Change horses at the crossing

In Ukraine, the investigation of the one who struck the village of Lugansk is continuing. On July 2, representatives of the Luhansk People's Republic accused the Ukrainian military of struck by reactive artillery in a peaceful village, as a result of which 10 people were killed, including a girl of 5-6 years old.

The head of the press service of the LPR Vladimir Zenogorodsky said that as a result of the artillery, the Ministry of Internal Affairs building was destroyed in the village of Lugansk, as well as several residential buildings “mutilated”.

The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine quickly responded to the accusations of the separatists. The acting head of the department Mikhail Koval on the same day, July 2, assured that the armed forces of the country and the National Guard are forbidden to use jet artillery equipment in settlements.

Petro Poroshenko and Mikhail Koval. Photo: mil.gov.ua

Koval also denied the information of the separatists about the victims among the civilians - according to him, on July 2, fights in the area of ​​the village of Lugansk were not conducted.

However, a little later, the fact of shelling of the village of Lugansk was confirmed, it turned out, however, that seven people were killed, including a five -year -old girl. According to the second version, which was voiced on July 3, people became a victim of the mistake of Ukrainian pilots - the separatists have no aviation.

The fact that by the settlements “worked” by aviation, said the head of the Stanichno-Lugansk District Council Vladimir Belous. Valery Golenko, the head of the Lugansk Regional Council, agreed with him. He even filed an open letter to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, in which he demanded that the head of state immediately return to the ceasefire, arguing it precisely by artillery and aircraft with shelling of peaceful settlements.

Even some Ukrainian military agreed that the village of Lugansk and old Kondrashovka could be fired as a result of the pilots error. Igor Mosiychuk, deputy commander of the Azov battalion, said on the air of the 112 channel that the death of civilians could become the result of “pilots' mistakes”.

Igor Mosiychuk

“I think that the pilots' error, and shelling from the side took place. I do not exclude the situation that the first and second took place. And not so much the pilot’s mistake in shooting at the civilian population as we should understand that terrorists can shoot from settlements at armed people, ”he said and added that Kondrashovka“ turned out to be between two lights ”.

The Russian edition of Lifenews even indicated with reference to its correspondent that the raid on the village had made the Su-25 aircraft.

On June 3, a new version of what happened near Lugansk appeared. The Ukrainian security forces denied the information that the pilots could fire Lugansk. The Council of National Security and Defense of Ukraine said that peaceful villages were fired by the separatists themselves.

Firstly, according to the Ukrainian military, the remains of shells of the reactive system of the Grad team fire were discovered, and ammunition were identified as Russian. Secondly, the separatists managed to capture the installation itself, from which volleys could well be made at the village of Lugansk and old Kondrashovka.

The purpose of the shelling, respectively, looks not too attractive in this scenario: to strike a peaceful village in order to blame the opposing side of this.

The village of Lugansk

However, not everyone in Ukraine believes that there was no aviation blow. It is believed that the planes really fired at the village of Lugansk - but it was Russian aviation. In accordance with this version, on July 2, unknown people crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border and actually destroyed part of the air defense, which was responsible for control over the airspace of the East of the Luhansk region. Emergency and restoration work lasted until 15:00, and until that time, Russian aviation, allegedly, could calmly cross the border.

The attackers, according to these data, after the completion of the equipment, part of the air defense moved towards Lugansk, and after some time, two planes invaded the airspace of Ukraine, which were supposedly from Russia, which struck the village of Lugansk. The first aircraft destroyed the internal affairs department, the second released a shell in the residential sector.

According to this version, NATO equipment recorded a violation of the air border of Ukraine and, in theory, the West can publish this data - but so far there was no independent confirmation of this information.

Simultaneously with the events in the vicinity of Lugansk in Ukraine, the leadership of the defense department changed. On July 3, the Verkhovna Rada appointed Valery Geletey to the post of Minister of Defense. It is characteristic that the new Minister of Defense is not a native of the Ukrainian army. In 1990, he graduated from the police school in Ivano-Frankivsk, and in 1994-the Ukrainian Academy of the Interior. Since that time, he worked in the Kiev department to combat organized crime, in February 2005 he was the first deputy head of the Kyiv department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In 2006, he went to work in the Presidential Secretariat - he began to oversee the work of law enforcement agencies there, and in 2007 he was appointed to the post of head of the state protection department of Ukraine. At that time, the parliament and the president could not agree on who exactly the law enforcement agencies obey, so the appointment was symbolic. He was resigned in 2009.

Alexander Turchinov

March 2, 2014, acting President of Ukraine Alexander Turchinov again appointed Geletey the head of the state guard, and on July 2, President Poroshenko invited the Rada to appoint him to the post of Minister of Defense. Speaking on July 3 in the Verkhovna Rada, Geletey promised the deputies to "hold the Victory Parade in the Ukrainian Sevastopol."

Due to the fact that Valery Geletey, in fact, is the Civil Minister of Defense in the conditions when there is a war with separatists in the east of the country, the chief of the General Staff may be a key figure in the defense department. The head of this structure was appointed just a military personnel, Lieutenant General Viktor Muzhenko.

Muzhenko is 52 years old, he was born in the Zhytomyr region and graduated from the Leningrad Higher Combined Arms Command School. In the Soviet Army, he served in the Transcaucasian Military District, and also served in Germany, where he rose to the commander of a motorized rifle company.

In 1992, he returned to Ukraine, where he served in the Carpathian military district, and then in the northern operational command. In 2003, for more than a year he was sent on a business trip to Iraq, where he was the chief of staff of the 5th separate mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian contingent.

Thus, the President of Ukraine changed the highest leadership of the army - apparently deciding that now the most suitable time is for this, and the operation in the east of the country needs fresh strength and ideas.