western revolution in Kiev, which was followed by Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the outbreak of fighting in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ottawa has also levied sanctions against businesses and individuals linked to the Kremlin as punishment for Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

The setting for Operation Unifier adds to the mission’s Cold War feel. For five decades, the Red Army used what was then known as the Lviv Training Centre to rehearse for war with NATO forces on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Yavoriv, a short drive from the Polish border, was where the Soviet Union ended and the rest of Eastern Europe began. Soviet soldiers stationed near here were sent to crush the Hungarian uprising in 1956.

Today, there are U.S. soldiers conducting live fire exercises alongside Ukrainian units at the renamed Yavoriv Peacekeeping Centre. A contingent of British soldiers recently left after completing their training mission. The Ukrainian soldiers emerge from the crash courses with their guns pointed east rather than west.

The 200 Canadians from the 1st Battalion of the Petawawa, Ont.-based Royal Canadian Regiment who formally began their mission on Monday, will initially work with the 30th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian army teaching tactics, marksmanship and combat medicine, as well as how to deal with improvised explosive devices.

The 30th Mechanized Brigade is a battered unit, one that took heavy losses in the failed defense of the city of Ilovaysk last year and the strategic rail hub of Debaltseve this spring. Both cities eventually fell into the hands of pro-Russian forces. Some of the unit is now made up of raw recruits called up to replace those killed and wounded in action. (gl/ez)