KIEV, July 9 (RIA Novosti) - A major Ukrainian-U.S. naval exercise, involving staff officers and observers from 13 nations, started Monday in the Odessa Region, in the Black Sea, amid protests by local left-wing political groups.
The Sea Breeze 2007, Ukraine's largest military training effort scheduled for 2007, is a multinational peacekeeping exercise led by the U.S. and Ukraine which has been held annually since 1997.
This year, it will involve a dozen ships and vessels, up to three fixed-wing and up to eight rotary-wing aircraft, a team of divers, an airborne search and rescue team, a Marine company, and several pieces of armor.
The exercise will be based in the port of Odessa and neighboring Nikolaev, a Soviet-era naval shipbuilding center.
Ukrainian communists and the leftist Progressive Socialist Party have threatened to obstruct the exercise, as they did in the Crimea last year when the U.S. warship delivering the hardware had to be moved elsewhere.
