US "Mercenaries" in Ukraine?

Recently, there has been a lot of rumors circulating in the media, both Russian and Western, (the bias of these two media sources could be a blog inanofitself, so take that into account when reading them) as to whether or not US private military security contractors have deployed troops in Ukraine. The video below has been used as evidence that Academi (a private military security contractor formerly known as Blackwater) is in Ukraine.

According to Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development in, in an interview with The Centre for Globalization, the uniforms "are consistent with US mercs." He later questions this theory saying, "why run around in public making a show of it?” Now it's hard to say for certain whether these troops were part of a US military contractor or not, but the US government's response to the accusation that they were in Ukraine may be cause for concern.

According to an article by Damien Gayle of the Daily Mail, "A U.S. State Department spokesman said it could not answer for a private company but added: 'We do not have any U.S. military units in Ukraine.'" Interesting that they decided to not answer whether or not the US military has hired Academi to deploy troops in Ukraine (the question that we really want to know) and instead just said that there weren't any official US troops. Granted, technically US military contractors like Academi can be hired by anyone, so maybe the official didn't comment because they couldn't know for sure because someone else could have hired them without the US government knowing. But this isn't that likely when considering the fact that about 90% of Academi's contracts come from the US government according to study by the Institute for Policy Studies. Additionally, many of the members of the board of directors are former high up US military officials (Gayle). Clearly, the ties between the US military and Academi are incredibly strong and the likely hood of the US not knowing whether Academi has been deployed is unlikely, which makes the typical "we can neither confirm nor deny" response by the US government seem all the more suspicious.

This story is an example of what private military security contractors are used by the world's governments for. When they need something done but don't want to be directly tied to the event or it would be inappropriate for that nation's troops to be in that location, they often hire a private military security contractor to get the job done while keeping that nation's military and the nation itself out of the world's view.