Zelenskyi punishes “traitors”
Ukraine arrests fleeing Major General
4/2/2022 12:59 am
Ukrainian President Selenskyj announces tough action against saboteurs. First, he revokes the titles of two brigadier generals. Now a major general of the reserve of the Ukrainian secret service SBU has been arrested because he wants to leave the country with forged papers.
A major general of the reserve of the Ukrainian secret service SBU has been prevented from leaving the country illegally, according to the authorities. At a border crossing to Hungary, the general presented forged papers on Friday, according to which he was not conscripted. This was announced by the State Investigation Bureau of Ukraine in Kyiv. As a military rank, the man had given a enlisted rank, namely private. The Major General had been arrested, it said.
In a video message on Friday night, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had stripped two SBU brigadier generals of their military ranks. He expressly praised the efforts of other SBU employees in the war triggered by Russia. Zelenskyy revoked the respective titles of the former head of the Main Directorate for Internal Security, Andriy Naumov, and the ex-SBU head for the Kherson region, Serhey Kryvoruchko.
SBU is the successor to the KGB
“Now I don’t have time to take care of all the traitors. But gradually they will all be punished,” Zelenskyj said in the video message. He did not give any further details. Naumov had already been dismissed as head of the secret service last summer and allegedly fled abroad before the start of the war. According to the media, he is involved in smuggling and corruption at customs.
The SBU is the successor to the former Soviet secret service KGB in Ukraine. The SBU maintained close contacts with Moscow until 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and fueled the war in eastern Ukraine. Therefore, there were always doubts about the loyalty of the service to the Ukrainian government.
The mayor of Luhansk is said to have deserted
In addition, according to the pro-Russian separatists in the Luhansk region, the mayor of the eastern Ukrainian city of Rubishne defected to them. Mayor Serhiy Khortyv called on Ukrainian troops to lay down their arms, the separatist news agency Lug-Info reported.
In a video, Khortyv repeated Moscow’s thesis that Ukraine was committing genocide against its Russian-speaking population. It was unclear under what circumstances the video had been taken. Rubishne is the eighth largest city in the Luhansk region and had around 60,000 inhabitants before the war. The city has not been in the hands of the Separatists so far. Kiev politicians threatened Khortyv with retaliation.
When the Russian-fueled struggle of the eastern Ukrainian separatists against the Kiev government began in 2014, many local politicians defected to them. In the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine since February 24, however, most local and regional administrations stand by Kyiv. This could be a reason for the successful Ukrainian resistance so far.