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The Island-class vessels arrived in the southern Black Sea port city of Odesa on Nov. 23, transported from Baltimore on the cargo ship Ocean Grand.
The 165-ton warships, previously used by the U.S. Coast Guard, have been named Sumy and Fastiv, after two Ukrainian cities. The Ukrainian navy said that their crews just completed their six-week training course in the U.S.
Ukraine now has four Island-class patrol boats, including the Starobilsk and the Slovyansk, which were delivered in 2019. Another Island is expected by the end of the year.
The U.S. is also considering providing Ukraine with more Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Mi-17 helicopters, previously used in Afghanistan, CNN reported on Nov. 23.

Illia Ponomarenko
Defense reporter
Illia Ponomarenko is the defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.
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