Ukraine Starts Swearing In Its Own Soldiers

Ignoring warnings from Moscow, Ukraine began to swear in soldiers for its new armed forces Sunday as members of the old Soviet internal security forces took oaths of allegiance to the new, independent state.

With the whitewashed belfry of the Florivsky Monastery as a backdrop, 500 volunteers from one of the old Soviet Interior Ministry’s rapid deployment regiments pledged to “defend the Ukrainian state and steadfastly guard its freedom and independence.”

Before reading the oath to the soldiers, Maj. Gen. Volodymyr Kukharets, commander of the new Ukrainian National Guard, told his troops, “We have been given a historical mission--defending our mother Ukraine.”

Although Ukrainian officials had announced plans in November for the 20,000-member internal security force, the ceremony Sunday took on political overtones after Air Marshal Yevgeny I. Shaposhnikov complained last week about the hasty division of the Soviet armed forces into national armies.

“This is not his business,” Serhij Kolesnik, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Military Commission, said Sunday of the republic’s plans to convert former Soviet army units into the new Ukrainian army. “No one is being forced to take the Ukrainian oath.”

Russian officials have also warned Ukraine not to take military assets that belonged to Russia, such as the Black Sea fleet, or to the combined strategic forces of the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

The mood was thus one of defiance as Kukharets administered the oath of allegiance to his troops even though they came from the Interior Ministry units rather than the Soviet army itself.

With a Kalashnikov rifle strapped across his chest and still wearing his old Soviet uniform except for a new epaulet with the initials “NG” for the National Guard, each soldier marched to the front of his platoon to read the oath and then declare, “I serve the people of Ukraine!”

Kukharets called on the new guardsmen to “renew and add to the military tradition of our freedom-loving ancestors, the Zaporizhian Cossacks,” who battled the Poles, the Turks and the Russians through the 17th and 18th centuries.

He concluded with the traditional Ukrainian military call, “Glory to Ukraine!” The new Ukrainian soldiers responded with a rousing shout of “Glory, glory, glory!” before marching off to the previously forbidden national anthem, “Ukraine Has Not Yet Died.”

According to National Guard spokesmen, 8,000 soldiers from the old Soviet Interior Ministry troops volunteered to take the Ukrainian oath on Sunday. “Right now, we have more applicants than spaces,” Maj. Mikhail Grinuk said. “Ukrainian soldiers from others republics are also asking to serve here.”

Of 12,000 soldiers in the old Soviet internal security units, 1,084 declined to take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine, largely out of preference to serve in their own republics, which are also now independent. They will be airlifted to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod this week. The rest of the soldiers, about 3,000, have not yet made a decision.

Special correspondent Mary Mycio reports from Kiev for The Times.