Dismissal of military director after deadly Russian attack on Ukrainian congress center

The military administration of the Ukrainian region Soemy is said to have organized a medal recerioremony in the congress center of the regional capital on which Russia fired two ballistic missiles of the Iskander-M type on Palm Sunday. « (This decision) The Russian troops help their terrorist attack justify, » said the furious mayor, Artem Semenichin, in a Facebook video.

The mayor, not from the regional capital Soemy but from a town further from the front lines, revealed the medaleceremony. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zenskyy has immediately fired the head of the military administration of the Northern region of Soemy, Volodymyr Artjoech, on Tuesday.

Certainly one of the Russian missiles was loaded with cluster munitions – which means that it splashes into thousands of metal fragments. One rocket landed at the university congress center. A second exploded above the street, close to a trolley bus full of people.

The attack led to 34 dead and 125 injured, including 18 children. More than forty of the wounded are still in the hospital, seven are seriously injured, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

The whistle -sliding mayor pointed in a Facebook video to the head of the Military Board Volodymyr Artjoech. « He organized a medal ceremony for the men of the 117th brigade. It is not true that there was nothing (military) going on, there was. (…) Who thinks this? A medal recerioremony at 30 km from the (Russian Hufters), in the Céntrum of the city, » the mayor fulminated.

No warning time

Soemy is located on the northern border with Russia. Moscow is working on an offensive in that direction to get back the areas occupied by Ukraine in Koersk. So close to the border there is virtually no warning time for Russian attacks.

« I personally risk a lot because of this, » the mayor Semenichin said in the video, walking on his eyes with tears in his eyes. « But I see the blood that they clean up now. Bloody children’s stuff. And it’s not the first time. »

The soldiers who were present at the ceremony would all be intact. « They were protected, » says the mayor, « while the citizens did not have enough time to go to the shelters. » Possibly the ceremony itself was underground.

In a response to the Ukrainian broadcaster Soespilne, the dismissed lieutenant general artjoech, of the military administration, that he was not the initiator of the meeting. « I was invited, » said Artjoech according to the journalists. He refused to say by whom. On Tuesday he was held responsible by Zensky, and had to make way.

Warly it does not mean that the Russian attack is justified because of the medal recerior. In urban areas, warring parties must always be extra careful and limit the damage for citizens as much as possible. The use of cluster munitions in populated, urban area makes it difficult to speak about a precision attack.

« Soemy is a front line city with many militiaries … But there are certainly citizens on the street at the weekend. Anyone who ordered it to be civilian deaths, » said the Ukrainian military expert Roman Svitan to the Russian independent news site Novaja Gazeta.

Cluster

Russia has recently used the heavy ballistic missiles more and more because they are more difficult to intercept for Ukraine than cruise missiles. Russia also used cluster munitions more often on cities – including on a playground in Kryvy Rih, a few weeks ago, with more than a hundred injured people and more than thirty deaths as a result.

In Ukraine, due to the war, the obligation to confidentiality on all subjects that the population or the armed forces can endanger. Research is therefore being conducted as to whether the location of the medaleceremony was leaked.

In recent months, society has increasingly sounded criticism of the way in which the Ukrainian forces are organized. « A small Soviet army cannot beat a large Soviet army, » it sounds, accompanied by a call to solve problems fairly, smart and efficiently – and not with brutal strength and repression, as Russia would. It does not help for imaging that someone like the dismissed Artjoech (66) was trained militarily within the Soviet system.

Mobilization

The biggest problem for Ukraine is mobilization. Hardly any volunteers report after three years of war and the mobilization is becoming increasingly unfair in many eyes. Men with money, education and connections are often able to avoid the service call. As a result of which it is the vulnerable who have to man the lines, military analyst Tatarski stated last month.

« In the thirty years since independence, Ukrainian leaders did not succeed in building a system that could support war mobilization, » Tatarski continued. « This was partly due to the widespread conviction that large -scale wars belonged to history – something for the textbooks, not for modern reality. »

The lack of manpower ensures in Ukraine that soldiers are repaid little and there is no maximum service period. This means that men who have served since the start of the invasion can only be demobilized if they are injured. At the end of last year it turned out that 350,000 soldiers at the front have been fighting for three years.

Unlike Russia, these shortcomings are publicly discussed in Ukraine. This also has the downside that this information is also used against Ukraine itself. US President Donald Trump reacted to a Ukrainian request on Monday to buy ten anti -aircraft system Patriot for 15 billion dollars. « You don’t have to start war against someone who is twenty times as big and then hope that people give your rockets, » Snucked US President Donald Trump.

The American special envoy Steve Witkoff also stated on Monday evening (Dutch time) that he had a productive meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg and talks about a deal with regard to five Ukrainian territories. The American-Russian relations will also offer ‘very attractive commercial opportunities’, according to Witkoff.

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