US ambassador:‘Georgia not only committed to supporting NATO, it can also train, certify its units for NATO missions’
US Ambassador Kelly Degnan and Georgian Defence Minister Irakli Garibashvili. Photo: US Embassy press office.
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US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan has attended the certification exercise for the Georgia Deployment Program – Resolute Support Mission (GDP-RSM), conducted by Georgian and American troops, where she stated that Georgia is not only committed to supporting NATO, but that it can train and certify its own defence units for these missions.
Georgia is the largest non-NATO contributor to the Resolute Support mission with 871 soldiers.
The Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan was launched in 2015 and involves more than 16,000 personnel from nearly 40 NATO member and partner countries.
The mission serves to train, advise and assist Afghan defence and security forces and support them through funding.
Thirty-two Georgian soldiers have been killed and dozens injured in NATO-led peace missions in Afghanistan.
Georgian soldiers from the III infantry brigade have been recognized for their service in Nato’s Resolute Support mission in northern Afghanistan, receiving awards for exemplary service from the Multinational Battalion commander and Lieutenant Colonel Wolfgang Schroeder.
A Georgian soldier who became seriously ill while serving in the NATO Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan has been brought back to his homeland by the German air forces, the German Embassy to Georgia has told IPN.
Georgia’s newly appointed Minister of Defense Irakli Garibashvili has announced he will visit Afghanistan to meet with Georgian peacekeepers and learn about their everyday life. Gharibashvili made an online address with Georgian peacekeepers deployed on the Afghan and African continents and pledged his support to them at the military command centre.
The US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan says that every new election in Georgia is held in a better way than previous ones, stating that the upcoming parliamentary elections in the autumn ‘are of high importance and we will observe them closely.’
Georgian peacekeeping troops are undergoing their final exercises before deploying to NATO's Resolute Support Mission in Georgia for the first time, with the Mission Readiness Exercise testing their preparedness for serving in the next round of tours in Afghanistan.
860 Georgian soldiers will start leaving Afghanistan in May as the US and NATO will begin withdrawing their troops from the country after two decades of war.NATO allies agreed on Wednesday, according to US plans, to start removing troops by May 1.The pull-out is to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US by jihadist organization al-Qaida.