A Ukrainian general was among the 12 Ukrainian servicemen killed while aboard an Mi-8 helicopter that Kremlin-backed insurgents shot down near Sloviansk shortly after noon on May 29.
The National Guard said six national guardsmen, including Major-General Serhiy Kulchytsky, 50, and six elite Interior Ministry servicemen were killed, while one guardsman survived but was in critical condition.
The deaths bring to at least 56 the number of Ukrainian soldiers or servicemen killed since the mid-April start of the government’s anti-terrorist operation against heavily armed Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, home to 15 percent of Ukraine’s 45 million people.
In response, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said the pro-Russian militants who carried out the attack were themselves killed by Ukrainian forces. Vladyslav Seleznyov, the government’s anti-terrorism operation spokesman, did not have a number of pro-Russian militants killed. He said “all of them” who killed the Ukrainian servicemen had also been killed.
“In response to the actions by terrorists, counterterrorism forces carried out artillery bombardment and an air strike of the territory, from where the fire was coming,” the statement read. “As a result, a group of criminals involved in the shooting was destroyed.”
The helicopter had earlier in the day delivered food and equipment, including troop replacements. It was shot down while starting its return flight, with outgoing troops who were being rotated on board.
A separate announcement by Ukraine’s parliament said that “terrorists” used a Russian-made shoulder-fired air-defense weapon to shoot down the National Guard helicopter.
“I’m certain that our armed forces, our security forces, will completely clean out the terrorists,” said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov in parliament who is also the acting speaker of the legislature. “And all the criminals who are now being funded by the Russian Federation will be annihilated or will sit in the defendant’s chair (in court).”
Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, continue to deny any involvement in the unrest in eastern Ukraine.
The Kyiv Post spoke to Ukrainian soldiers at a checkpoint in Donetsk Oblast’s Sloviansk who expressed their sorrow and disappointment about the death of Kulchytsky. They said that they respected him as one who often stayed with them and didn’t put a boundary between him as a general and other simple soldiers.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
