Facing growing public pressure to address concerns over military leadership on the front as Ukrainian forces lose ground daily due to Russian attacks, Ukraine said it has detained three former commanders it fired last spring. Was blamed for the loss of the area.
Ukraine’s security service said late Monday that three former commanders – two generals and a colonel – were charged with failing to defend the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine from Russian military advances last year.
The security service, known as the SBU, did not reveal the names of those detained, only their ranks and the units they commanded at the time.
The former commanders are accused of failing to build adequate fortifications or properly equip defensive positions, among other mistakes, which led to “the capture of part of the territory of the eastern region of Ukraine, where fierce fighting currently continues.” is,” Security Service said in a statement,
The arrests come amid growing public pressure to take action against commanders deemed incompetent or negligent in the Ukrainian military due to a surge in troop desertions. Soldiers who leave their units without permission often cite disagreements with their commanders as the main reason for doing so.
The colonel was also being held responsible for the desertion of 12 soldiers of his battalion, said in a statementSeparately, the commander of another brigade, the 155th, was arrested and accused of actions that caused large numbers of members of his brigade to be absent without leave at a time when Ukraine’s military is facing severe shortages. .
Ukraine is also targeting corruption in the military amid widespread accounts of bribery by military officials – particularly medical commissars who can issue draft exemptions.
On Tuesday, the SBU announced that the country’s chief military psychiatrist had been arrested, saying he had embezzled more than $1 million, several properties and four BMWs since the start of the full-scale invasion of Russia. Have achieved.
The crimes with which the commanders are charged carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison. The SBU said it would try to keep those arrested in pre-trial detention as a preventive measure.
Soldiers of the 125th Brigade, which was involved in the defense of the Kharkiv region at the time, said that their former commander was one of those arrested, and reacted angrily.
“We were defending a large part of the border, in the first hours of the attack we kept fighting to the death. We were short of men, ammunition and support but we fought, we fought under the leadership of our commander!” he wrote on the brigade facebook page,
cassandra winograd And Natalia Novosolova Contributed to the reporting.