A Ukrainian army general who was sentenced for neglecting intelligence warnings, leading to the killing of 49 troops, may walk free, the families of the victims fear.
Gen. Viktor Nazarov was sentenced to seven years in prison this March when the court decided that he neglected the intelligence reports when he sent off three planes carrying paratroopers into Luhansk in 2014.
One of the planes was shot down by Russia-backed separatists occupying the eastern Ukrainian city, killing 40 paratroopers and nine crew members. It marked the first massive loss of the war in eastern Ukraine, which has now been going on for three years with the loss of 10,000 lives.
Now, a sister of one of the killed paratroopers is worried that Nazarov may win his appeal and be set free. She is worried that the court will be influenced by the chief commander, Viktor Muzhenko, and President Petro Poroshenko, who have both publicly supported Nazarov.
Controversial order
Overnight into June 14, 2014, three Ukrainian Il-76 military transport aircraft were approaching the Luhansk airstrip to touch the ground with a composite airborne company on board. The Ukrainian paratroopers from Dnipro had been sent to reinforce the army garrison defending the embattled airport some 800 kilometers east of Kyiv, which had been surrounded by Russian-backed militant forces and relentlessly shelled amid attempts to quell Ukrainian resistance.
Soon after midnight, the first aircraft landed safely, but 10 minutes later, when the second one was about to land, a rocket soared up in the sky. The plane’s tailgunner immediately shot the thermal traps to mislead the projectile, but then the second rocket hit the aircraft’s wing from the blind spot.
The pilots did their best to save those on board, tearing their hand tendons while trying to get a handle on the wheels until the last second. The plane crashed in the field in the hostile territory some 7 kilometers away from the destination point, killing everyone on board, including 40 paratroopers and nine crew members.
The high-profile criminal investigation by the military prosecutor’s office proved that the Il-76 was downed from the Igla man-portable anti-air rocket systems by Russian-backed separatists.
The investigation found that it was Nazarov, who back then was the first deputy commander of Ukraine’s operation against the Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, who oversaw the troops transportation to Luhansk airfield that day.
Despite being repeatedly warned about the anti-air threat near the airport area, the general neglected the intelligence reports and sent the planes unprotected in violation of Ukraine’s military instructions.
An inquiry by security services and military aviation experts confirmed Nazarov’s guilt. Basing on the results of the investigation, the Pavlograd district court on March 27 convicted the general to seven years in jail. At the same time, the court did not strip him of his rank.
Nazarov himself says that he didn’t know the details of the operation and thus isn’t responsible for what happened.
“I don’t know how this flight was planned and organized. It was the responsibility of the head of the operational unit,” Nazarov told TSN in April. “I only filed a note requiring the transportation of the troops.”
Killed soldier’s sister speaks out
Among the paratroopers killed in the sky over Luhansk that day, was Ilya Gaiduk, a 21-years-old volunteer soldier from the city of Kryvyi Rih. Almost three years after, his elder sister Ulyana still cannot stand the thought that the ill-fated plane was set off guardless.
“Just before his last flight, Ilya assured me that the planes would be protected by helicopters,” she told the Kyiv Post during the interview on May 4. “Everyone of the paratroopers had the greatest faith that their commanders would not simply send them to slaughter.”
Even those thermal traps that misled the first rocket had been installed by the plane’s crew without the direct order from the command, she tells.
“The plane was given no chance of survival,” she says.
Gen. Nazarov has never admitted his guilt or given apology to the relatives of victims. He was not even temporarily discharged from military service during the investigation or even after being accused by the prosecution.
Later, together with present chief of the general staff Viktor Muzhenko, his long-time friend and immediate commander, Nazarov did play his part in decisive battles of Ilovaisk and Debaltseve, resulted in the extremely heavy toll amid Ukrainian forces.
On Oct. 14, 2014, Poroshenko decorated Nazarov with the third-degree Bohdan Khmelnitsky Order, together with other 27 Ukrainian army officers distinguished in battles against combined Russian-separatist forces in the east.
“Nazarov tried to drag the case as long as possible. He swapped his lawyers, filed objections to prosecution. There were times when we all had almost no hope of bringing him to the court,” Gaiduk says.
Ilyana Gaiduk, sister of the 25th Airborne brigade paratrooper Ilya Gaiduk, killed in the Il-76 tragedy. (Pavlo Podufalov)
In May 2015, the relatives of victims held a rally, seeking justice for the high-ranking general’s negligence.
“We just laid ourselves down on red carpets on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square – wives, mothers, relatives of the soldiers trying to appeal the public attention. We repeatedly demanded to suspend Nazarov from service during the trial as he could threaten the witnesses and experts. We had been looking for an audience with the president – with official requests, open letters, petitions in the media,” she said.
Up to now, Poroshenko has not met anyone of those affected by the tragedy, Gaiduk says.
“Eventually I got a letter from the Presidential Administration saying that Nazarov could not be suspended as he was not directly involved in the case,” she says.
Nevertheless, the trial on the Il-76 case eventually started as late as in December 2015 and lasted 16 months. Until judgment day of March 29, the relatives had no clue if they have any chances to gain the cause, despite strong evidence against Nazarov.
“Finally, the Pavlograd court found him guilty, not least due to moral position of the judge Natalya Samotkan, as we believe,” Gaiduk says. “And we know she was under pressure all this time – Nazarov’s wife Oksana works at the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine.”
Also, many of the middle-ranked Ukraine’s commanders were seeking true justice over the tragedy, which made a difference in tipping the scales, Gaiduk says.
Appeal ahead
Sentencing Nazarov immediately caused mixed reaction mostly among the country’s top officials, with Gen. Muzhenko calling the sentence “a dangerous precedent” for the Ukrainian army. The wave of backlash ended up with Poroshenko expressing discontent over “the civilian court judging the battlefield general” on March 29.
That very day, Gaiduk decided to return her slain brother’s Order For Courage that she had accepted in his name.
“That was a response to the president’s wrongdoing,” she says. “By saying that, he made up his mind about which side he was on. Poroshenko simply neglected the court’s decision, openly supported the one who is guilty of the deaths of 49 heroes. After this, we have nothing to speak about with him.”
On April 21, Nazarov appealed against the judgment, and a new trial is expected to be launched within a month. The relatives of the killed paratroopers and pilots doubt hat Nazarov will serve jail time. Being supported by the top commander, and also by the president, Nazarov can win the appeal, Gaiduk believes.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, in a private conversation when the two met at an event in January, explained what might happen: “Lutsenko told me that Nazarov will definitely be imprisoned, but he will be pardoned after serving minimum time in jail. Lutsenko told me that would be necessary. Or else other generals would be afraid to give orders,” she said.
