Zakharcheno: We'll adequately react to this
2015-03-20
Posted by: badanov
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By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Donetsk president Aleksandr Zakharchenko said in remarks Wednesday, that he intends to give take no prisoner orders against the Ukrainian army unit whose vehicle ran over and killed a three year old child on Monday, according to a youtube.com video.
Tuesday night riots broke out in the northern Donetsk town of Konstantinovka after an unidentified child was hit and killed by a group of Ukrainian soldiers driving an armored vehicle, identified as an MTLB. According to videos taken at the scene, the driver missed a turn, and when he attempted to correct his course, a family was struck by the vehicle, killing one child and wounding another.
That night protesters burned a car and a bus in reaction to the death.
Konstantinovka is a town about seven kilometers southwest of Artemovsk, which until the end of last month was a major logistical center for Ukrainian forces holding the Debaltsevo salient. The rebel campaign to destroyed those forces concluded only a few days ago with Ukrainian soldiers killed in action said to number into the thousands.
Zakharchenko's remarks, mostly about the failure of the Ukrainian parliament to pass a reform law which would allow Russian speaking residents in Donetsk and Lugansk to maintain a special status as an autonomous region in Ukraine, and changing Ukraine into a federation.
Zakharcheko made his reference to the incidents in Konstaninovka saying that the Minsk Ceasefire was annulled. He said that he will give orders to rebel combat units under his command not to take prisoners from the unit which caused the accident.
"We'll come there, for sure," said Zakharchenko.
Zakharchenko has been hinting of late about renewed rebel efforts in destroying more Ukrainian military units in operations similar to the battles in Debaltsevo last month and Ilovaisk last August.
Both of those battles were defensive operations by rebel forces intended to surround and eliminate Ukrainian forces by either forcing them to surrender or by liquidating those units.
Normally, surrounding forces are an offensive operation, but the operations in Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo were defensive in nature, because neither involve the usual elements in pocket battles, such as inner and outer rings for forces.
Instead, at least in Debaltsevo, rebel forces pinned down Ukrainian forces with attacks on those forces along the walls of the salient before launching a sudden attack which seized the town of Logvinovka at the neck of the salient. The Ukrainian geneal staff in Kiev had its hand in the utter defeat at Debaltsevo by stalling for days before reacting.
Inasmuch as the Ukrainian defeat at Debaltsevo could be studied as an example for pocket battles in modern warfare, at least one top rebel commander said that the losses were heavy for both sides, Ukrainian as well as rebel.
Commander of the Lugansk rebel Ghost Brigade Alexei Mozgovoi, characterized the losses for both sides at Debaltsevo as "colossal", according to a news report which appeared in nv.ua.
He said he did not like using combat methods from 1941 to resolve combat issues in the 21st century.
"I do not believe that the operation was successful. It was a lot of drawbacks of all these events," Mozgovoi said.
Rebel media since the end of February have focused on the tremendous losses by Ukrainians at Debaltsevo, but Mozgovoi's remarks are the first from the rebels' side to hint at the cost for the rebels.
Mozgovoi was recently the target of an assassination attempt two weeks ago, when his convoy was hit by a directional mine. A separate news item which appeared in regnum.ru said that a second Lugansk rebel unit commander, identified as Sergey Bondarenko, commander of the "Rus" battalion was similarly attacked using a directional mine.
The news report does not make clear when the attack took place on Bondarenko.
A third rebel commander, this time from Donetsk, Colonel Mikhail Tolstykh, known as "Givi", was attacked Tuesday as he drove his Kia Sorrento SUV from Makeevka. This time he was attacked with small arms fire. According to his remarks recorded in a youtube.com video, Givi was driving alone when the attack took place,. He said he returned fire with an AKMS rifle.
Givi was not wounded in the attack.
Chris Covert writes about foreign military issues for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com. Click here for a list of stories in the The 2014 War in Ukraina category.
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